Witnesses detail seeing 12-year-old Putnam girl days after prosecutors say she was killed

A key element of the prosecution case against Andrew Krivak in the Putnam rape and murder of 12-year-old Josette Wright is that the girl was killed on the night of Oct. 3, 1994.

But the defense took aim at that this week with two witnesses who detailed seeing Josette days later at local malls.

One, Lorraine McLaughlin, was a former teacher of Josette's. The other, Allyson Clokey, had gone to summer school with her. They told investigators early on that they had seen Josette over the Columbus Day weekend, later changing that to dates before Oct. 3. McLaughlin said the different date she provided was based on pressure from investigators to fit their timeline.

Both women took the witness stand this week and insisted they had gotten it right the first time.

Josette's remains were discovered in the woods off Fields Lane in Patterson on Nov. 22, 1995, and the deterioration of the body made it impossible to pinpoint a date of death.

The defense has long maintained that Oct. 3 was a date picked by investigators based on Susan Wright's reporting her daughter missing on Oct. 4 and to fit the statement of Denise Rose, who claimed she was in a van with Krivak and Anthony DiPippo when they raped a tied-up and gagged Josette and then dumped her body in the woods. The defense has assailed Rose's account — which she has stuck to for nearly 27 years — as a fabrication crafted by investigators that she went along with to avoid prosecution herself.

Both men were charged in 1997, convicted in separate trials the following year and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. DiPippo had that conviction and a second one overturned before he was acquitted at a third trial in 2016. Krivak remained in prison for more than two decades but was released in 2020 to await a new trial that was ordered the previous year when his conviction was overturned.

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What does McLaughlin remember?

McLaughlin taught Josette at George Fischer Middle School in Carmel in the 1993-94 school year. She testified that she went shopping at The Galleria mall in Poughkeepsie on Saturday, Oct. 8 and ran into Josette. They exchanged greetings. A young woman who was with Josette asked her who McLaughlin was and Josette simply answered "a teacher" and they went their separate ways.

She remembers knowing that kids had been talking about Josette running off with a man but that she had discounted it as just rumors. But when she returned to school on Tuesday, Oct. 11 and teachers were talking about Josette being missing, she let administrators know. Weeks later an investigator contacted her and she gave her statement to police.

Weeks later she gave her account to police. But she was contacted again on Oct. 1, 1996, when Putnam Sheriff's Investigator William Quick came to the school and asked to speak with her. Quick told her she had to have gotten the date when she saw Josette wrong, that maybe it had been during a different school vacation, like the Jewish holidays. McLaughlin said she didn't have a calendar with her so went along with him figuring she had gotten it wrong.

"I just agreed with him that I must have messed up the date in my head," she told defense lawyer Oscar Michelen.

It bothered her enough that she eventually checked when the holidays were and realized Rosh Hashana fell out in early September. She knew that she had seen Josette much closer than that to Oct. 11.

McLaughlin was scheduled to be a defense witness at DiPippo's retrial in 2012. She was at the courthouse one day waiting to testify, but the day's session ended without her being called.

She had already moved to Florida by then and was staying with friends in Pawling. She left to go back there and soon realized she was being followed. When she got to the house, two cars pulled into the driveway behind her and three men got out. They were detectives, she said, and wanted to know why she was changing her account again after they had told her the original date she gave was wrong.

"They weren't threatening," she said. "Though I felt intimidated, a little scared."

Prosecutor Larry Glasser cited earlier testimony by McLaughlin that she had known Josette was missing by Columbus Day weekend, suggesting that if she really saw her on that date McLaughlin might have contacted police immediately. He also suggested McLaughlin might have actually seen an older sister of Josette's, who looked like her.

But McLaughlin later reiterated that she was certain that she saw Josette and that it was on Columbus Day weekend.

"I think in my heart I knew I was right. I kind of trusted the officer at the time," she said about changing her statement. "I was believing the sheriff''s department. Why would they lie to me?"

What did Clokey recall?

Clokey, a year older than Josette, had met her at summer school in 1994. They weren't particularly close, mostly just taking the bus home together, but had become friends.

Clokey said she was at the Danbury Fair mall walking to Cohen's Fashion Optical on Friday, Oct. 7, 1994, when someone called out to her from behind. It was Josette. They spoke briefly, and Josette went off with the group of people she was with, Clokey said.

When she returned to school the following Tuesday and heard people talking about Josette being missing, she wanted to let police know she had seen her over the weekend. A statement she gave police detailed the Oct. 7 meeting at the mall.

In late November 1995, days after the discovery of Josette's remains, Clokey was interviewed again, and this time she could not recall a specific date. She said the investigators didn't share with her the initial statement.

She was twice interviewed again in October 1996, months after Krivak and DiPippo were arrested. At that point she told investigators that she had seen Josette on Sept. 30, the first day she had gone to Cohen's to be fitted for contact lenses.

Clokey on Thursday could not recall what made her change her mind but said she had not felt pressured by the investigators to say something that wasn't true.

Despite those later statements, she testified in 1997 that she had seen Josette at the mall on Oct. 7.

She was asked by Glasser about DiPippo's stepfather coming up to her before that 1997 trial and telling her that she was sending his son to jail, a reference to her latter statement. She denied the confrontation had prompted her change in testimony, insisting she testified as she did because Oct. 7 was the day she saw Josette.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Date of death at issue in Krivak retrial in murder of Josette Wright