Investigator details alleged confession in 1994 murder of 12-year-old Putnam girl

The lead investigator in the 1994 rape and murder of 12-year-old Josette Wright said Thursday that he and his partner did little to prompt a confession from one of the suspects, Andrew Krivak.

Testifying at Krivak’s retrial, retired Putnam County Sheriff's Investigator Patrick Castaldo said Krivak offered to take a lie detector test on July 1, 1996, and when he thought he had failed offered to talk his way out of a murder charge.

"Is rape less than murder?" Castaldo claimed Krivak asked on questioning by District Attorney Robert Tendy. When the investigator asked him what he meant, Castaldo said, Krivak told him: “I raped her. I didn’t murder her. Anthony DiPippo raped and murdered her.”

That comment and the formal statement that followed, which the defense maintains was a false confession coerced by the investigators, led to separate trials for the two friends. Both were convicted the following year and sentenced to 25 years to life.

DiPippo had that conviction and another one overturned before he was acquitted at a third trial in 2016. Krivak was freed in 2020, a year after his conviction was overturned because of evidence both defendants presented that a Putnam sex offender who knew Josette could have been her killer.

Castaldo read for the jury the six-page statement, which he said was dictated by Krivak and written by Investigator William Quick because Krivak was too nervous to write it himself.

Krivak allegedly detailed how he, DiPippo and Josette were with three other people on the night of Oct. 3, 1994, in the back of his father’s van that was parked on Fields Lane in Patterson.

According to the statement, Krivak took Josette’s clothes off, tied her hands, stuffed her underwear in her mouth to keep her from screaming and then had sex with her. DiPippo then had sex with Josette, who lay motionless on the floor of the van when he was finished. The two men then carried her out of the van and went into the woods, where Krivak threw up and DiPippo dumped the body, according to the statement.

The arrests of Krivak and DiPippo that day came five weeks after Castaldo and Quick got a statement from 19-year-old Denise Rose implicating him and DiPippo in the killing. She claimed to have been one of the others in the van and witnessed the killing.

Rose has been the key witness in all the trials. She repeated her account in court on Wednesday but was confronted by defense lawyer Oscar Michelen about numerous inconsistencies over the years, her admitted perjury in a deposition in DiPippo’s wrongful conviction lawsuit and her remaining close friends with DiPippo for the 18 months before he was arrested, despite claiming she was deathly afraid of him.

The defense maintains that Rose went along with a story crafted by the investigators because they threatened she herself could be prosecuted as an accessory to murder and she was hoping for leniency in an unrelated criminal case she had that month.

According to the defense, the brown van was not operational in October 1994 and Josette was seen alive by two witnesses days after Oct. 3.

Rose gave three formal statements to the investigators in April 1996. In the first she only acknowledged being in the van with Josette, Krivak and DiPippo but said nothing about witnessing what happened.

Castaldo said Rose did not recognize a ring thought to be Josette’s, but that when she was shown a brown jacket and an eye hologram found at the crime scene she said she recognized them as items Josette had been wearing that night in the van.

Those items were found near Josette’s remains, but Castaldo insisted he did not tell her that or show her crime scene pictures before she gave her statement about the killing.

When the investigators interviewed her the third time, on April 26, Castaldo told her they had just learned some new details about the case. He acknowledged that was a lie, a technique used when they think someone is holding back information.

He said she banged her hand on the table three times and said, "They raped, they tied, they gagged and they dumper her in the woods," before telling what she claimed to have seen in the van.

"She looked like she was relieved," Castaldo told Tendy.

Michelen on Friday will confront Castaldo about the statements by Rose and Krivak.

In the hour of cross examination he had Thursday, he painted a picture of a shoddy missing child investigation by Castaldo from Oct. 4, 1995, when Josette's mother reported her missing, to Nov. 22, 1995, when the girl's skeletal remains were found.

Castaldo acknowledged only getting formal statements from Susan Wright and the two people who said they saw Josette at local malls the weekend after she disappeared. He never asked teachers to name classmates who were close to Josette and didn't even speak to the father of a friend of Josette's who had seen her after school Oct. 3 until after her remains were found.

But Castaldo took umbrage at Michelen's insinuations, insisting that he filed a missing child report with the state, posted Missing fliers with Josette's picture and on six occasions over a period of months checked out the two malls.

Michelen asked him if he had assigned the case a low priority because he thought Josette had run away.

"I didn't assign it as anything," Castaldo answered. "It was a missing child (investigation) ... I got no information. It went cold, unfortunately."

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Jury hears details of alleged confession in murder of Josette Wright