Death on the River

by Diane Fanning

  When Angelika started talking about her personal relationship with Vince, Moscato explained, he figured the topic was better suited for a one-on-one conversation. “I know that they were fiancés—but we were treating her like the grieving widow. We didn’t want to make it seem like anybody is ganging up on her, or anything like that. So I asked her would you prefer just to talk to one of us.” He said that she went off with Investigator DeQuarto and he and DaSilva “went off to the side there where the castle is. There is a bench near by there. And Investigator DaSilva and I went and we sat down on that bench for the duration of the conversation that Angelika and Investigator DeQuarto had on the path.”

  “Do you know how long that you and Investigator DaSilva were sitting on the bench?” Mohl asked.

  “I would say probably about forty minutes or so, give or take.”

  “And after that duration of time, did you see Investigator DeQuarto and the defendant again?”

  “Yes, I saw them walking towards us from that path that I just described. And I saw Angelika go down towards the dock where the bathroom was at. And Investigator DeQuarto came over to me.”

  “So, the defendant was able and allowed to walk to the bathroom on her own?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Moscato confirmed.

  “No one followed her?”

  “No one followed her.”

  He reiterated the information DeQuarto had relayed to his colleague about the kayak plug and the paddle ring and described the boat ride back to the mainland.

  “Did she ever ask not to get on the boat?”

  “No, not at all. In fact, we had some engine problems with the boat, so we were joking a little bit back and forth.”

  “Did any further conversation about the plug or the ring come up while you were on the boat?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Did you have a conversation on the boat with the defendant other than when you were joking about?”

  “No, that was about it. That it was kind of windy. And we joked a little bit around the boat issues and that was it, no, no further conversations occurred.”

  “Did you notice anything she was doing while she was on the boat?”

  “Well, she was, I don’t know how to explain it, but she wasn’t—she wasn’t visibly upset about anything. It was almost like she was happy-go-lucky. And, you know, I was a little taken aback, but I didn’t say anything to her at that point. That, you know, after she just had said what she said to Investigator DeQuarto, that she would have this happy-go-lucky attitude. So we kind of just left it at that.”

  In response to the ADA’s questions, Moscato told the court that he rode in his own vehicle back to the barracks while Angelika rode with the other two investigators. The only additional conversation he had with her was a brief one as they were entering the barracks, when Angelika commented on her desire to go motorcycling.

  The prosecution turned the witness over to the defense and Portale asked for a break to review a document. Instead, the judge broke for the day and ordered the parties to return the next day at 1:30 pm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  On the second day of proceedings, lead defense attorney Richard Portale began the cross-examination of Senior Investigator Aniello Moscato. He focused first on the lead sheets generated in the investigation—logs that keep track of when new lines of investigation are opened in a case. The attorney tried to imply that the police started looking into Angelika as a suspect on April 19, 2015, because that date was on the lead sheet. Even after Moscato informed him that the date on the forms referred to the incident date, not when the form was filled out, Portale kept pushing.

  “In reference to the lead sheets,” Moscato explained, “that did not commence until the evening of the twenty-ninth. We tried to start treating this as a major crime investigation after the arrest was made, not prior to the arrest.”

  “Are you aware that there is a lead sheet dated 4/19/15 by Trooper Freeman, that says the lead was assigned by you?” Portale pressed.

  “That’s right,” the investigator said. “And that probably wasn’t assigned till the twenty-ninth. Do you see where the lead was reviewed and completed on the bottom? It should reflect. The lead may have been assigned on the twenty-ninth and it reflected what was done on the nineteenth. That is very much possible.”

  Portale moved on. “So, you were first assigned to this case on April 19; is that right?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t technically assigned,” Moscato clarified again. “I’m the supervisor. And I was called in. And because of the nature of what it was, I responded down to Cornwall Yacht Club on the nineteenth.”

  “So, because you’re a supervisor, you didn’t really get assigned, you were ‘the guy:’ is that fair to say?”

  “I guess,” Moscato said, giving the attorney an incredulous look.

  “You can say it. It’s okay.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ‘the guy,’ but yes, I responded. My squad is out there. Some of my guys were out there. I like to go and give them support and try to help facilitate things that needed to be done.”

  The men discussed the various local police, emergency response, and fire department members Moscato talked to that night, as well as the investigator’s almost daily contact with Angelika before her arrest. “We might have missed a day in between, but we at least met up on the shores of the Hudson in one way or another,” Moscato said. “And we either spoke on the phone or we texted each other. I believe she texted me more than I texted her back, but to this day, she’s still on my cell phone as Angelika.”

  Portale established that Moscato hadn’t been present for the meeting Angelika had with DeQuarto on the nineteenth and that Moscato had listened to the 911 call with DeQuarto sometime prior to April 29. “Did he make you aware of the fact that he was suspicious of Miss Graswald after listening to that call?”

  “Suspicious?” Moscato asked.

  “Yes.”

  “No. Listen, Angelika went through a lot in the first couple of days. Everyone reacts to these situations in different ways.”

  “Objection,” Portale said, “to the non-responsive part of the question and move to strike it. It was a yes or no question.”

  “I’ll sustain the objection,” Judge Freehill said.

  A flash of exasperation crossed Moscato’s face.

  “Are you okay?” Portale asked him.

  “I’m fine,” a clearly provoked Moscato said. The expression on his face and his curt responses to the next few questions said otherwise. He had to elaborate, though, when asked about his reaction to DeQuarto’s statement about Angelika admitting she’d removed the kayak’s plug.

  Portale asked, “Is it fair to say that part of the reason you found that hard to believe and that you were in shock was that she was acting happy-go-lucky? That was your testimony [on] direct?”

  “That’s not the reason,” Moscato contradicted. He continued with a lengthy answer that seemed to be daring Portale to object. “Number one, I didn’t know about a plug. So that was surprising to me. And, also, like I was trying to say, for nine to ten days we were all on an emotional roller coaster, more so for the family and Angelika than myself. I kind of felt the pain they were experiencing. And she was being treated like a widow, if you will. A grieving widow. So, I was totally shocked that, you know, because of certain actions and behaviors that she exhibited before? I didn’t really put a lot of weight on that. I’m sure you heard she would do cartwheels.

  “In fact, on that Friday before, she called me up and she invited me to a nightclub. Said, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing?’ Like, ‘We’re down at the Hudson River. We’re searching for Vinny’s body.’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, it’s too cold out there. Aniello, why don’t you tell the guys to take the rest of the day off and we’re gonna have a little tribute to Vinny.’ I forget the name of the place, but it was across the river on the Poughkeepsie side. She said that it was a tribute to Vinny. And she wanted all of the people that were assisti
ng with the search to join her at the party.

  “So, you know, a lot of people are, well, ‘that’s kind of odd.’ But was it odd? Yeah, maybe. But you know what? Everybody grieves differently. Some people hide it. Some people are happy about it. Some people are sad about it. You know, everyone acts differently. So, I didn’t put a lot of weight on that.

  “Over the thirty-some years of doing this type of missing persons, and unnatural deaths, homicides, call it what you want—when a loved one’s lost, people’s reactions have been the spectrum of the rainbow. Anything is possible. You can’t go to a textbook and say, ‘This is what they should be doing.’ So, I didn’t put a lot of weight on her doing cartwheels and being happy about everything. Maybe others did, but I didn’t.”

  If Portale was affected by Moscato’s impassioned response, he didn’t show it. “Yesterday when you testified that you were surprised that she was acting happy-go-lucky on Bannerman’s Island, what did you mean?”

  “Absolutely, I did. This is after she tells Investigator DeQuarto that she pulled the plug and sabotaged the paddle. How could you act happy-go-lucky after making a statement like that? It wasn’t consistent with what she had just revealed … yes. That I was taken aback on.”

  “She wasn’t acting like someone that had just confessed to murder; is that fair to say?”

  “That’s fair to say,” Moscato conceded.

  Portale asked the investigator to describe his actions on the morning of April 29. “Describe what you and your crew did, from the time you arrived to the time she arrived, what did you do—start with you. What did you personally do?”

  “Okay. We looked around the island. We spoke to some people there that were on the cleanup committee. Some were planting flowers, others were just cleaning up. And we just, we looked around for any kind of evidence—keep in mind, at this point, we still had not found Vincent Viafore’s body. So, we were concerned that maybe something may have happened on the island. We weren’t sure. Maybe something was left behind on the island. You know, the whole issue that there was a cell phone involved. Maybe some pictures that were taken. Maybe some articles of clothing might have been left behind. Whatever. We had never been to Bannerman’s Island since this incident had occurred. So, we were there to kind of take a first look at it, if you will.”

  “So, this incident happened on the nineteenth. In the ten days that followed, you, before the twenty-ninth, you had never been to the island.”

  “That’s right,” the investigator said. “And that’s why we made it a point to go out there. You are absolutely right. You know, we were busy concentrating on the scuba searches, you had the shore searches, based on the information that we had. And as time went by and Vincent’s body didn’t surface, we wanted to expand the search, if you will. That maybe he got hung up on some of the rocks on the other side of the island, what have you, and [we] wanted to try to re-create what happened.”

  “You just testified that you were concerned that something may have happened on the island, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean like foul play?”

  “Not necessarily, no,” Moscato hedged.

  “Well, what do you mean?”

  “Well, I know what I know now, but back then I—”

  “What do you mean ‘back then’?”

  “Back then, well, I knew Angelika had spent some time on the island with Vincent Viafore. And she had taken some pictures. And I don’t know the extent of all the pictures, but some of the descriptions that she had offered to the investigators and myself were to the effect that they were there enjoying the day and sharing some intimate moments with each other. I don’t know if she—I think I do know, but I don’t know exactly—but she brought a change of clothing and they took some photographs [with] some, if you will, some sexy poses and lingerie. So, perhaps, maybe something was left behind. It was part of our duty to be thorough and take a look to see if we missed something. Not necessarily foul play, at that point.”

  Portale tried to get Moscato to give a precise assessment of the times they arrived on Bannerman Island and that Angelika reached the island, but he could only estimate. The attorney criticized him for not writing down the hour and minute.

  “I had been meeting with her for ten days. I never wrote down any of those times either that I met with her,” Moscato argued.

  “You’re not suggesting that she confessed to murder any of those other times?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But this time was a little different, right? This time—”

  Moscato didn’t let Portale finish his question. “I didn’t have a crystal ball and knew what was going to happen—”

  “Would you answer my question?” Portale asked. In the same breath he turned to the judge and pleaded, “Your Honor?”

  When the attorney got no response from Freehill, he continued, “What I’ll do is, I’ll ask a question and then I’ll give you an opportunity to answer it. Can we do that?”

  “I know how the system works,” Moscato snapped.

  “And I promise I am not going to interrupt. I’ll try not to.” Portale paused and then continued, “This time was a little bit different. It was a lot different than the other times you met with Miss Graswald because this time, you’re saying she confessed to murder, true?”

  Now it was ADA Mohl’s turn to object.

  “What’s the basis?” Portale asked.

  “Number one,” she said, “it’s argumentative, and what time are you talking about?”

  “I don’t see this as being argumentative,” the judge said. “I’ll agree with the other part. Sustained. Rephrase the question.”

  Portale forged ahead. “The Bannerman’s Island meeting with Miss Graswald was different than the meeting leading up to [it] because in the Bannerman’s meeting on 4/29, you’re saying that she confessed to murder?”

  “No.”

  Julie Mohl objected again and was sustained by the judge. Richard Portale withdrew his question and the judge struck the answer.

  Portale changed his query. “You testified on direct that you have gone to Bannerman’s Island on 4/29 and were searching for clues. That true?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, with regard to the communication that took place between you and Miss Graswald prior to arriving on Bannerman, there were some phone calls or text messages?”

  “Yes.”

  “You called her and she returned your call?”

  “No. The opposite.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m positive.”

  “So, she called you first and then you returned her call?”

  “She called me. I answered the phone. This was at Gully’s,” Moscato said, growing irritated. “This is the part where you didn’t allow me to explain.”

  “Just answer the question,” the judge remonstrated.

  “You were at Gully’s?” Portale asked.

  Moscato confirmed again and described the phone call he’d received from Angelika. “And later on, at the island, she showed up. We didn’t tell her to go there. I didn’t tell her not to go there. She had planned on going there, on her own. And when she arrived at the island, yes, it was like any other time of the nine days prior of meeting with her. I had no idea that she was gonna confess to murder when she came to that island.”

  Portale moved to strike for non-responsiveness and the judge refused his request. The attorney asked, “My question to you, really [is] who called who first. That’s the question, who called who first?”

  “Well, I answered that three times and you didn’t believe me,” Moscato retorted. “And I even said positive. She called me first.”

  “You said you walked around the island. Did you walk along the outside of the island, the shoreline?” the attorney asked.

  “It’s hard to walk around the shoreline on the island. I don’t know if you know the layout of it, but it’s kind of cliffy. We docked. We went up the steps. There are
trails up there and leading up to the house that was built up there. We walked around there and then we walked down to the shoreline. But it’s hard to walk around the perimeter of the island, given the terrain of it.”

  Then Portale brought up Angelika’s arrival on the island. “So, from the time Miss Graswald disembarked the boat on Bannerman’s Island, to the time she got on your police boat, either yourself—aside when she was in the bathroom—either yourself or one of your troopers were with her, right?”

  “Not all the time.”

  “Were there other places and times she wasn’t with a trooper on Bannerman?”

  “The island is not a big island. So, we were there on the island. Were we holding her hand? No. Was she free to go? Absolutely.”

  “She was gonna go where?”

  “Wherever she wanted to go.”

  “But it’s an island,” Portale snipped.

  “How did she get there?” Moscato pointed out. “She got there in a boat. She could have left there the same way. She was free to go. She was not in custody. And we had no reason to keep her there. We didn’t—we really didn’t invite her to come out there.”

  “She wasn’t handcuffed?”

  “No. Absolutely not. In fact, even after she admitted to what she did, she still wasn’t handcuffed.”

  “This is on the island now?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you testified that on the island, as you were talking to her, at some point you sat down on the trail; is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And prior to that, you had allowed her to smoke a cigarette, you had allowed her to go to the bathroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Objection, Judge,” Mohl interrupted, “as to the characterization of ‘allowed.’”

  Portale tried to clarify: “Did she ask you?”

  “Sustained,” Freehill said.

  “Withdrawn,” said Portale. “During those times, did [she] say, like, ‘Can I go to the bathroom?’ Did she ask you?”