This special edition of Wrongful Conviction Behind Bars was recorded inside of Wende Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Buffalo, NY with Anthony DiPippo’s co-defendant, Andrew Krivak, and his attorney Professor Adele Bernhard. On November 22nd, 1995, a hunter found the remains of 12-year-old Josette Wright in a wooded area of Putnam County, NY with her hands and feet hog-tied behind her back and her underwear shoved down her throat. Detectives investigating the murder arrested 16-year-old Dominic Neglia on unrelated drug charges. During questioning, detectives claimed that Neglia said 18-year-old Anthony DiPippo, his girlfriend at the time Denise Rose, Andrew Krivak, Adam Wilson, Bill McGregor were involved in the rape and murder of Wright. Although co-defendants, they were convicted in separate trials in Putnam County Supreme Court in 1997, based largely on the testimony of Wilson, McGregor and Rose, and sentenced each to 25 years to life in prison. While Anthony DiPippo denied any involvement in the crime and testified in his trial, Andrew Krivak signed a false confession in which he admitted to raping Josette Wright but not killing her and implicating Anthony DiPippo in the murder. In 2016, Andrew Krivak’s legal team sought to introduce newly discovered evidence that points to Howard Gombert, who is serving time in Connecticut for sexual assault, as the killer, which ultimately led to the acquittal and release of his co-defendant, Anthony DiPippo. The motion seeking a new trial was denied, largely due to his false confession. However, in 2019 a judge threw out his conviction and granted him a new trial. He is still in prison awaiting his new trial.
https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom
Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
My interview with Andrew Crievak originally aired on August one, two thousand seventeen, and there's been some incredible development since that um. In two thousand nineteen, a judge throughout Andrew's conviction and granted him a new trial in Putnam County Court. At the time I'm recording this, he's still in prison awaiting his new trial. But by the time you're hearing it, I'm really optimistic that he's going to be home. I can't even express what that would mean to me, and I know to a lot of our audience who followed his case, it's a disgusting miscarriage of justice. His co defendant, Anthony di Pippo, has been out now for several years. He's a dear friend, and the fact is it's incomprehensible and inexcusable that for that long they've own these alreadies, have known that Andrew is just as innocent as Anthony is, but they've prevented his release to the simple fact that Andrew confessed to the crime that they both didn't commit while Anthony did not. So Andrew creevac Justice delayed will not be justice denied. I think we have the best legal system. It's just the people that implemented 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 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 and eat spaghetti like it was nothing. And anybody that would say, 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 threatening to kill your life? George, he said, how you feel? I said, I'm okay. He said, well the day is You're lucky day you go home. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. We have a very unique case and a very special episode of wrongful Conviction behind bars. Today is gonna be the noisiest episode. I just want to warn your upfront because we're inside Wendy Maximum Security Prison in Buffalo, New York. So apologies in advance, but I promise you you're gonna hear an extraordinary interview today, and so hang in there and hear the story of Andrew Creevac. You've probably heard Andrew's co defendant, Anthony de Pippo his episode of wrongful Conviction aired recently. And so this is a case where we have Anthony on the show, having been exonerated, and yet we're still back behind bars interviewing his co defendant, which makes no fucking sense, but here we are. If you hear the cell door slamming, you'll know it's as real as it can be. It was a horrific case, the rape and strangulation in evangelically beautiful twelve year old Josette Right, there was stunning development in a sensational case of a convicted child killer rapist in Putnam County. What's wrong with this case? This case was created out of hold cloth by the deputy sheriff in charge of this case, who himself has been indicted by this very county for crime. Pippo still maintains his innocence for jury and Putnam County found him not guilty. 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 eyewitness was incredible. The defense was allowed to suggest Howard Gombert is the real killer. Scene with the victims shortly before her disappearance and currently in a Connecticut prison on sex assault charges, Judge Robert Neary ordered to Pippo released on a million dollars bail. The Putnam County distric Attorney, though, isn't backing down own. He insists not guilty. It's not the same as innocent. Andrew Welcome to the show. In this case, I could say I'm sorry you're here. Usually I'm happy to have a guest on the show, but I'm sorry to be taping it in this facility. I'm looking forward to seeing you on the outside sometime soon. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We also have with us another very special guest, someone who I considered to be a sort of royalty. A lot of people that would be royalty in the innocence community. The one and only Adele Bernhardt is here. Adele welcome, Thank you very much. I'm very glad to be here. I'm really glad you're focusing on Andy's case. I think it's important and I'm glad so Adele has been representing Andy for over ten years now, well close to ten, I guess. Unfortunately, it's easy to get wrongfully convicted and undoing it we know takes thousands of hours of legal work, and this case is no different. So Andy, going back to the beginning, where were you from? What were you born? Originally? I was really born in Pontam County, New York, Putnam County Hospital, raised there until probably like n then my family moved to Stormville, New York to take care of my grandmother, me and my father. My grandmother and my brother and at the time my stepmother. And your childhood? Was it a happy childhood? How was how it thinks it was? I mean, you know, we had a normal problems like anything else. I can't say that, you know, I was subjected to anything unusual. It was normal for the most part. I had my you know, little issues growing up, primarily because I know my real mother, so you know, I was emotional a lot on that in the things. But he was pretty normal. And let mean, upstate New York pretty nice place to grow up. It's beautiful around here. What did you play sports or yeah, I grew I actually I started fifth grade football. From that point on our baseball basketball. I did that probably up until junior high with the hopes that I could go into high school playing sports and see how far I can go. Unfortunately I never panned out. So you're a teenager growing up doing teenager type stuff, right, certainly not not getting in trouble, right, that's a double negative. But yeah, I mean like you know nothing major. I mean, you know juvenile things, but you were not a violent guy. So you're going along trying to find your way like a lot of teenagers. And then one day something absolutely horrifying happens. A young girl, twelve year old girl named Josette Right was raped and brutally murdered. But they didn't know that at the time. All they knew was that she had disappeared. Did you know her? I knew her from being around the area, seeing her, know when her older sister's. Komo is a small community, so everybody interacted, you know, when a fair comes around and goes to the fair. They got a plaza, so they have all these regular areas that you would run into people. So yeah, for that part of in passing or being around somewhere or being in a fair a new word to that extent and all. This is a very strange aspect of this case because here you have this small community, sounds sort of idyllic in a lot of ways, and this lovely young girl disappears one day. Now, you know, we all see on TV when these things happened, the search parties are formed, there's you know, the whole town comes out almost pandemonium, but controlled pandemonia, where people are just searching everywhere to find this little girl. But that's not what happened, right. The authorities didn't at first believe that she even was really missing. I thought she ran away. Well from what I could tell from the records they've turned over to us, the police didn't seem to take her disappearance terribly seriously at all. So they put up some wanted posters. But that's about it, so as far as I can see from all of the records that I've gathered, Unless I'm missing something, they figured she'd come back. They figured she was a runaway. They didn't really take it very seriously. They logged a couple of calls people reported seeing her later on in the malls, But I guess they thought well, easy, commies and go, she'll be back. I mean, as a are it it's just outrageous. I think it's very shocking, and it's particularly outrageous because of her age. I mean, it's not like she was seventeen, where you could say, well, you know, sometimes seventeen ars run away. She was in school every day, She wasn't getting into trouble with older people from any place else. So the fact that she all of a sudden wasn't there was I think pretty serious. Yes, she was twelve, I mean, Jesus, it's so young. The horror of that is unimaginable. But so months and months go by, right, you've obviously heard about the case. Everybody's probably heard about the case. And then I think it was thirteen months later her body was found in the woods. And now everything changes, right, all of a sudden, once they found the bones and they were able to identify the dental records as belonging to her, suddenly the police realized that they should have been paying more attention. This is my interpretation of the records. It looked like they realized, hey, we should have been taking this more seriously all the way along. Now we know this is a homicide. It's not just a runaway. She's not coming back, and we didn't follow up the leads that might have let us discover what happened much much earlier, when the trail wasn't so cold. So Andrew, now we have a situation where not only is there the very real problem of the fact that there's a brutal child killer in the midst of this town, right and everything that that would mean to the authorities, many of whom have kids of their own, or relatives or nieces, whatever might be. So on a personal level, all of a sudden, there's a real sense of urgency, but also there's got to be a lot of pressure from the community with something like this happens. So they've now got and we see this over and over again, they've got to really scramble, and they got to find somebody because otherwise it's going to be obvious that they didn't do their job and going to be a lot more pressure brought to bear on them. There could be people losing their jobs, who knows what could happened, people getting voted out. They got to find this guy or people who did this, right, So things start to go downhill quick from this point and ultimately you end up being arrested and charged with this crime that you must have been like are you kid? Were you? I mean were you? Like? Are you kidding? Like I was in shock. I mean you know that the actual processes was like fifty paces behind my brain like trying to catch up, like wait a minute, my conscious you know, it's like trying to wait, am I really sitting here? You know, as a juvenile, I've been in and out of little situations, so but to being told that I raped and murdered somebody at seventeen, Like are you serious? You know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, just anybody who knows me were like like they don't correlate the two, and you know, me to try to process that I'm being accused of it and sitting in there and having you know, these people yell at me and say this evidence, this witnesses this people, and I'm yelling back your line, You're crazy, You're making it up. I don't really think it still is hit me because I refused to let it, and it's like I'm in this altered state of just trying to figure this out, like wait a minute, you know it's got to be a bad dream. I'm waking up sometimes. How did they land on you? And Anthony? I mean, I know the story, but I want to hear from your perspective because it's so bizarre. There was no physical evidence connecting you. What do you understand how that happened? No, and I think about it every day, you know, I have since this has happened. My only consensus of it is maybe prior Runnings being an easy target. I don't know. Like I said, you know, you try to make sense of something that doesn't make sense, and you can drive yourself crazy. For one thing, what happened is that Denise Rose got herself arrested, well eventually, I mean yeah, you know, later on down the line, through their talking to people, whatever the case may be, different names came up. And I think, at least personally, that it still extends farther than just people mentioning names, because you would think that the professionals that are actively pursuing leads and looking for the culprits or the culprit that that committed his crime, would be able to hang themselves onto some something tangible, as opposed to oh, well, yeah he knew her or she knew him, or you know what I'm saying. So I think it's a little bit more than that. To what extent, I don't know, it's obvious that there's more to it than just singling us out because a name was mentioned. Do you want to jump in here A sure? I mean, when Denise Rose got arrested, they had an idea of who the likely suspects were in the town. And I think that Anthony in particular was a likely suspect just because he was a big guy. They knew him. He'd gotten in trouble for various juvenile kinds of things. And so when Denise gets arrested and she's in trouble and they know that she had been his girlfriend at around the time that they now decided that this little girl was murdered, they immediately started putting the pressure on her. Did you know him, you knew him then? How did you know him? Weren't you with him? Weren't you with him that night? Didn't you see what happened? And they talked to her time and time again, and they talked to her at least three different times while she was in jail after she'd gotten arrested, while she was worried about going to jail herself, and so a little bit, by little bit, by little bit, they got her to start thinking that maybe there would be something in it for her to put these pieces together for them when she could perfectly well see where they wanted her to go, which was to give them something about this murder that involved Anthony. And of course Anthony's friend, who he was with a lot of the time, is anthy So it's a little bit of a house of cards. And the niece would not seem to have been the most credible witness, since, by her own admission, she smoked crack thousands of times. Yeah, but I don't know that they knew that then, Okay, that that came out in this third trial, where there was some really very pointed cross examination and a lot of discovery about who she was and what she had done. I don't know how much the police knew or even thought about it at the time. I just know that they realized that maybe this is a way into this case, right, maybe we can put pressure on this gap and then the whole thing will fall into place. Why they would have assumed that she would know who the killer was, that's for anybody to speculate, right, only because they already had in their mind this idea. I mean, if she had been somebody else's boyfriend during that time, they might have picked on somebody else. But I think it was a way like, Okay, we've got pressure on you. You know the other kids, you know, all the kids in this community. Okay, the girl who disappeared was a kid, maybe you know something about it. We're gonna go with this, right, And she ultimately came up with a very farcical story which has been disproven in every imaginable way. I mean, it never made sense in the first place, but now it's actually been disproven. What was this story that she manufactured completely, as far as I'm concerned, incredible story. And so I think that the police had in their minds because I really think the story came from the investigating officers. I think they came up with this idea of how they thought that the crime must have happened, and they pushed their hypothesis onto everybody, eventually convincing juries that this is indeed what happened. And it starts from where they found the body, because they found these bones off of a dirt road, which was a road that all the kids in the community used to go to the smoke pot, so they knew that people drove down there, and they knew that people's smoke pots. So from there they kind of worked backwards and said, oh, what must have happened is that she must have gone with these older kids and they're smoking pot and then they killed her and threw her body into the woods. So they had this idea in their minds, is my belief, before they talked to her, and then they got her to say exactly what they thought. And remember, they had been investigating the case for months before they talked to her, so they knew where the body was found, they knew how far that road was from where the kids all lived, they knew who drove down that road, and they said, isn't this what happened, Denise? And she's like, yeah, that's right. We're all in a van and they were. According to her story, her fairy tale, there were five people besides the victim in the van, correct, all of whom knew what was going on, including her, But she made it sound like she wasn't involved. And what I find absolutely preposterous about all of this is that let us not forget that thirteen months had gone by or more by the time they interviewed her, and somehow magically, not she or any of the other people in the van ever breathed a word of it to anyone. Right now, she claims that she is present and sees a rape in a murder of a twelve year old girl that happens in a car right in front of her eyes, that she sees the whole thing, and she never mentions it to a soul, not her mother, not a priest, not her best friends, not her best friend. Right, teenage girls have best friends and tell them everything. I've never been a teenage girl. But our teenage girls good at keeping secrets. They're not going to secrets, okay, And we don't want to sound sexist here about boys are no good at it either. In this case, you'd have to look at that and go, no, that's not possible. Somebody's lying because that didn't happen the way she says, or somebody who else would have known and it would have gotten out there. So anyway, so she makes up this story about the five of us in the van and the victim, and we're driving with her to go smoke pot whatever the hell she's saying, Can I just in inject for a minute before it even got to that point, you gotta be aware that there were two previous statements, both of which she doesn't know nothing more alone the lines of the truth. For whatever reasons, it came to her disclosing, oh, I witnessed this, Hanny, a crime is obvious in this sense where the police detectives in the case, primarily Patrick Castaldo, had seen her several times and either badget or threatened her, intimidated her bullet or all of the both, but finally convinced her that it was in her best interests to lie and to say she was witness of this crime that she never witnessed and that we never committed, and it wasn't her best thing just because who knows what she would have been facing herself? Well absolutely and again who she was actually older than both me and Anthony, so she was already on probation. She's had arrests for drugs, so it's easy to understand how that type of threat of going to jail would influence her to go along with the cops version of events. It's a very real threat. And also we know too that she was a teenager, even though she was older than you, still a very young woman, and you know she may not have been able to process the real consequences of her actions. Your case has many of the causes that we see most frequently in wrongful convictions and whatever the reverse of a jackpot is, you hit it because you had incentivized witnesses, You had sloppy or incompetent police work. Known liar who was the guy who administered the polygraph. We know that because he was the same guy from Jeffrey Deskobec's case who lied in his case. Then the false confession in your case, which is really one of the main reasons why you're still here, where the state county authorities have admitted that they got it wrong. Right, Anthony's home and he's been on the show, he's live and in person, and you're still here. And I think it's fair to say that one of the main reasons for that is the fact that they did manage to elicit a false confession from you, which again is confounding to so many people who who look at me with these faces and they go, I would never confess to something I didn't do. That's and a jury can't understand that either, Right, How did they get you to confess to a crime you didn't commit. Well, it's not my words. I didn't confess to none. It's pre written statement made by them that I wound up breaking down and signing. I think that's important. It's not his words, it's their words on a piece of paper. To understand how segregation I came in. I denied everything, obviously, And at the time my mind was working like, Oh, I detect the tests, They'll say I passed it, they understanding made a mistake, and I'll be let go. So you believe they were after justice, they wanted to do the right thing. Yes, my naive at the time believed in the good of the system and not to at that particular moment think that they were devising this big operation to get themselves to solve a case by any means necessary. Now I know, obviously, but yeah, I was still believing that even if they were under the impression I had any involvement, by me, giving a lot of detective tests would clear that up and then it would reevaluate and go somewhere else. That's what my belief was. So I answered the questions they didn't like them obviously, so I said, we'll give me a lot of Texas tests. I'm not gonna hide, I'm not going to be untruthful about And I took three consecutive lot of Textis tests by Daniel Stevens, and then the integregation continued. You lied, you failed, more aggressive, more intimidating. I keep denying it. That's yelling back and forth. So it's like, at that point in time, I'm going through it. You know they're not listening to me. Did you have a lawyer or a parent or anybody in there with you? Well, ironically, from where I found out after the fact, was all right. Just to bring it back a little bit. At the time of my arrest, it's crazy because I was reporting to my probation office in Beacon, New York. It was a morning. I was at the time with a girl and it was my girlfriend. She was in the car, so we left my house. I went and reported to probation that I was going to be my father to go to work because at the time I worked for him. And while I was in my probation office, four detectives come in the room to style doing quick from Punnham County and to Beacon detectives, and they detained me, put me in the car and bring me the Punham County. Now, my girlfriend is still sitting in the car, okay, so she calls my family. My father finds out. Now apparently everybody goes to the Sheriff's department to find out what's going on. Why did they have me? And apparently while I was being interrogated, didn't news was outside in the parking lot. My family was out there, So I guess it was a whole scrum going on out there while I'm in the back room being worked over. One of the things I beat myself up with is how I was allowed to just give in. But again, a sense of my mind that was working was like, you can't make an untruth truth. So regardless of what's written on paper, it's words on paper, it's not evidence. And I really felt that if it had to come to litigation, meaning court, that the evidence and the truth would come out and solidify my innocence. Again, that's being young and not even to the system. And I pretty much helped them convict me, wrungefully for this crime. But you were young, and I even and I don't think you can really beat yourself up. The thing is, I think for me anyway, having met and befriended, and worked for and with so many people who not only signed a piece of paper like you did, we see all different types of false confessions. I think it's perfectly understandable and reasonable to think that the truth is going to come out and that you can't change it, and if you're innocent, that that will eventually be the story that emerges, which is like, I think what he's saying is I figured the truth would prevail. I am innocent. Everyone will eventually know that and correct me if I'm wrong, Andrew. But when you're in that room with and I'm just trying to put myself in your shoes, and it's giving me the chills. But it became clear after many hours of interrogation that these guys were not going to listen to you. I mean there was nothing you could probably by now, you said everything you could say, and they keep telling you you're lying, and they keep becoming more aggressive. Right, so at a certain point you go, well, this ain't working right, this is not getting me anywhere. But somebody somewhere is going to be on my side because it's called the justice system. And I'm just a kid and I didn't do anything. So I gotta get out of this room and into a different place where there's people robes on and things like that that are like you know why eyes and that are not these sort of half crazed interrogators. They're not letting up, and you ain't getting out of that room. I mean, it's not like they said, well one more hour, we're gonna let you go home, right, I mean, like you just you're there in death. They pretty much you wanted to hear me admit that I committed this crime, and I kept getting more aggressively in my nature of time that I didn't committed, and it was it was a volcano getting ready to erupt. Were you worried that they were gonna be physically violent with you? Dan Steve is already head a poem a compleating the polygraph test. You know when he told me I failed, grabbing my my throne, punched me in my stomach, told me that you know, I was a piece of ship. I'm gonna get what I get deserved, and all this other stuff. You know, we know he's made other people. That's what you didn't know at the time. I didn't know at the time. He's also been similarly violent in other cases and was brought up on charges for at least one of those. Right, Okay, So now we're getting really to the crux of it. So you now have a guy who is a very real danger to you. I mean he has now physically assaulted you, and you have no way out of this room, nobody who's listening to you, and you've now been beaten, and you don't know what's coming next. So at a certain point you say, okay, well, here's this piece of paper. It's my it's my way out, and then we're gonna get this sorted out later. Because the truth is the truth. You didn't do it. Yeah, I mean, that's always been my belief. I mean even to this day, Like I said, I mean, I just find it completely preposterous that they could try to stand behind that argument when all the physical, scientific and for his habit is disproves what's on that paper. Oh, by the way, did you fail the polygraph test? You know, we had our own polygraphist at the time, who was a retired polygraph expert for the FEZ was on the polygraphic Board of administrators who came in reviewed my tests and determined that the attempts were to make it failed by disconnecting parts of the machine. And he said, despite all of that, I was truthful in every answer. Well, the disconnecting parts of the machine, I mean the top of everything else. It's just like Daniel Stevens, I mean Russia. This is what was exposed with Jeffrey Dskovich instead of you know, his procedure and his version of what he does in the correct manner in which to perform a polygraph test. I mean, there's a lot of dynamics in my case that don't make sense, Like how was that introduced this evidence when it's not allowed. It was never a mechanism for them to try to ascertain the truth. That's so tactic of an inster Good Tory process, to manipulate, beat me down, to get me in the position to give them what they wanted, which they eventually did. Heads you lose and now we know too, like on top of all those other causes that the three central police figures in this investigation have all been either indicted and convicted of other crimes. I mean, the system really failed you in so many ways, and these are ways that we as a society have to address because if we don't, it's going to happen to somebody else. And then for the of you out there, listen, it could be someone you love, could be you. And there's so much of this case. There was a guy who was initially suspected of being the killer, the rapist and killer, and somehow the tension was diverted from him, and now that guy is in prison for child sex crimes. So I mean coincidence, I mean maybe, but the circumstantial evidence is mounting and there's a very real chance that he might hold the key. He may be the only guy who knows who did this. And there's also a statement that came out that he apparently made in prison to another inmate where he claimed that there's a couple of I think he said a couple other suckers were taken the fall for his crime in this particular case. And that's got to just make you insane to hear a guy like that who is really a scumbag. I mean, he is very much so. And and you know, just to point out that's why I say, there's there's dynamics of the case that is so overwhelmingly obvious it puzzles you to say, how do you ignore it? Here it is as a person at that time that was in his i think late twenties, who goes back to the eighties of rapes insidemys, who is known through the Legal Aid Society and the police departments in Cornwell. He's a monster, absolutely so with all the initial investigations going on, in all the statements that were provided to the police, his name is repeated and brought up time and time again. Two of the witnesses from Anthony's recent trial were victims of Howard gun. Let's go back to that for a second. So Anthony the Pippo who was convicted the same time that you are convicted up in separate trials for reasons we're getting too, but it was convicted the same crime co defendants, and I think people out there probably saying, wait a minutef you're both convicted the same crime, and he's out, what are you doing here? Why are you here? And Anthony served twenty years and you're in your twenty first year now, and it's like where, where and when is some sanity going to enter the picture. That's what we're here to try to get to the bottom of it, to try to help bring attention to because it's madness that he's out. Everyone's acknowledged now. It wasn't easy, but now it's been proven and acknowledged that he's innocent and you are too. But they don't want to take their their foot off your neck just yet, right. They want to still like drive this this madness into a deeper hole and with you as just sort of sitting here like like a pinball or something, just being knocked around. I mean, yeah, it's unfortunate deficiencies of the system when you have people in the power that can abuse it and then defended. I mean, it's like they're defending something that's been disproven already and and leaving out the guy who is so clearly should be under extreme scrutiny for this crime and should be being question and should be held accountable. You should be held accountable. I mean, this little girl deserves justice and she's not getting it either. And may I just point out to when we gotta go back to because this is when she was first reported missing. I was seventeen at the time and he was eighteen at the time. Shortly thereafter, another young woman became missing that had tied tower Gombert and who's been investigated for her disappearance. And I believe still is the police were looking at this fellow Gombert, yes, for another somewhat similar homicide that occurred in that area at around the same time. So we know from the records that they were looking at him. Why they dropped the ball on this. Hopefully someday we'll find out. You know, you can speculate and try to figure out so many areas of why they did what it did. Some things become more obvious than others. You have a different police agency other than the sheriffs, which is a common police department, And they believed that Gombert was responsible for both crimes. They wanted to work together there to try to tackle the evidence and come to a consensus, and the Sheriff's appartment basically told him to take ike. And again, is it politics, its ugly head. Maybe Combert had some powerful friends somewhere. Maybe maybe he did. I mean, it makes you scratch your head because you're sit there and say this is obvious. It's not like you see similar cases where you could get the wrong impression by evidence, just by interpretation, and that's understandable. And then you know they run down the line and said, oh, well, this is how I got a room. It didn't start off like that. This was blatant disregard to certain elements of the case. And this is decisions that were made knowingly by the police involved. I mean, one thing, if there was some sort of an iron clad alibi, you know, they had records that Mr Gambert was in Canada at the top him or something like that, but there's nothing to show that because all of the evidence points to him, and they do nothing. He was connected to the victim, he knew the victim, he was suspect already another similar respect and other So here it is you have an individual that if you're gonna fit on mold of any type of area, I mean, like, what what more do you look for? So now it comes to trial, A bunch of time had passed, right, You've been sitting in jail presumably this whole time waiting for your trial. Yes, since July first, and ever since I've been incarcerated, But I'm talking about from July one was when you were arrested. Arrested me that it was a trial I think for over a year better part of a year for awaiting trial, and then you go to trial. At this point, did you still have hope that the system was gonna work? Yeah? Yeah, I did. A lot of that was under the pretense of my lawyer at the time, and the things that he was telling me making me believe that certain things were going to be addressed, and his disclosure to me about how he was going to present the evidence to disprove that we committed this crime led me to believe that I was going to be successful in establishing that. But he did note of what he said he was going to do. You had a lawyer who was definitely not on his a game, let's just say that, which happens, sadly, tragically more frequently than it should ever be allowed to. But you go to trial, your family is there. I want to get to the moment when the jury went out and everything that could be said had been said, and then you get called back to the court room because a verdict is ready. How long was the jury out I think like maybe thirty five forty minutes. I don't know, it was like during lunch break. But by the time I literally got brought to them like two minutes later they said they got a verdict, and I got back in the corn with pacup to the court building. So like, that's how fast it was. Can you just paint the picture for us, Like at that moment when they stole your life from you, what went through your mind? I mean, the same thing that's going through my mind now. Like I mean, when they came back and read the verdict that I was guilty on both charges, I was still in shock, I mean to the whole process. Like I said, I don't think I really ever adjusted to it, really settling in and I stood up and I rest the court saying that they got a wrown, that somebody else committed this crime and that one day the truth will come out. I didn't have an emotional outburst. I didn't break down. I just gathered my inner self and just faced it. It's hard. I mean, it's like I I broke inside, but I didn't allow myself to break completely. I don't know if that makes sense. It's like, what do you do? What's the next course of action? How do you do with somebody has to has to listen, somebody has to see it, you know, And even though that happened, I still believed that the truth will come out, even though I didn't know n of what I know now of Howard Gambert to the extent of his involvement, his participation a lot of things, to the degree of the cops, and you know, all the information I've gathered through the years that I can now look back on and say, wow, really it just became more obvious to Like I said, there wasn't a truth finding element to where they was trying to justify arresting somebody and solving a case. It was had you job, for whatever reason, to exacerbate their positions like they were the good and to proclosure on a case that probably they look bad on from the very beginning. Closure. Yeah, that's the That's a big word of closure. Um, get it off the desk and on to the next one. Just let you rot. And then, meanwhile, let this guy who's at this point still out there. Yeah, I don't know when he was arrested for the case that he's serving time on now. I think, okay, so let's just reflect on that for a second. To had this investigation been conducted properly and hadn't been arrested, and that would have been prevented, those other victims would have just been able to go on about their lives and never go through this horrific experience, them and their families and the whole thing. I find that fucking outrageous. It's just it's just sucking outrageous. Then you find yourself in a maximum security prison. You're locked up as someone who's convicted only but convicted of the worst crime that you can be convicted of, which is a child rape and murder. How the hell did you manage to survive that ordeal and get to where we are now, where it is actually a ray of hope. Just like I said, facing it straight up, it hasn't been easy. To this day, it's still not easy because it's it's something that's always exemplified and used the yenshu. You know the word that, oh, he's convicted of a rape and murder, it's a two year old girl. Automatically, it's a completely different outlet to me. So now there's certain restrictions in place, there's certain attitudes I'm dealt with, there's certain ways I'm looked at, and it's a battle trying to say that, yo, that's not me. But one of the things in prison, is you here the population talk about their in a centeral crime. So it's like the boy you crowd wolf. So it's a constant that I'm facing on a daily basis, and it's gone extreme in certain cases. But again it's just what else do I do? Signing living a show just conformed to the to the outlook that they have in the negative manner. One of the things that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna scream loud and proud because I didn't do it. It's ugly, it's nasty, and it's understandable how people can look at it one way. But in order to overcome that and realize just how significant my situation is, you need to understand that there's other elements that you don't know about. So if you're gonna judge me, judge based on everything, and it's entirety, not just off the face of what's being said or what I've introduced into the bomb the corrections for I want to get to the aspect of your mental state, because you seem to be somebody who's very calm, rational, thoughtful, even I want to say, you maintain a very real sense of hope in a situation that to a lot of people, I think it would just collapse and they would just you know, and no one could blame you for that, right. I mean, to find yourself in in in a place like this for over twenty years, that well, it's not easy and it's taking a long time to get this calm. I'm forcing the situation. It's reality. It is what it is. So I could allow things to overwhelm me and make them harder, or I could just face it and deal with the best way that I can. And that's what I choose to do. I got a voice, and I try to put it out there and as much as I can. And I got to just be a warrior and just face everything that comes my way, all adversity, and it's hard. Each conflict that I go through allows me to deal with something different in a more positive way. So I try to take all of that on a daily basis to gain my strength. That's amazing. I don't even know what to say after, but I will say that it's important for you to know. And we spoke to Anthony Peppo on the way in today and he wanted us to communicate to you that he is standing strong with you and that he's gonna be there when you have your hearings, and he's gonna bring a group of exonorees. I mean, he's another one. He's a fighter. I mean, he's a guy you would on on your side. And uh and and I'll let you know too that there's a lot of other people out there, people you don't even know about, who are aware every case, and many more that are going to be aware of it, that that care about you and and want to see justice finally brought to bear on this terrible situation. Adell. Now we find ourselves there in two thousand and seventeen, twenty three years from the time of the crime, twenty one years from the time that you were convicted, and that doesn't even include the time you spent in jail awaiting trial. And what are the prospects and how how are you approaching this now? And what can people who are listening do to help? Well, basically, we're doing what you said right in the beginning, which is we're trying to raise the specter of justice. Why if two people have been convicted of the same crime on the same evidence, essentially, why is one free and one in jail? That just seems wrong. It seems in just and it seems like we should be able to do something about at in this situation, Andrew didn't get the new trial that Anthony got, so he hasn't had an opportunity to let a jury here about the evidence pointing to Howard Gombert. So he hasn't yet had that opportunity. And we've asked the appellate court to review the lower court ruling that denied him that opportunity, and the appellate courts have given us the opportunity to raise that argument and brief that issue. So we believe that we're gonna get an opportunity to have a trial where Andrew as well. We'll get to put in front of a jury the same evidence that Anthony used that resulted in his acquittal. So we're hoping to be in that same place, but we're not there yet, so we're still waiting. We have to brief the case at the Appellate Division. They've got a rule in our favor. They have to order that he gets a new trial, and then we'll have that new trial if the Just Attorney's Office wants to retry him a second time, or they can just vacate the just vacate, which they could do now frankly, absolutely, but that's very unlikely. It's very unlikely, but that's not something that we have completely given up them. We're in touch with the d I of new evidence gets developed, will continue to talk to the d I about this case and about how they could do the right thing and they could save everybody a lot of time, a lot of trouble, right and go after the guy. So we suspect who the evidence points to. I mean, clearly, he's never been charged. Okay, we're talking about him as though he were in fact the guilty party. We don't know that. What we know is that the evidence certainly points to him, and he's done things that are very similar to what they've been convicted of. So we have a reason to believe that he is the person, but we don't know that obviously, and it hasn't been proved in a court of law. Just in the manner of the way that this case was presented, has a lot of associative ties to Gombert and his culpable acts against other victims. Yeah, the evidence points to that. You have a lot of thoughts that connect that. I'm not here to do anything other than improve I was not the one who committed this crime. To exemplify that, focus on the evidence, focus on the facts, keep it simple. I'm not an investigator, nor should I have to be. But one thing that's paramount is the evidence discloses I did not commit this crime. The evidence that's been brought forth in Anthony's retrial is that he did not commit this crime. The prosecutions theory is that we together participated committing this crime. There's nothing separate outside of this purported confession. And again it's words on paper, so you can't turn that into more evidence against me to say, oh, well, you admitted it. No, the forensic and pathological evidence disproves those words, disproves Denise Roles. She disproves her own through her testimony, words and her statement. So there's all of these different avenues to come to a conclusion that they're refusing to do. Yeah, the only evidence is her testimony. There really is nothing else that they say, Well, this happened in this van, and there's no forensic evidence linking the victim to the van. There's just nothing. They are they're supposed to be other witnesses who are in the van with Denise, and all of them say, oh, I didn't see that happen. The police tried to make me say that that's what happened, but I refused to say that because it didn't happen. So that's what Adam Wilson says. He says, Oh, the police tried to make me go along with that story. They tried to make me corroborate what Denise Rose said, but I wouldn't do it because it didn't happen. The only evidence is the testimony of this crack addicted young woman who has been refuted by the other people that were there with her at the time. The physical evidence. Not only is there no physical evidence that because there's always gonna be skeptics, right, these people out there going, well, there must be something, but you know, in this case, there's there's no physical evidence connecting you to the crime. And the evidence that does exist would indicate that the story, well, clearly, the story is not. Certainly the forensic evidence is completely consistent with innocence and not at all consistent with guilt. So if we are to believe that you actually did this, you would have to be a master criminal. You have to be cleaned up the entire vand that they said it happened in, so that no trace of this victim could be found in the van, which I think is really beyond the abilities of two teens, especially when the van that they said it happened in was already in police custody, is already off the road, it was already inoperable at the time they said it happened. So there's one more thing that we have to talk about, which is that the prosecution's theory revolved around the idea that this horrible crime was committed in the van with five people and the victim. And there's a pretty big problem with that, which is that there's a mechanic who has testified that the van in fact was up on blocks at the time, right. And the fact of the matter is he testified to that in this recent trial where Anthony was acquitted, But he also testified to that back at the first child. This isn't even new evidence. The police knew that, and there was no reason to disbelieve the mechanic. I mean, there was no reason to think that he was somehow in CODs with the defendants and you know, trying to improperly create a reasonable doubt where there was none. There was all sorts of stuff with the van. It was on blocks, right, the tires were off it, the engine was screwed up. Yeah, I could explain some of that, but just before I get into that, just so everybody knows and it's aware of, just the extent and involvement of these detectives is Initially on the statements, it was a bronco that was crossed out and changed to van. What happens is is that they later on okay, because we remember, there's this long period of time between the time that Joe said disappears and the time that they realize it's a homicide. So during that period of time when they're not really investigating this case and they're not following up their leads on Howard Gombert, during this time, they seized this van. So by the time they arrest Andrew, they've got it in their custody. Well, they legally stole it, right, they kept it that they seize it, and they never returned it. So at that point it becomes helpful for them to have the crime occur in the van, which is in their possession. So they then changed it from saying oh it was Bronco to saying, oh, this must have happened in Andy's van, not knowing that there was an actual witness out there who could say, oh, that's impossible because of the van was actually up on blocks and inoperable at the time that you're saying that this child was actually murdered, yes, which was from there. So I think Andrews right to say that when you look at this from the point of view of thinking about the police after the fact having a hypothesis which they tried to make the facts conformed to, that this evidence actually does support that theory. And I think that's what happened. It's simple orchestration. What they did was they said this is the crime, and we're going to get the people to say this is what happened. And that's what they did. They glued together, but again simplifying and keep it into the evan and it tells its own story. And going back to Denise Rose and her claims of her witnessing, and you're just reading the statement. You read it and you see words crossed down and replaced with other words, and then you listen to the actual main areas of this statement, which is supposed to be a version of her reciting witnessing a crime, and you could see that it's like it's almost like you know, you're putting a play together, you know, you're you know, this fits better over here, and no say it like this. So it comes across more believable. But all the meat and potatoes, so to speak, the essential facts that one would digress if they really witness something, it's not a part of the statements. And the forensic evidence conflicts with her version. So who do you believe? So they actually did, when you think about it, a very sloppy job of framing you because in fact, if they had been a little bit more thoughtful, somebody would have said, wait a minute, let's not go with that van theory, because I just found out that the van is over at Mechanic Auto shop up on a thing with an engine that doesn't work, no tires. But they didn't even bother to do that. And guess what they didn't need to do they know, And that's why again there is another side to what the prosecution is saying. I'm not saying they're wrong all the time. They're certainly not. You're absolutely right. We want we want to hold the prosecution the police and the prosecution to the high standard. There's a burden approof and a criminal trial which is beyond a reasonable doubt, and we want to be holding people to that standard and make them prove that case. I mean, you know, and just just to point out, it would be easy for me to just jump on that bashing, you know, aspect of mindset. And even as hard as it is, I understand and believe in the system. There's a lot of good and you know, I believe in what it's supposed to be there for. But again, this isn't something that it wasn't something that you could take and say, it's understandable how these two were wanfully convicted because there was a lot of close ties to the evidence that would indicate the possibility then being guilty. This is the furthest from that. This is blatant setting up. This is the ugliest of the ugly. This is conscious decisions of the people that are there to protect and serve that are throwing all that out a way to make themselves look like they all those protectors by closing a case, getting pats on the bad commendations, knowingly fabricating evidence, bullying and intimidating people and getting a wrongful conviction on and shattering lives and not you know, not just us. They lie to the victims family, they lied to the population, They did all of these things that have a ripple effect. It's not just me. I want to point out that, regardless of what anybody can say that's to the extent this case is. This isn't one of those just close knit or we understand it. No, this is individuals choosing to go against the Lord that we're in the powers to get people to believe them because of their positions, and just shot alive they say, like comes to dark. Three of those same people that were involved have since been in some form being convicted of misconduct, from the boss at the boss into the scene of detectives that were actively involved in our case. There's one more aspect of this case that troubles me, and it highlights the fact that there for so much time elapsed from the time of the crime to the time of the arrests. And they came up with a little girl who said she remembered something about some jewelry or something, which I found so far fetched. Well, the police said that they had found jewelry belonging to the victim, Josette, in this van, which we know that even if they had committed the crime, they couldn't have committed it in this van. But anyway, they said they had found jewelry in the van. They then called witnesses at the trial to say that they recognized the jewelry as belonging to Josette. When I first learned about this case, which was quite a long time ago, and he wrote me and he described the evidence, and I got involved in the case because I thought the evidence was completely unconvinced and untrue to common sense. I didn't believe that a seventeen year old girl would have witnessed a crime like this and not told anybody. Didn't believe it. And they also said, despite the lack of any forensic evidence linking the girl to the van, there was jewelry found in the van that witnesses have identified as belonging to the victim. And I just didn't believe that that could possibly be true, because I didn't believe that little girls fourteen, because they were fourteen by the time they testified at trial, would have remembered what their girlfriend was wearing on the day that she disappeared. Two and a half years earlier, because we're talking here about jewelry that would have been brought from the five and dimes store, right, an earring, a necklace, and they were learning to Eric, how cold, how special could they have been? Little girls have lots of different jewelry. You would never recognize what one person was wearing from one day to the next. So the fact that they said at trial under oath, I recognized this piece of jewelry I found extremely suspect. And again I think it is evidence of how in fact careful the police were trying to be to try to overcome the lack of any forensic evidence because they didn't have traces of Joe set in this van, so they were bound and determined to come up with something that would link her to this supposed crime scene. I'm thinking now right about that courtroom in that moment, right and I'm sure the jury, but there must have been almost like a gasp like, oh my god, the jewelry or the poor girl's jewelry was found in the band. And now I would ask anyone listening to conduct a little test, which is, think of who you were hanging out with yesterday and describe what kind of jewelry they were wearing. Unless your friend has the Hope diamond on, I think the chance of you remembering whether they had a ring on, which finger on, whether they had a necklace, and what it looked like, I mean, you're not gonna able to do it. I mean, it's just not realistic. And I'm talking about yesterday. So the idea that it was thirteen months ago or more actually, because by the time they got to the trial, they're saying, yes, I can remember distinctly what she was wearing. Now, they weren't saying that they were with her at the time that this supposedly happened. They were just saying, yeah, I saw her that day, earlier, that day, the night before, and yes, I can remember this is her jewelry. That's what she was aware. I have to point out pertaining to the jewelry one of the things again that I mean, it's just it's so funny that it's not funny, but it's funny. The homicide detectives, we took possession in my van at the time. It's never left their custody. So some of the jewelry that they mentioned now bear in mind a state trooper in April of n didn't inventory research, No jewelry was found. Well, I get arrested on May eleventh on a warrant for marijuana possession, and from that point on, the van was in the possession in Uponham County Sheriff's department, and the jewelry that they claimed to have fine in the map compartment was already searched by two other offices. So it never left your possession. It wasn't found. How does it get found? Conveniently, they had the van, they searched the van, they didn't see it. And then suddenly after they had decided how this case is going to go, oh, there's jewelry in the van that wow, people can link to Now it's aece of physical because all the DNA testing up into point at that time, fiber blood analysis or whatever was going on, did not support their version. There was not a hair of Joe's right inside that vehicle. But she's never been in the very She's never been none of my vehicles. So it's systematically became obvious that they needed some more to push this version of events, and by doing so, they say there's now physical evidence of Joe's right being inside the van, so you must believe in these roles. And I'm sitting here now thinking about they were sitting around having a coffee or lunch or maybe having a meeting in the investigator prosecutors or whatever was and somebody goes, I got an idea, and go, hey, what's that? So what if we up a jewelry story? What if we come with the jewelry story? So he goes, that's a great idea. I mean, like, how does it? How does everybody go so far wrong? It It makes me insane. So anyway, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence. We are here now to bring attention to this madness and to your plight and to hopefully help advance the cause of justice, which the wheels are turning. And you know you have a great team. We have this pending motion I guess right, and on projecting positive outcomes as I know you are. And we have a lot of legal support. I mean, because all of Anthony's team is they've got great lawyers. They were totally helpful. I think the whole network, the innocence network, will be supportive on the legal issue. Is at the very least because of the question of why one person is still in jail and the other one isn't. So I think that appeals just on an emotional gut level to people. So I think we're gonna get a lot of support on behalf of our position in the court. So I feel actually quite positively that will we'll get a new trial, and when we do, I think it's impossible to imagine how a jury you can look at this evidence now and say yeah, no, yeah, I mean reasonable doubt, my ass. I mean, this thing is it's a mountain of In the intervening years, also, people have learned a lot about why folks falsely confess and how that happens. I think that public is much more educated and jurors will be as well. So I think at the time that Andy was convicted, nobody believed that individuals falsely confessed. If they heard a confession, they figured it must be true, and I don't think they needed much additional evidence, and they had Denise Rose. So with the two of those statements, I think it would have been very hard in that time to have gotten a not guilty verdict. Now it's a very different story. We know a lot more about what people do, and we know a lot more, unfortunately about police practices. Yeah, I'm gonna say this before I turn it over to you for closing remarks. Having heard about you and heard about your case for some time now, I really wanted to come up here and meet you. Now that I have met you and getting a sense of your strength and your spirit, I can say that I'm going to do everything in my power to help Adele and the team. There's a lot of people who care about you and care about this case and care about justice, and we're just gonna keep going until we get you out. So with that, I mean, you've said a lot and you don't have to say anything else. But if there's anything else you want to share with the audience, now would be a good time to do it. All right, Well, you know, first, I just want to thank you being what though everybody listening for your support, continued support, future support. It means a lot, it really does. You got to find strength in yourself in order to face adversity and going through the situation. It's it's a constant battle. But I won't give up. You can't give up. Everybody to be hearing from me soon. I gotta start itself. I stay positive, I stay driven Otherwise I'm subjected to just the whims and the mercy of what they did to me, and I can't let that happen. Last question, do you want people to write to you? Is there any other social media you want them to go to? Do? I mean absolutely, I would love to hear from anybody and everybody. You know? Can you give the information of where people can write when they correctional facility all the New York I'm not sure the ZIP court. I apologize for that. Wendy w E N d E w E n d E Correctional facility. It's in all the New York A L D E N. My name is Andrew creevat K R I V A K and my then number is ninety seven A four two three six. If you want to know a little bit more about me, you could look up, obviously my code for Anthony the Peppo um A lot the information is on his Facebook name. You know, there's a lot of news articles recently through the exposure of the evidence and things that came out with Anthony's retrial. Also, Jeffrey Deskovich, who I'm in close contact with, is also in my corner and speaks of my case. And you know, I want to just think those that have reached out to me so far, some of which I'm corresponding with, and I'm looking to link up with as many people as possible just pay forward and do something positive. I'm glad you brought that up too, because Jeffrey Deskovic, who had a terrible thing in common with you, which was this lying polygraph examiner, has become a very powerful advocate for the wrongfully convicted, and he's been on the show, he passed the bar in New York State, and I do want to just mention that he has been a very vocal and passionate advocate of yours and Anthony's and others who have been wrongly convicted. So shout out to jeff and I know he's here in spirit and he's on your side. He's just an other one. We're all pushing this snowball up to hell together, and I appreciate it. I really don't. I know sometimes I can't in the future. People, you just see how much I appreciate things. But like I said, it's up to us to make change and eventually, Well for cool, thank you for listening to wrongful conviction behind bars, and I want to thank well in the star of our show today who I'm very excited to see on the outside soon. Andrew Creevac, thank you for being on and a dal Bernhard is wonderful lawyer. Thank you. Thank you to our producers, to Been Jansen for coming and making us sound as good as we can even with all of the jail. Thank you for doing this work and making a difference in so many people's lives. Yeah, I want to say that too. You know, I definitely applaud your own longevity. It means a lot. Like I said, you know, it's because of people like you that allow people like me who have the opportunity to correct the room. So it definitely touches my heart. Can's up, won't stop. I'm not gonna stop, and I'm very stubborn And that's a good thing in this line of work because you need it. And like I said, I've seen too many miracles to stop believing in miracles. Don't forget to give us a fantastic review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps. And I'm a proud donor to the Innocence Project, and I really hope you'll join me in supporting this very important cause and helping to prevent future wrongful convictions. Go to Innocence Project dot org to learn how to donate and get involved. I'd like to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kevin Wardis. The music in the show is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one. All the Wind, God