Identifying a new suspect Howard Gombert

Your routine should be anything but vanilla, but your ready to go wellness can be. Elevate daily wellness with vital proteins advanced collllagen plus cololostrum and prebiotic fiber. This three in one blend supports radiant skin, gut health, and immune system wellness, designed to mix into room temperature or cold liquids. So your inner harmony works with your outer wellness Vital Proteins Stay vital. Visit vitalroteinsot com to get started. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, to ture or prevent any disease. Indeed, sponsoreor Jobs gets you quality candidates when you need the most. Spend less time searching, and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress Less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a seventy five dollars sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed dot com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Ne to hire? This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs Jardiance has a big story to tell. Discover Jardience, Empical Flozen, ten or twenty five milligram tablets. Visit Jardiance dot com call one eight nine six eight six six four eight or talk to your doctor to see if Jardience is right for you. G to town This series includes sensitive and potentially distressing topics including sexual assault and abuse involving children Listener discretion is advised Prison is like a cemetery for the living man. It's like everybody has a shadow of themselves, a shell Gost Some of those people with life, you look in their eyes and there is nothing. Nothing good to say, nothing good to feel A couple of months after his conviction for the murder of Joseette Wright, Anthony was transferred to Dstate Correctional. It's where they process new inmates into the system I went in young Unprepared Not as tough as I thought I was When I got to downstate, the counselor threatened me, the counselor He says, you're gonna to have a really bad tie. I'm like, how do you meanide into do it? He's like, Yeahah, sure You're not going have a good good life His first day at Downstate corroborated that counselor It's so Two hours in And there's, I don't know, a hundred of us and you know, they're doing the read your cheeks and then it shaved your hair, your eyebrows, off facial hair, off The next thing they did is they made us all undressed all naked in one line. and they threw the shit they call lie The Luser They're taking a picture and now here I look like frreaking mininnie M So it's like you're being processed, you as a human being in a factory of other human beings. You're moving the way they tell you, they put you on a line, they give you your clothes. you're giving an inmate ID number. Mine was nine seven A, five, six three nine You had to walk in two rows paired off side by side in groups of forty if you back a little bit, they would say something like Patch it up on a left retart Or if somebody was talking to me like, what part of no talking in my hallway do you not understand? And so I started hearing these direct orders from this foul place somebody says S laughs about something that unacceptable. there would be quiet and there would be order And they would take guys that did these things and then you would hear them beating and scream. Well I'm not gonna to say nothing. in places like downstate. Penens built to terrorize entry level felons into a life of learned submission that Anthony would have to learn how to save his own life This is the deevil's quarry Horseshoe Online Casino has a special offer for you, New Jersey. New users can get five hundred bonus spins in their first month on games like Huff and lots of puff and more. It's simple and rewarding to play your casino favorites. Download and play today. Must be twenty one plus and physically present in New Jersey. mininimum wagering within five days required to unlock bonuses. Full terms and wagering requirements at horseshoe onnlinecasino dot com slash promos If you are someone you know is a gambling problem, call one eight hundred gambler I'm Lindsey, and even before my diagnosis, my hands were full as a mom and an investigator After treating my HR positive, herurt to negative early breast cancer, I wanted to do everything I could to try to keep it from coming back. So I talked to my doctor about a treatment plan that included Casci Tiscalle ribocyclip's two hundred milligram tablets with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with HR positive, her two negative, stage two or three early breast cancer with a high risk of coming back. Kiscali may cause serious skin reactions, liver problems, and low white blood cell counts that may result in serious infections, life threatening lung problems, and abnormal heartbeats can occur. Your doctor should test your heart and blood before and during treatment. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening cough, chest pain or dizziness. Before taking Kiscali, tell your doctor all your medical conditions, medicines you take and if you're breastfeeding, pregnant, or planning to be Sick and harm an unborn baby, common side effects include nausea, headache, and tiredness Lindsseay is a real patient, compensated for her time. Learn more at Kiscali. com Summer is a gift It's a gift of days that last a little longer, a brighter state of mind So give yourself a new Kia at the KEA Summer Sticker S sales event Eespecially tacked vehicles including the Sorrento, Sportage, Carnival, as well as the Nurohybrid all backed by a ten year one hundred thousand mile limited powertrain warranty. So the gift of summer can keep on giving for summers to come. Kia, Movement that inspires Call eight hundred three three threety four K for Details host J safree event and seven six twenty six to dealer for warranty details In the fall of nineteen ninety seven, Anthony was sent up top. That's what inmates call the max security pens in Northern New York state His new address, Suangun Correctional was where they kept the worst of the worst Berkowitz, better known as the son of Sam Rubber Chambers, the Central Park Strangler Larry Davis, who shot six cops in the Bronx and lived to tell the tale In a crabd like that, you keep yourself to yourself And if anyone asks what you're in for You liear fool, head off I was like, for the first six or eight months, it was a robbery and murder. So I kind of altered the story to kind of protect myself from like You're having to explain it. But eventually your case comes out in a lot of books and people find out and people talk. He didn't have to guess what happened to the untouchables getet a front row seat for that stuff Like I see a lot of stuff happening. like violent stuff. I seen a guy pick a guy up out of a wheelchair and start fighting him and putting him back in a wheelchair. Ive seen two guys fighting over a state burrito upstairs slamming each other into the cages. I seen a guy on the weight bench cut madeade a Nike sign on the kid's face while he was under about two hundred twenty five Um, Yeah, I I mean, I've seen enough blood to fill a bathtub. Anthony knew his day was coming Today you'd have to fight three gangsters in the shower or someone would slip behind him with a straight edge. He lived in a state of low level of terror It's one thing to hulk slam your backyard buddies. It's another to fend off Lifers who squat four hundred fifty, and who conspire with the guards to get at you. In short, you don't survive up top without a breraak or two coming your way Anthony's break came to him out of the clear blue. He met some guys who knew the guy in the mafia there. And what was Anthony's calling card to the crime boss at Chuang Gunk His stepdad, Big o' Larry There was a couple of people that knew my stepfather. And then there was this guy, his name was Angelo and he was high up in Kazy' He knew some people, that knew some people. rightight? And those people knew my people Anthony put out word that he wanted to sit down with Angelo Quest went up the chain and Anthony got to sit down He went with every scrap of proof he had. Ps had stitched him up Like I brought out the Dominic Reantation, Adam takaking his story back He told him how Andy was tricked into a false confession How his buddies said they were beaten into testifying against him and They believed After hearing him out The Italians made the ruling This kid gets a pass. hands off When you got to pass with your own kind, that kind fallen water It didn't mean it put me at the top of the food chain, but no longer am I at the bottom And so now not only are they like giving me a pass, they're like they're calling me to the table. They're breaking bread with me now. And so it's like I feel a little safer like when it was happappy birthday, they sng happappy birthday. When it was Christmas, they brought out buffets of chips and cookies It surely didn't hurt that every couple of weeks you'd get a big care package from home Cart and cram with goodood easasy chair with a crew teach salamis and so presadas. Hubs of dried fruits. Th then there was the stuff that really opened doors copies a penthouse and hustler Those are the kinds of goods that make you a VIP and Dpx able to finally let her breath out Anthony got back to the job of living started training in the jail yard every day builduilding a brickhouse, Chest in quads It's where he met some of the other guys on his tier I had a friend of mine, his name was Mk Ming. He used his Big Muslim guy but he was in a wheelchair. He just lost the body function from the waist down. It was military police, Vietnam vet believe me, he looked like he walked right out of a black exploitation film. If he had a soundtrack, it would be like, D, d That ain't that Dan then And he was so cool Mook was one of my best friends I ever met in jail An Anthony got good and tight with Mook Enough so that Book shared a secret with him. Get a little helper that got him through the day Nothing illegal mind you It was actually prescribed by the prison doctors muscle relax and c back lfin or his muscle spasms. So he he had like they would give him like ninety a month And he'd be like, yo, you should try this. like, we'll try it. You should try. I'm telling you, you feel better Fally like, Yeahah, I'm gonna take them. I don't know if it was like, you know, what like beta blockers do for college kids But if you take ten of them with two heing spoons of folgress crystals down the throat, you're going be S when I was doing with the backacliffins, I mix it with the coffee like folgers and I would put just a little bit of water in a lot of the crystals to get like a super dose of caffeine late at night. and that would kind of counterbalance the down effect of the backacliffin. So I was like high and feeling good, but focused And with that focus came a rush of agency the urge to fight back Clearearst name. As a kid, he had no shot against this butuck now with a clear head and his day' free to work. Ready to take them on to get hold of his case file and read every workd twice. for the facts that weren't in that file I stopped weight and lifting so much. I could only do one in the other. I was either going to be the best looking most macho man in history or I was going home because I only had that much time. And so I dedicated my focus on my freedom. What the drugs did was kind of like res resurrect like my will gave me a passion to do the research late at night. And I took them and I became a freicaking genius For all its reputation as a dumb site for psychos, Swangunk had a library was proud of. There, Anthony A guy who'd failed the ninth grade twice found a full set of texts called the Case laaw Reporters Curious, he pulled a volume off the shelf and started on page one By the time he looked up again, it was dark outside. and Anthony was bewitched Here in his hands was a starter kit for aspiring self taught lawyers In a matter of months, he went from ninth grade kickout to Deploxs legal Eagle I started sleeping all day like the hurricane That would be Rubin Hurricane Carter The great middleweight frame for murder in New Jersey He'd famously written his way out of prison by becoming a jailhouse lawyer And I would stay up at night and I would study and I would print all these papers out from the law library. I would just love to learn the law. I had little highlighters and I had little notebooks and I started thinking. And when I start connecting the facts and the hope and the law, as it applies, as it should be applied, and I see a way out I get very hopeful and very dreamy And I kind of create my own kind of euphoria. And you know, it wasn't a fantasy. It drove me. It inspired me. It was part of a chain of things in my life that led me to learn this law As a fixture in those stacks, he found his tribe of jailhouse lawyers And so like in prison it is like a cemetery for a living man. people that are innocent, the people that are fighting, the people that had hope had a different level of energy. These are the people that I need to be around. These are the people that are focused. They were all learning together and something new came out and we all had ways of sharing the knowledge. Everybody followed the new laws, the advance sheets, the law journals, anything that came out and they just had the heart. And that was the only way out They spent the first couple of years there framing an appeal Big Larry had hired him new lawyers So in ' ninety eight, we hired Joel Brenner and Joel with just this legendary old heel monster whose name is all over these books. I mean, you guys might not know too much about him on the street, but in the jailhouse, he's a legend. you know, you want to go feel like the guy that is gonna to get the job done. So Larry hires him From his jail cell, Anthony worked morning and night writing and revising that petition There's about twelve to thirteen points. a couple of those points are broken. And we argue When you say points you're talking about? Well, when you file an appeal, you raise points of law. So these points of law are, you know, you want to break it down and give the court you know the basis of your claim and how that law support you and how you didn't have a fair trial. There's a format to follow in a post conviction relief appeal Even if you find clear proof of your innocence, you still have to show the court that your conviction broke the law So Our first it's a statement of facts basically summarizing the trial And then our point one is the evidence was legally insufficient and Denise Rose, the weight of the evidence goes against the verdict as a matter of law. Second point is the erroneous decision of the trial court to preclude Dominic Neglia Dam Ngia, youll recall, was kept off the stand by the judge at Anthony's trial this despite the fact that he'd invent the story It's on Anthony's trail The impact of that story was immense Domb didn't just put Anthony and Andy in the frame He also gave those cops the names of their stoner friends. Kids like Adam Wils and Bill McGregor And the cops then stalked and coerced Wilson, at least had recanted a trial He told the jury the story of those cops' coercion McGregor at grudging we played along He signed a statement that the button cops wrote out testified against Anthony at his trial This testimony would haunt McGregor for a decade In two thousand five, a pair of investigators hired by Big Larry tracked him down in Florida And when they did Still told him he had a confession to make Bill is like I've been waiting to say this for quite some time. I have a lot of my chest. and you know first of all, I wasn't there. first time I met Denise Rose was when the cops introduced her to me and tried to have her convince me of this story. I never met Josette right a day in my life. I wasn't in that van. I did not see nothing. He says that those cops coerced him draged him up to pututnam County from Manhattan obained and questioned him fllit between threatening and with a murder count and offering to erase a pending drug charge he had in New York He's like they told me, they threatened me with accomplice to murder Gregor signed and swore out a full recantation. So now three of the four witnesses allegedly in that van any cvag. Gregor And Wilson recanted their coerce statements I got three of the four Yeah. I got three to four That left one last witness, Denise Rose, standing by your testimony in court. ass at this point in two thousand five They Larry ran out of money He'd been funding Anthony's defense for nine long years paying expensive lawyers and private eyes Business had run aground And he had to tap out for a while Big Larry is like, I can'tay, I'm having money problems. I can't pay for lawyers anymore So H, it's me. I'm my own here So Anthony filed the next motion basased on McGregor's recantation And then he filed another motion citing all the cops missteps many omissions from his case files After months of drafting and redrafting motions for an appeal Anthony wound up nowhere with the courz projection left him gutted but never out of gas His rage against those cops was high test jet fuel pace in my cell and I would just put cestaldo in that steel cage and I would put like the whole thing on fire. I put barb wire on the top Andar I would have steel bats with barbed wire around them and it's in my head. Yeah, and it would help me feel better. Motions hoping that something, anything would stick I'm just motion proliferation and dilatory tactics and I'm stolen. So all of this stuff I know is like haail Mary stuff, but I'm not ready. And I don't want my life to end And then at some point, Anthony changed directions inststead of fixing on the cops He turned to what those cops had missed Because if he didn't kill Joseette, someone else certainly had get access to his case file from the Putnam Sheriff's office Over and over, he read the cops's notes and witness statements parsing them for unexamined clues You found this time through. was a name you'd overlooked the name of a man lurking in the margins Horseshoe Online Casino has a special offer for you, New Jersey. New users can get five hundred bonus spins in their first month on games like Huff and lots of puff and more. It's simple and rewarding to play your casino favorites. Download and play today. Must be twenty one plus and physically present in New Jersey. minimum wagering within five days required to unlock bonuses. Full terms and wagering requirements at horseshoe onnlinecasino dot com slash promos. If you are someone you know is a gambling problem Call one eight hundred gambler I'm Lindsay, and even before my diagnosis, my hands were full as a mom and an investigator After treating my HR positive herur to negative early breast cancer, I wanted to do everything I could to try to keep it from coming back. So I talked to my doctor about a treatment plan that included Casci Tiscali ribocyclips two hundred milligram tablets with an aromatase inhibitor is for adults with HR positive, herd two negative, stage two orI early breast cancer with a high risk of coming back. Kiscale may cause serious skin reactions, liver problems, and low white blood cell counts that may result in serious infections, life threatening lung problems, and abnormal heartbeats can occur. Your doctor should test your heart and blood before and during treatment. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening cough, chest pain or dizziness. Before taking Kiscali, tell your doctor all your medical conditions, medicines you take and if you're breastfeeding, pregnant, or planning to be Sick and harm an unborn baby, common side effects include nausea, headache, and tiredness Lindsy is a real patient, compensated for her time Learn more at Kiscali. com Summer is a gift It's The gift of days that last a little longer, a brighter state of mind So gift yourself a new Kia at the Kia Summer Sticker sales event, Epecially tacked vehicles including the Sorrento, Sportage, Carnival, as well as the Nurohybrid all backed by a ten year one hundred thousand mile limited powertrain warranty. So the gift of summer can keep on giving for summers to come. Kia. Movement that inspires Call eight hundred three thir threety four K Freeets host as a free event and seven six twenty six to deealer for warranty details Wired onfolders, crystals and backls Anthony spread out in a cell at night He stayed up so late reading his own case file that he slepts roll call many mornings got written up by the guards himself. He kept finding clues that snapped together The first of those clues was a witness statement from one of Joseosette's neighbors Her name was Anita Albano. And she talked to the cops on november twenty fifth, nineteen ninety five Three days after Josette's bones were found Lady Anita Albano. She's coming home from work on october third, nineteen ninety four That of course, was the day Joseette went missing Bana was driving home from work when she stopped at an intersection This little corner seeminary Hill in Willow is a stone's door away from the wh house, maybe a six minute walk at best. There she saw Josette walking down the road Suddenly a sporty red car stopped beside her. Joseette speaks to the driver. for half a minute, maybe a minute, then runs around to the passenger side gets in. U I guess they weren't getting in fast enough because it seemed like a bano She drove around them, but as she's driving around them, she looks at the license plate because she's concerned That little red car in Connecticut plate, said Albano. pause to get a look at the driver. et full mstache and blonde hair, she said Everything in her statement tracked what other witnesses said about the day Joseette went missing. Her sisters and their friends each told the cops that Josette left the house at three hundred and forty five headed towards Seminary Hill Road. That's where Ee Banner saw her a few minutes later Heing down that road At four PM, she's getting in a red car It certainly wasn't a brown van with a six foot six Anthony D Pipo, it was a red car with Connecticut plates an it was alarmed that Joseet got into that car But from the look of it, she said Joseette knew the driver I seemed happy to hop in with him The cops taking her a statement showed her a photo lineup She is then brought a photo array of six individuals The six loosely fitter description Each was assigned a number, one through six. Bano studied the mug shots She said the guy she saw driving that day looked younger than his mugs shot pointed to his photo anyway And in this photoray, she says, If anybody Nbero She she picks number two if anybody And number two was Howard Gombert Readings through the file, Anthony saw that other Putnam detectives, not Gastaldo and Quick up the Albano lead and ran with it They brought in Gumbert's girlfriend The young woman will call Anne Marie But unlike Gistaldo and Quick, those detectives made a recording. If the tape sounds a little fuzzy, remember it's been sitting in a drawer for decades. He invest up too money, so mustust need the g justig make you get any stick Earie told D this cop she met Gombra when she was just a teen that she got pregnant by him when she was sixteen or so that he was almost thirty at the time She said they shared a little girl together. And then she started dropping bombs on those cops. There was a very bad igence event to together together he said them He did whatever he wanted and I a placeeless Okay Th I' got to ask questions For years, she said Gombert had raped her thenen they were all beatings. in the times he choked her till she passed out She said she'd left him many times and even had him arrested for rape But he'd always wriggle out of those jams. and then he'd stalk her and hunt her down again. What was the last time cops asked her? Six months ago, she said. She'd fled with her toddler to a shelter in Connecticut. But he tracked her there and attacked her in her car. What did he do to you? asked the cops He put a knife to my throat, she said, and told me not to scream. And then then she laid the big one on them. She told them she drove a pontiac sunbird, a red and black sports car with Connecticut plates. red and that he drove her car All the time. In fact, he'd been driving at the day they saw missing posters with Josette's name and face on them. Emmie saw that poster in the deli she went to every day. This was the first time I noticed with posters. They just put that poster up and take a picture any more Pld the name again he said, Oh my God