Prosecution rests at Krivak retrial in 12-year-old Josette Wright's killing

For just over a week in the early fall of 1994, 12-year-old Billy Jo Wooster had a girlfriend.

But as quickly as the crush developed, the nightly phone calls ended. Josette Wright had disappeared, and Wooster never saw her again.

On Tuesday, the Connecticut resident returned to the Putnam County Courthouse as the prosecution's final witness in the retrial of Andrew Krivak, who is charged in Josette's rape and murder.

He had nothing to offer about the brutal way she was killed, who might have done it or the discovery of her skeletal remains 13 months later.

But Wooster was there to bolster the prosecution's case about when Josette was last seen and jewelry she might have been wearing when she disappeared.

He described meeting her on Sept. 24, 1994, at the weekly car show at Marcus Dairy in Danbury, where a mutual friend had brought Josette. He liked the lizard earring she wore and thought she was cute. He testified that they hung out that night and he asked her if she'd be his girlfriend.

Investigators:Defense assails Putnam investigators in Krivak retrial. Here's what to know

They met at the Danbury Mall the next day and spoke by phone every night that week, he said. He thinks he went to the mall again with her a few times the following weekend but knows for sure he did on Sunday, Oct. 2. That was when they kissed, he said, and he gave her his picture.

They spoke on the phone later that night. He said Josette told him she was looking at his picture.

When District Attorney Robert Tendy handed him the picture, Wooster began to cry. He said he never saw or spoke to her again after that phone call.

Defense lawyer Oscar Michelen asked Wooster if Josette had talked about running away. Sure, he answered, "she was a rebel, she was cool. That's the kind of thing she talked about." But she wasn't going to actually do it, he insisted. "Absolutely not."

What happened to Josette Wright?

The prosecution's theory is that Krivak and Anthony DiPippo raped a tied up and gagged Josette the following night in the back of Krivak's brown van before dumping her lifeless body in the woods off Fields Lane in Patterson. That is based on the testimony of Denise Rose, who has insisted she was in the van and witnessed the killing and that Josette was wearing a lizard earring.

Both men were convicted in separate trials in 1997, but DiPippo had that and a second conviction overturned before he was acquitted at a third trial in 2016. Krivak was freed from prison in 2020, a year after a judge threw out his conviction and ordered the new trial.

The defense has long assailed Rose's credibility and maintains her account was the product of details fed to her by Putnam sheriff's investigators after they threatened her with prosecution., including that Oct. 3 was the date of the killing.

The defense has two witnesses who insist they saw Josette at local malls days after Susan Wright reported her daughter missing on Oct. 4. One, a retired Carmel middle school teacher named Lorraine McLaughlin, testified Wednesday that she saw Josette at The Galleria in Poughkeepsie on Oct. 8, told that to investigators the following month, but changed her account when they confronted her two years later and convinced her she had the wrong date because it didn't fit with their timeline.

Krivak's ex-girlfriend testifies

The first defense witness was a former girlfriend of Krivak's, Melanie Rosabella, who described a troubled adolescence and running away from a group home in Carmel in the late spring of 1994. She was 14 and had met Krivak, two years older than her, that year and they began dating.

That summer, Krivak had gone to stay at her stepfather's home north of Poughkeepsie. She went to be with him there and then they went and stayed for a few weeks in a tent in the backyard of Krivak's father's home in Stormville. She said as a runaway they didn't want to get Krivak's family in trouble, although sometimes they would stay in the basement.

She was able to move into the house after clearing up her Family Court record and getting her mother in Canada to approve her living with the Krivaks, Rosabella testified. From mid September until mid October she said she stayed in the house before going to live with her mother. She said that during that month she never saw any change in Krivak's demeanor and he didn't appear tense about anything.

"I was happy, we were happy," she told defense lawyer Karen Newirth. "He was really trying to be the backbone for me."

She said the Krivaks did have a brown van, but that it was surrounded by bushes at the top of the driveway and she never saw it move, recalling that she thought it had been on blocks. The defense maintains that Rose could not have witnessed what she claimed in the van because it was not operational in the fall of 1994.

Tendy questioned Rosabella her account she gave investigators in 1996 where she didn't remember many of the details she recalls now, 29 years later.

But he especially targeted her credibility with a Florida police report suggesting Rosabella for two years failed to report her daughter's complaint that her stepfather had sexually abused her. Her husband eventually was arrested and admitted to the behavior. Over the defense's objection about its relevance and the potential prejudice to Krivak, Judge Robert Prisco allowed Tendy to ask a limited question about that case but to stop if Rosabella acknowledged it happened.

When Rosabella denied it, Tendy was able to question her further. She said it was sensitive information about her family and that it didn't happen the way it was reported. She asked how it was relevant to her testimony and soon broke into tears.

On redirect, Rosabella confirmed to Newirth that the Florida case happened decades after 1994, implying they should have no bearing on the testimony she gave about Krivak.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Prosecution rests in Andrew Krivak retrial in Josette Wright death