Death on the River

by Diane Fanning

  They all looked out at the river in the direction of New Windsor to the spot where the kayakers were thought to have overturned. Bedetti saw an object that could have been a person in the water. The volunteer rescue boat sped over to that spot.

  Down by the river, the search response was escalating with every passing moment. More boats left the yacht club and headed out to search. Flashing lights filled the air around Cornwall-on-Hudson and soon a helicopter with a searchlight was scanning the water.

  Meanwhile, Officer Bedetti boarded the volunteer rescue boat as it returned to shore. The people on board had wrapped Angelika in blankets. She shivered uncontrollably when he asked her name.

  “What happened? Where were you coming from?” he asked, walking off the boat with her toward the approaching paramedics. She carried a black bag and a life vest and told her rescuers that Vince was still in the water. As soon as she disembarked, the club members turned the boat around and went back upriver to search for him, joining the ever-growing number of law enforcement boats taking to the water.

  Angelika turned to Bedetti. “We were coming from Bannerman’s Island on our way back to Plum Point in New Windsor where we parked the car,” she told him, struggling to form words through her chattering teeth.

  “When did you leave the park to go to the island?”

  “About four o’clock.”

  “Who were you with?”

  “My boyfriend,” she said. They arrived at the gurney where emergency responders were on hand to treat her for hypothermia. To their experienced eyes, they noticed that the rescued woman seemed oddly calm and devoid of emotion.

  “What happened when you headed back?” Bedetti asked, trying to collect any information that could help rescuers find Vince

  “It got a little rough out. He went over into the water. I lost sight of him because of the waves. I waited for about five minutes after I lost sight of him and called nine-one-one.”

  “Where is the phone you used to call nine-one-one?”

  “It fell in the river when my kayak capsized.”

  “What was your boyfriend doing in the water?”

  “When the kayak overturned, he was clinging to the kayak.”

  “Did he have a floatation device?” Bedetti asked.

  “No.”

  The police officer heard a cell phone ring and was surprised when no one answered it. “Whose cell phone is ringing?”

  The paramedics around Angelika, on the one hand, threw annoyed glances in his direction, as if his question were irrelevant and distracting. Bedetti, on the other hand, thought it was possible that Angelika’s phone had not gone in the water after all. The ringtone sounded like it was coming from down by his feet, where Angelika had set down her black bag and life vest.

  When Bedetti grabbed the vest, Angelika sat bolt upright and stared at him. He wasn’t sure why she was bothered, but her reaction made him uncomfortable. He peeked at the vest and eased it back down on the grass.

  “Do you have the keys to the car?” he asked.

  “Yes, I have them.”

  “He definitely doesn’t have the keys?”

  “No, I have them in the bag.”

  Bedetti picked it up and handed it to Angelika. She rooted through it and pulled out the keys, showing them off to Bedetti. He put them back and handed the bag and vest to Angelika as she was loaded into the ambulance.

  Bedetti watched the ambulance pull out of the park. He thought about returning to the station but decided to follow it to St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in his own vehicle. He’d learned as a volunteer fireman that every second can mean the difference between life and death and the quicker he obtained information from Angelika the greater the odds that the search for the other kayaker would be successful. He also hoped she was wrong about losing the phone. Locating that device could enable law enforcement to extrapolate from the GPS coordinates to find a more precise spot where Vince went into the water.

  * * *

  Senior Investigator Aniello Moscato of the New York State Police was not on duty on April 19, but when he learned that his team had deployed he went down to the river to help in any way he could. He strongly believed that his role as a supervisor meant he was honor bound to provide support.

  When he arrived at the staging area at Gully’s, a former Newburgh riverfront restaurant and bar housed in an old barge, the search-and-rescue effort was gaining momentum and resources. In early spring, that portion of the riverside was normally quiet and subdued. The yacht club marina was not up to full speed for the season yet—most of their boaters didn’t put their vessels in the water until later that month or early in May. Now police and fire department boats filled the water and helicopters from the New York State Police and Westchester and Rockland County police departments flew overheard, bringing a few people out of their houses on the hill of the opposite shore to check out the increased activity.

  * * *

  Upon arriving at the hospital, Officer Bedetti rummaged through the vehicle he was driving, looking for anything he could use to take notes. All he could find was the piece of card stock stuck in his ticket pack. He grabbed that and headed inside to the emergency room bay. There he found Angelika behind a drawn curtain. A hospital employee was behind it with her, asking questions. Officer Bedetti announced his presence and was invited inside.

  Bedetti ran over the same questions again, probing for more detail and jotting down her responses on the back of the card stock. As he talked to her, he picked up the life vest, thinking it was possible that the phone had gotten caught up in the webbing or fallen into a pocket.

  “What are you doing?” Angelika asked.

  “Inspecting the vest,” he said, but when he realized that what he was doing was distracting her attention from the medical personnel he set the vest back down. Then he asked about her cell phone, wanting, at least, to get her phone number to run a trace for the last known coordinates to help locate her boyfriend. He also wanted to know if she’d had it in a box or ziplock that would have protected it from the water if it had fallen in the Hudson.

  “No,” she said. “I dropped the phone in the water when I overturned my kayak.”

  Next, Bedetti asked her to describe the kayaks. Angelika not only told him the colors of their crafts but also threw in the dimensions of both. As he was preparing to leave, Angelika asked, “Can you bring me back to my car?”

  “It would be better if you stayed here to get treated for whatever they’re going to treat for you.”

  Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed. “Okay.”

  Bedetti could tell she had grown far less calm than she had been down by the water—she was clearly anxious to get out of there. He handed her his business card and said, “If you need a ride or something after that, call the number for the police department, ask for me, and I’ll come by and get you.” After leaving the hospital, Bedetti returned to headquarters and wrote his incident report. He accidentally listed the missing person as Victor Viafore.

  * * *

  Senior Investigator Moscato sent Trooper Andrew Freeman of the Montgomery barracks to the hospital to make a determination of the current status of the rescued kayaker. He found her in a bay in the emergency room. He asked if she was okay and offered to make any phone calls for her.

  Meanwhile, state police investigator Detective Donald DeQuarto had received a call from Trooper Jason Vidacovich, who informed him that there was a missing kayaker in the Hudson River by the Cornwall Yacht Club and that a rescued female had been taken to the hospital in Newburgh, where Trooper Freeman had met her. DeQuarto called Freeman and asked to speak to her.

  “Can you tell me briefly what happened,” he asked

  “I was kayaking with my fiancé in the Hudson River, and because of the rough current he overturned his kayak, and I couldn’t get to him. I overturned my kayak, too, and they brought me to this hospital,” Angelika said.

  “I’m on my way there and I’ll be there shortly,” he said. DeQuart
o got to the hospital at 9:30 that evening. When he arrived, Angelika was dressed in hospital-provided garments, her water-soaked clothing stuffed in her bag. She was being processed through discharge and seemed very calm as she filled out release paperwork. He asked if she had any problem coming back to the barracks with him to discuss what had happened.

  “No problem,” she said.

  Trooper Andrew Freeman transported her back to the Montgomery barracks, where DeQuarto joined her. He sat behind his desk and she sat down in a chair beside it. He asked her to run through the events in more detail.

  She complied, telling him when she and Vincent had left the mainland and when they’d set out to return after spending a couple of hours on the island shooting photographs.

  “What were the colors of your kayaks?”

  “I was in a red kayak and Vince was in a blue kayak. Is this all really necessary?” she asked.

  “Yes, we have a missing person and we need as many specifics as we can get.”

  She sighed and began a lengthier description. “We set out to head back to Plum Point—Vince was about fifty feet in front of me. The water was getting really bad and the current was bad. I saw Vince flip out of his kayak and fall into the river. I tried to paddle to him, but I couldn’t get to him because the current was pulling me further and further away. I was exhausted trying to paddle to him. When he was in the water about five minutes he yelled, ‘Call 911.’ So, I did. I was telling the dispatcher what happened when the current flipped me into the water. In about ten minutes, rescue workers came and pulled me out.”

  “Where were you when Vince flipped out of his kayak?”

  “About halfway between Bannerman Island and Plum Point.”

  “Was he wearing a life jacket?”

  “No, but he had the floatation device he uses as a backrest.”

  DeQuarto wrote up her deposition and handed it to her to review. “Do you want to change anything with it?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You can sign that if everything is correct.”

  She signed the document and asked, “Can you take me back to my car now?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Can I call Vince’s sister, Laura, first?”

  “No problem.”

  “Can you look up the phone number for me? When I fell into the water, I saw my phone go into the water. I lost my phone in the Hudson River and I lost all my contacts with it.”

  DeQuarto found the number and gave it to her.

  She placed the call to Vince’s sister, Laura Rice, just after 10:00 pm. “Vinny is missing,” she said. “We went kayaking and he went into the water. The police are looking for him.”

  “Oh my God! Should I come down there? What should I do?” Laura asked.

  “You don’t need to. I’m with the officers that will take me where I need to go.”

  Hanging up the phone, Laura was stunned and terrified. She thought about calling her mother but hesitated and talked to her husband. Laura didn’t want to wake Mary Ann Viafore if she was sleeping and didn’t want to inflict unnecessary worry on her before they knew the outcome. After all, they reasoned, Vince might be found, hurt but alive, that night. They decided to wait until the next morning to let her know.

  Angelika and Investigator DeQuarto walked out to the parking lot, and DeQuarto opened the front passenger door of his car for her. He drove back to her car at Plum Point, arriving there around 11:30.

  The searchers were still hard at work. The helicopters zigzagged across the area, shining their bright lights down on the water. People in boats crept through the waves, peering into the darkness and hoping for a glimpse of the missing man. Law enforcement and fire department personnel explored the shoreline searching for Vince or any of his belongings. Scuba dive teams were looking at any unusual objects in the sonar and getting readings on the currents in an attempt to narrow their focus on the most probable location of Vince’s body.

  Angelika said that she was not sure if Vince had his cell with him or if he’d left it in the car. She and DeQuarto approached the Jeep on different sides, looking in the glove box, under seats, and into crevices, but did not find the phone.

  Angelika looked toward the river and yelled, “Vinny!”

  Having given up on finding his phone, she walked to her car and told DeQuarto she was going to Laura Rice’s house.

  “We’ll keep searching tonight and I’ll call you there if we locate Vince,” he told her.

  She pulled away from the parking lot with Investigator DeQuarto following her. When they reached 9W, their cars went in opposite directions.

  Moments after Angelika and DeQuarto pulled out of the park, the Westchester County helicopter spotted Vince’s blue Fusion kayak—upside down in the river. Montgomery Fire Department secured the vessel; they had to drain a large amount of water out of it to lift it into the boat. Fifteen minutes later, the Rockland County helicopter spotted Angelika’s red Clearwater Affinity kayak tangled in downed trees, just south of where Vince’s was found. Both were located just north of Plum Point, where they had launched hours ago to paddle to the island. Two Westchester County marine units brought them to the Cornwall Yacht Club along with Vince’s blue Pioneer paddle and Angelika’s black one. After Investigator DeQuarto took photographs, the kayaks and paddles were transported by the Storm King Fire Department and secured at their nearby facility to await pickup by the state police the next day.

  Before the rescue teams called it quits for the night, the state police dive team was advised about the current status of the search. They made plans to be on the scene the next morning at 9:00 when the search resumed.

  Just after 2:30 that morning, Troopers Freeman and Vidacovich called local hospitals to see if Vince had been admitted. No one had seen him, but employees were given a description of Vince and asked to call if anyone came in matching his description.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In accordance with his supervision philosophy, Moscato was on hand when the kayaks and paddles were delivered on Monday, April 20, to the Montgomery barracks by the fire department. He helped with the unloading process, but not being a kayaker, he noted nothing unusual about the condition of the vessels. He did note that the paddles were not assembled for use—they had been broken down, the ring unscrewed, and the two parts separated, in order to fit in the trooper car.

  * * *

  The following day, the search continued over a ten-mile radius, with assistance from a large number of agencies: the Westchester Department of Public Safety; Rockland County Sheriff; fire departments from Cornwall, West Point, Fort Montgomery, Vails Gate, Stony Point, and the City of Newburgh; police departments from Newburgh, Cornwall-on-Hudson, the Town of New Windsor, and the Town of Cornwall, as well as resources from the state police and other agencies. They all worked together from the staging area at Gully’s boat dock. Official searchers were joined by civilian volunteers—family and friends of Vince, as well as civic-minded strangers. New York State Troopers handed out flyers on both sides of the river to boaters, hikers, fishermen, everyone spotted in the area. They wanted to talk to anyone who had been in the park between 4:00 and 8:00 pm on April 19.

  While the ground searchers scanned the shoreline hoping to find Vince injured but alive, the divers were in the water hunting for a body hung up on a tree branch, a rock, or another underwater impediment. The determination of where the water could have carried his body was complicated by the nature of the Hudson. As it was a tidal river, the directions of flow changed twice a day, dragging any mass first in one direction and then in the other. The dive boat also ran a sonar scan with aerial support by helicopter. The scuba team tried to fine-tune projections of where a body would drift as they searched.

  Later on that gray, miserable day, Captain Brendan Casey of the New York State Police stood before a bank of microphones before a crowd of reporters. As he spoke, the falling rain bounced off his hat, punctuating his words. “Our investigation has determined that they broug
ht their personal kayaks down to Plum Point and they launched from there and paddled out to Pollepel Island and were on their way back. Again, reports from the female who was rescued were that they had kayaked in the past, they are experienced kayakers. And it is indeed a bit of a cautionary tale if it is true that they are experienced. People should remember that this time of year, the water is very cold, and the weather can change very quickly, and they should use caution if they are out in the water.”

  Asked what his challenges were that day, he answered, “We have a state police marine unit in the water with side-scanning sonar. When the water is this rough, it is very difficult to operate, [to] keep your grid line searches uniform and get good readings from the side-scanning sonar. So, they’re going to keep pushing a little bit longer but probably have to call it here in a little bit and we’ll be back out here tomorrow if the weather turns.”

  In response to a question about Angelika, he said, “She’s obviously upset about her fiancé and not being able to locate him. She has mild hypothermia, so she was taken to the hospital and treated.”

  Casey then commented on why he thought the accident had happened. “The conditions yesterday changed. It was nice during the day and I think that’s what may have lulled them into a sense of complacency. It was a pretty nice day. And then it got cooler and the winds picked up. We’re not sure exactly how long she was in the water, but it was long enough for her to start feeling some effects of hypothermia.”