Chapter 2 | Ride or Die

Summary

Bone Valley – Season 3, Chapter 2 | Ride or Die

Date: June 10, 2026
Podcast: Bone Valley (Lava for Good Podcasts)
Host/Creator: Paul Solotaroff
Featured Voice: Anthony
Episode Focus: The complex, intertwined lives of Anthony and Andy—"ride or die" friends ensnared in the investigation of Josette Wright's murder in Putnam County, NY, 1995. This chapter explores the circumstances that spiraled from their troubled adolescence into a harrowing police investigation and threatening criminal charges.

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Episode Overview

In Chapter 2, "Ride or Die," Bone Valley shifts its lens to the powerful bond between Anthony and his best friend Andy, tracing how personal trauma and institutional failures led them into the crosshairs of a murder investigation. Through candid, raw recollections, the episode delves into cycles of abandonment, criminalization, loyalty, and betrayal under the shadow of Josette Wright’s murder—and the police’s hunt for answers. This narrative scrutinizes the reliability of law enforcement methods, interrogations, and the thin line between friendship and survival.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Scene is Set: Arrest after Josette Wright's Body is Found

Time: 01:33 – 06:45

• Josette Wright’s bones are discovered. Days later, Anthony, Andy, and Dom (their hulking friend) are arrested after attempting to sell PCP on a night out.
• Anthony details the chaos of their arrest:

  “I had drugs in every pocket of my. And basically I got this stuff in my lap, in my coat, in my pants, and it's like falling out of me everywhere.”
  (Anthony, 05:01)

• Loyalty and sacrifice: During booking, Andy asks Anthony to take the charge for an extra bag of PCP. Without hesitation, Anthony agrees—"this is the least you do for a brother.”

2. Ride or Die: Forming Bonds in Broken Homes

Time: 06:45 – 12:45

• The narrator reconstructs Anthony and Andy’s personal and family turmoil:
  • Anthony’s step-uncle connection:

    “I met Andy around 10, okay, maybe 11. We’re family like now.”
    (Anthony, 08:11)

  • Both boys grew up facing betrayal—Andy’s mom and stepmom both left; Anthony’s family fractured by his father’s affair with Andy’s much-older sister.
  • They bonded over “Wrestlemania,” lifting weights, and shared escapes in wrestling’s staged heroics.
  • Their “partnership in crime” extended to experimenting with drugs and hanging out with kids from group homes.

3. The Weight of Loyalty, the Cost of Brotherhood

Time: 12:45 – 13:50

• Anthony’s reflexive act of taking the fall for Andy's drugs highlights the blurred lines between friendship and codependency:

  “So I told the cops, I’m like, hey, this guy, you gotta let him go. ... But, you know, they didn’t let him go. They didn’t let me go.”
  (Anthony, 13:14)

4. Disparities in Justice: Who Gets to Go Home?

Time: 13:26 – 14:45

• Dom, the driver, is inexplicably released quickly; Andy is given a lesser charge and goes home. Anthony—a kid already marginalized and under supervision—faces a felony and languishes in lockup, his stepdad, “Big Larry,” choosing to let him “learn a lesson.”
• Big Larry’s reputation both helps and haunts Anthony:

  “I mean, if you ask the district attorney, he’s probably gonna tell you he’s a mobster, but he’s just a really good hearted person in the garbage business.”
  (Anthony, 14:21)

5. Police Interrogation and Pressure Tactics

Time: 17:02 – 22:24

• Anthony describes the jailhouse pipeline for information, interrogations, and ratting:

  “People that are going are either under interrogation or the rats, and they’re going to give some information.”
  (Anthony, 17:21)

• Youthful drug charges quickly escalate into high-pressure questioning about Josette’s murder, with aggressive good-cop/bad-cop routines:
  • Detective Don Kilarney intimidates Anthony.

    “I plead the Fifth. I, I, I want my lawyer. He’s like, ‘Fuck you. Fuck the Fifth and your lawyer. We have a murder case here.’ ... all ears, all nose, all forehead.”
    (Anthony, 19:17)

• Detective Michael Ball’s threats:

  “We could cut you a deal... pay your way to college, he says, or you know what I can do? I can take you over to Fields Lane right now and blow your head off.”
  (Anthony, 20:35)

• Anthony’s lawyer, Jim Reeds, storms in mid-polygraph, pulling Anthony out:

  “He just looked like a hero in the frickin wind. ... ‘You gotta get my playing off this thing. You got to come with me. You got to get out of here.’”
  (Anthony, 21:02)

6. Paranoia, Betrayal, and the Fall of Ride or Die

Time: 24:35 – 29:27

• After release, Anthony falls into deeper drug use and growing paranoia—especially about Dom, who behaves suspiciously and seems intimately acquainted with Josette Wright’s family, despite supposedly not knowing her.
• Suspicion intensifies when Anthony recalls Dom making a mysterious 3 a.m. call to his grandmother the night of their arrest, then being released by police while Anthony and Andy remain in custody:

  “I slammed the door on him. I slammed the door in his face and I called him a rat.”
  (Anthony, 27:53)

• Anthony’s spiral:

  “When you do cocaine for a long period of time, it starts to wear on you. ... My mind was kind of changing. Like the street life. This is all like starting to stress me out.”
  (Anthony, 28:27)

7. The Twist: From Parole Violation to Murder Charge

Time: 29:27 – 34:08

• In June 1996, Anthony purposefully violates parole, seeking jail as a respite and a “reset.”
• He’s unexpectedly brought before the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, cuffed, and led into a media circus:

  “I see a gamut of 25, 30 reporters, TV cameras … It was like an armada of vans, news vans.”
  (Anthony, 30:41)

• Detective Ball’s theatrics and Anthony’s defiance:

  “He takes the cross and tucks it into my chest. ... When I got to the other side, I popped the chain back out because fuck you.”
  (Anthony, 31:11)

• Anthony learns both he and Andy are charged with Josette’s rape and murder—and that Andy has “ratted him out.”

  “Andy’s the one that’s going to put this on me. Andrew Kac ratted me out.”
  (Anthony, 33:46)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On childhood betrayal and trauma:

  “[My father] was on the couch … The woman was a lot younger than my mom and his Dad. I heard 17, but 18 at best.”
  (Anthony, 08:41)

• On the complexity of small-town justice and inside connections:

  “Big Larry had a rep around town. He owned a thriving waste management firm and was said to have had connections. ... If you ask the district attorney, he's probably gonna tell you he's a mobster, but he's just a really good hearted person in the garbage business.”
  (Interviewer/Anthony, 14:10–14:21)

• On police threats and coercion:

  “We know you know something. ... I can take you over to Fields Lane right now and blow your head off.”
  (Anthony, 20:26–20:35)

• On feeling set up by his friend Dom:

  “That didn’t make me feel good because why does he even know this person’s name? ... It felt like I was being recorded.”
  (Anthony, 26:16)

• Confronting the ultimate betrayal:

  “How do you feel about Andrew Krivac ratting you out?”
  (Reporter/Narrator, 33:24)
  “Andy’s the one that’s going to put this on me. Andrew Kac ratted me out.”
  (Anthony, 33:46)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | The car ride, the PCP bust, and arrest aftermath | 01:33–06:45 | | Anthony and Andy’s early friendship and formative trauma | 06:45–12:45 | | Anthony takes blame for Andy’s drugs | 12:45–13:50 | | Disparities in the way the three are treated by police | 13:26–14:45 | | First interrogations and aggressive police tactics | 17:02–22:24 | | Paranoia, suspicion, and crumbling loyalty | 24:35–29:27 | | Anthony is charged with Josette Wright’s murder | 29:27–34:08 |

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Episode Tone and Style

Gritty, unfiltered, and emotionally raw—Anthony’s voice alternates between bravado, paranoia, and deep vulnerability. The host’s narration adds structure and context, while soundbite storytelling captures the confusion, desperation, and bleak humor of teenage life suddenly turned tragic.

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Conclusion

Chapter 2, “Ride or Die,” is a wrenching exploration of youthful loyalty warped by systemic failure, familial collapse, and the relentless machinery of criminal justice. By episode’s end, the line between brotherhood and betrayal is not just blurred, but weaponized—turning Anthony and Andy’s bond into the mechanism for potentially lifelong devastation. The stage is set for the unraveling of both their lives as the search for Josette Wright’s killer turns friend against friend.

---

For listeners seeking a detailed, conversational, human look at how wrongfully accused lives are created—not just through forensic evidence, but through every fracture in family, community, and the justice system—this episode is essential.

Transcript

[Anthony]

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[Anthony]

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[Interviewer/Investigator]

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[Anthony]

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[Narrator/Host]

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[Anthony]

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[Narrator/Host]

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[Anthony]

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[Interviewer/Investigator]

This series includes sensitive and potentially distressing topics, including sexual assault and abuse involving children. Listener discretion is advised. Josette Wright's bones were found in the woods off of fields Lane on November 22, 1995. Two nights later, Anthony was riding in a car with a couple of his boys, or road dogs, as he liked to call them. One of them was his best friend, Andy Krivak.

[Anthony]

Had a lot of adrenaline, a lot of energy, very energetic. Oh my God, that kid. He would just want to go.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

The kid at the wheel was dom Neglia. At 6 foot 4 and 300 plus pounds, he was even bigger and more imposing than Anthony.

[Anthony]

This guy's forearms are like horse legs. Like, it's just insane. This guy right now I'm close to 6, 6, 6, 5 and it depends on my shoes. But he was, he was big, but he was like big and big. Like, you know,

[Interviewer/Investigator]

the three of Them were headed out of Putnam County.

[Anthony]

We decided we want to go to this Jersey City rave. And I actually didn't want to just go to the Jersey City rave. I wanted to try to make money.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Anthony was hawking pcp, better known as angel dust. And en route, they were getting souped on their own supply.

[Anthony]

That was the time I picked up 60 bags of dust. Think of a tiny manila envelope and then a little bag in it. Back then they had these big baggy coats. They were jean jacket coats with all these metal buckles on them and stuff. And they had these super big deep pockets and stuff I just threw in my pockets.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

They were headed south on the Sawmill Parkway when one of them said, oh,

[Anthony]

my God, do you know whose sister they found up in the woods? They said they found her bones.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Anthony and Andy barely knew Josette, but they'd partied with her older sister Chloe a few years back. Dom, meanwhile, didn't know the girl. He'd been raised in a different town, but he got caught up in their chatter as he drove. When they reached the Jersey club in a dusted haze, Anthony handed some of his merch off to his boys.

[Anthony]

I gave a bunch to Dom and I'm like, well, I figured Dom is big and people are going to be scared of him not to do anything stupid or try to rob him.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

But several hours later, they left the club. Salty.

[Anthony]

I didn't make a dime.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Back in the car, Dom was at the wheel again while Anthony struggled to keep his eyes open.

[Anthony]

I'm zooted. I'm zooted. I'm sitting in the front seat. I'm not blacked out. I'm aware of what's around me, but I'm just so tired from all the suggesting dust. And I. I had my eyes closed.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

They were heading home around 5am and taking back roads to avoid the Putnam cops. But somehow the cops knew they were coming. Anthony panicked as their blue lights blazed up in the mirror.

[Anthony]

I had no shot because I was so high. I had drugs in every pocket of my. And basically I got this stuff in my lap, in my coat, in my pants, and it's like falling out of me everywhere.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

The cops yanked the three of them out of the car and cuffed and stuffed them into separate cruisers.

[Anthony]

Me and Andy were in the same car. And then they get Dominic in another car.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

They brought Anthony and Andy to the Putnam county jailhouse, then put them in basement jail cells.

[Anthony]

I just hear Andy in the cell next to me. He's like, yo, you got to help me out. I only have one bag, say it was yours, though.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Anthony's suited. He does the calculation. One more bag to the 30 he's holding. It'll make no difference when he's charged. Besides, Andy's more of a brother than a buddy. And this is the least you do for a brother. It bears saying that Andy had been arrested before. In fact, twice that very year for possession. Anthony had spent some nights in lockup. Two though, for juvenile nonsense, not drugs. So both boys were bummed about this latest bust, and not just because they were caught with felony weight. What they couldn't have known that night or the weeks to follow was that this was so much bigger than drugs. Like the lost boys they were, they just walked into a nightmare. A nightmare that would take them decades to wake up from.

[Anthony]

Do you hear my madness?

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Laughter hides my fears Sorrow's depths are

[Anthony]

endless

[Interviewer/Investigator]

this valley of tears. This is the devil's quarry. In the Putnam sheriff's case file on the murder of Josette Wright, you'll find page after page of the cops handwritten scribbles. Some of those scribbles concern Anthony and Andy. But what isn't in there is a clear story of their personal and criminal backgrounds. If there was one, it might sound something like this. Beginning a decade prior when the boys lives took a hard turn. Anthony and Andy had been each other's ride or die since were of grade school age.

[Anthony]

I met Andy around 10, okay, maybe 11. We're family like now.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Oh, they're family all right. When Anthony was 8, he stumbled in on his father having sex. Anthony was confused. For one thing, the woman in question wasn't his mom. His mom was in the hospital recovering from surgery. For another, the woman was a lot younger than Anthony's mom and his Dad.

[Anthony]

I heard 17, but 18 at best. I was coming out of my room and then they were on the couch. I didn't understand what I was looking at.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

That young woman was Donna Krivak, Andy's older sister. Anthony's dad ended up marrying Donna Krivak. Meanwhile, Anthony and his mom moved to family shelters where they survived on public assistance for several years. Anthony's only consolation was meeting Donna's kid brother, Andy.

[Anthony]

He winds up translating into my step uncle.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

The two boys became fast friends.

[Anthony]

You know, he was crazy. You know, if it's death defying, he'd do it. He did a stint or two in juvie. He would like to take his dirt bike and the cops would be chasing him and he would just go with the dirt bike. He loved to be chased by the cops.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

What the two boys had in common was their betrayal by a parent. Andy's mom had been out of the picture for years, and then his stepmom walked out. She was the closest thing he'd had to a mom. He soon began to act out in class, getting into scrapes with the other kids. By the time he had his tweens, he'd been bounced to special schools, the kind for kids with conduct disorders. The misery loves company. Especially in childhood. Anthony had been gutted by the rupture in his life. Suddenly broke and homeless, he'd had to change schools. And at his new one, the bullies were relentless.

[Anthony]

All these other kids had great families, Big swimming pools, nice houses. Now I'm wearing garbage clothes, like couch potato shirt and ripped jeans and cheap sneakers. And they would make fun of me for this. They would spit on me. They would throw things at me. A lot of people calling me the pito to hippo because now I'm eating all bad stuff. Because what do you have access to when you're poor? Cheap food. And you eat a lot of it when you don't have it around. So I always harbored kind of like a resistance, resentment for these people that would make fun of me.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

And the other thing he and Andy had in common, they loved the meathead circus of Wrestlemania.

[Anthony]

Wrestling was like the typical good first bad. You have Luke Skywalker, you have Darth Vader. Every hero needs a villain. And so for me, that wound up being like Hulk Hogan and Andre the giant. Hulk Hogan at the time represented everything good, at least the character, right?

[Interviewer/Investigator]

He and Andy would watch the pay per views at Andy's house, acting at the stunts they saw on screen.

[Anthony]

So they. They had this big blue cage, and Hulk Hogan was beating up King Kong Bundy. His ribs were taped. And then all of a sudden, Bundy did the splash. The avalanche in the corner, he hits him with the splash. And then we think it's over. Then Hulk Hogan kicks out, and then he throws against the ribs the cage, and then picks them up and slams them and then pins them and then does all this flexing and stuff. And I'm like, that was really cool.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

For the two friends, wrestling was their rewrite disc, the way to change their storylines in life. They started lifting weights and practicing kick flips in their basement. They staged those mini Wrestlemanias in their backyards. And as they got bigger, they shared other things, too. First cigarettes and beer, then weed and pcp. On many an afternoon, you'd find him in some kid's basement, cranking Wu Tang and talking game to the ninth grade girls.

[Anthony]

I didn't have a brother of my age. I mean, he's the closest thing that I've had to having a brother.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

From the town's perspective, these two were partners in crime. They seldom consumed narcotics and shared them with at risk girls from the group home where Josette was often seen hanging out. Back to that bag of angel dust the cops found in Andy's pocket. When Andy asked Anthony to claim it was his, Anthony didn't think twice.

[Anthony]

So I told the cops, I'm like, hey, this guy, you gotta let him go. I was just wearing that coat and I accidentally must have put that in his pocket. But, you know, they didn't let him go. They didn't let me go.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

And what about Dom? He went home that night. He went home?

[Anthony]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Dom had been released after a few hours. Andy, meanwhile, went home a few days later with a misdemeanor count for possession. But not Anthony. He wound up with a felony charge and sat in a county cell for six weeks. You couldn't make bail. What was the problem?

[Anthony]

No, well, Big Larry thought that I should learn my lesson.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Big Larry was Anthony's stepdad. He'd entered the frame after Anthony's folks split and eventually pulled the boy and his mom out of crisis. He moved them into his big house in Carmel and treated Anthony like he was his own son. Better still, Big Larry had a rep around town. He owned a thriving waste management firm and was said to have had connections.

[Anthony]

I mean, if you ask the district attorney, he's probably gonna tell you he's a mobster, but he's just a really good hearted person in the garbage business.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Big Larry had tried to steer Anthony straight when he dropped out of school at 16. He had also hired him a lawyer for his earlier scrapes. So naturally, Anthony phoned him after the PCP bust.

[Anthony]

I called Big Larry and I'm like, larry, you know, I was begging Larry, help me out. And Larry's like, you need to sit there. And then eventually.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

But after this bust, no. So Anthony would have to gut it out, sweating two years of dope through his pores, but detoxing cold turkey in a basement cell with the least of his worries. The real terror was waiting upstairs.

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[Anthony]

The jail itself is connected to the sheriff's office. The building is one. So it's a pipeline of information, whatever they want.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Anthony had been to lock up before and had a sense of how the place functioned. Whenever the sheriff's detectives wanted intel, they'd call down and say, send the inmate

[Anthony]

up and they get them. People that are going are either under interrogation or the rats, and they're going to give some information.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

And so, like the morning after Anthony's arrest, the guard sent him upstairs, still wasted from the night before. He sat with two detectives in an interrogation room. They started off asking him who he hung with. Local folks who popped up on their radar. And then they suddenly switched, started asking about Joseph Wright. Anthony flinched. He'd been popped for possession. What did that have to do with a dead girl?

[Anthony]

Did you see the girl? Yeah, I saw her walk around a few times. We knew the girl. We knew a little bit about her family life. We knew she wandered a lot.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

This went on for a while, to no effect. When those cops gave up, in came the heavy hitters.

[Anthony]

There was Castaldo, Pat Castaldo, the Elvis

[Interviewer/Investigator]

impersonator with a pompadour hairdo. As the cop who'd investigated Josette's disappearance, he'd been named lead detective in her murder, there was Bill Quick. Quick like. Castaldo was a veteran detective at the Putnam Sheriff's office. But neither of them had run a homicide before. And once Josette's body was found, they were under fierce pressure to get a result.

[Anthony]

They were getting aggressive, and they were trying to be like, we know you know, something that was accusatory and raised voices. And then one cop would go out, and then we'd have the another cop come in and be like, you should just tell him a little bit better. What more, you know. And he would be more nicer. So the good cop, bad cop was a real thing.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

According to Anthony, one of the cops playing bad cop was a dinosaur named Don Kalarney.

[Anthony]

You know, when they say you age, everything gets bigger. Well, that really happened to this guy. I'm, I'm sitting across from Don Killarney, and I'm like, listen, I, I don't like this. I plead the Fifth. I, I, I, I want my lawyer. He's like, fuck you. Fuck the Fifth and your lawyer. We have a murder case here. And he was like, big, with his hands were out and, you know, all ears, all nose, all forehead.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

They interrogated Anthony for hours. Week or so later, Anthony was driven to neighboring Brewster, where he was arraigned on the felony drug count. On their way back to lockup, the detective at the wheel turned to him.

[Anthony]

Michael Ball drove me back from the felony hearing in Brewster, and he put me in the front seat, and I didn't have no handcuffs on, right? He says, see how easy you're sitting there? It's gonna be really easy for you. We got this investigation with this little girl. I know you're involved with all these drugs. Like, we know you're doing the pcp. We know you know everybody. We know you know something.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

And then according to Anthony, Ballstown shifted. We could cut you a deal, he said. Give you witness protection, pay your way

[Anthony]

to college, he says, or you know what I can do? I can take you over to Fields Lane right now and blow your head off.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Over the course of the next week, says Anthony, he was hauled into interrogation rooms half a dozen times. One of those sessions, he agreed to a polygraph test.

[Anthony]

I sit down into this chair, and I remember notice I looked at the machine. The machine said 1969. And even in 95, I'm like, it looks like an earthquake machine, right? Rota dials. And then he puts like, you know, when they do the oxygen for you, he puts one on my pinky. And then he puts a blood pressure cuff on me. And he's got three cards and he pulls one card out. He's like, one's going to be a lie, but you just say yes to everything. So he's like, here, does this card have a blue dot? Yes. Does this car have a red dot? Yes. Does this card have a yellow dot? Yes. And one of the cards dot different. Next thing I know, my lawyer literally breaks through the door. And he had like a red eye from, I don't know, he must have got hit with something. So one eye was completely red. He's got like this long duster and he just looked like a hero in the frickin wind. And he says, you gotta get my playing off this thing. You got to come with me. You got to get out of here.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

That lawyer, Jim Reeds, had helped him out of scrapes in the past. To this day, though, Anthony has no idea how Reets knew about the polygraph test.

[Anthony]

I'm like, jim, what do you. What's going on? He's like, dude, we're gonna make you confess.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

The guards brought Anthony back to his cell the first chance he got. He called home in a panic.

[Anthony]

I was yelling with Larry on the phone. I think they're gonna charge me with murder. You gotta get me out of here.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

This time, Larry heard him out. He helped Anthony make bail. But if Anthony thought that his nightmare was over, well, he didn't know those Putnam county detectives.

[Anthony]

Foreign.

[Amy Ehrick]

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[Capella University Announcer]

You've never been one to settle, stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner, energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now. Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University. What can't you do? Visit Capella. Edu to learn more.

[Narrator/Host]

If you're seeking to try to understand the forensic science behind these cases that we hear about in the news, body bags is where you need to turn. There's no flaw. We do A deep dive into the forensics. Listen to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan and start listening.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

By January of 96, Anthony was out of jail, back home with his mom and stepdad. He was pulling regular shifts for Big Larry, who was trying to keep his problem stepchild busy.

[Anthony]

Larry's like, you should go hang on the truck. So now I'm working in the garbage business. I love the garbage business. You were hanging the truck and you throw it, hair in your wind. All these, you know, these women, these old ladies coming out with sandwiches and foil and old cake that tastes like asparagus. And, you know, all the. All the delis would be giving me sandwiches, bars and hot wings. And it was really the time of my life.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Alas, when he wasn't hauling garbage, he was getting up to trouble, partying with his crew like nothing had happened.

[Anthony]

When I came home, the next thing was Neglia.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

That's Big Dom Neglia, the guy behind the wheel the night the three of them got pinned for possession. Anthony wasn't seeing much of Andy those days, but Big Dom was right there for him.

[Anthony]

So, like, he was picking me up. We would hang out sometimes. We'd go to Newburgh, we would go to New York City, we would drive back and, you know, sometimes we just go get pot and we'd hang out. And one day we were in Danbury, and he said something about Susan Wright.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Wait a second. Susan Wright? As in Josette's mom? Anthony knew her from when he'd partied at the Wright house with Josette's older sister. But Dom. Dom didn't grow up in Carmel.

[Anthony]

That didn't make me feel good because why does he even know this person's name? And I looked at him funny, and it felt like I was being recorded

[Interviewer/Investigator]

sitting in that car. Anthony flashed to the night they were all arrested for pcp, something that Dom did that night as they were driving home. That had never made sense to him.

[Anthony]

Dominic does something really, really, really, really weird. He's like, I gotta call my grandmother. He's living with his grandmother. At the time, it's somewhere between three, four, maybe a.m. it was just like, why are you calling your grandma this late? She's probably asleep.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

But Anthony was half asleep himself. Andy was zonked in the back seat. So Dom pulled over and made his phone call.

[Anthony]

After Don made the phone call, it was all back roads. I'm like, we gotta be really safe. So we're driving behind the hospital and we're using all these back ways and shit and that's when we get pulled over.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

It came back to him. Now, Dom got into a separate cop car that night. What happened in that car? And why'd they let Dom go home after they booked him and Andy for possession? Was Dom the reason those cops grilled him about Josette? Threaten to kill him if he didn't come clean? Hell, was Dom still working with the Putnam cops to pin the murder of a 12 year old on him? Anthony snapped back to the present. He told Dom to pull over, got out of the car.

[Anthony]

Yeah, I slammed the door on him. I slammed the door in his face and I called him a rat.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

For Anthony, things took a turn after that night in Big Dom's car. He'd started sniffing coke at all night raves. Now he sniffed or smoked it whenever. And that habit fed his mounting paranoia. After four or five months of bad choices and daily drug use, Anthony felt his life spinning out.

[Anthony]

When you do cocaine for a long period of time, it starts to wear on you. My mind was kind of changing. Like the street life. This is all like starting to stress me out.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

And so In June of 96, Anthony decided to make a change. He was on parole at the time and figured the smart thing to do was just go back to jail, violate parole by failing a drug test, and then use the time in lockup to hit reset. He was relieved, even excited about the prospect.

[Anthony]

I'm actually feeling like I'm gonna make a change in my life. You know, Big Larry's trying to push me off into like college direction or working for. So I'm like, this is a nice reset for me. Be out fresh for the summer, my job back. So I'm like, I'm gonna head in and I'm gonna come out fresher than ever. My life is gonna be freaking beautiful.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

So he went back to jail with his chin up high for a 20 day stint in county.

[Anthony]

I'm on day 10, 11, 12. There's no TVs down there, right on the 14th day was July 1, 1996. I get called the booking. I go up the booking. They said, BCI wants to see you. Bci? Bureau of Criminal Investigations. As this whole group of jerk offs, I'm like, I got nothing to say. Send me back to my son. I just want to go to my cell. Oh, you could tell them that. So Michael Ball comes in.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

And Mike Ball was the detective who'd driven Anthony to court and who, according to Anthony, threatened To shoot him on Fields Lane if he didn't help him out regarding Josette's murder.

[Anthony]

And he walks up to me and he's cleanly shaven, like red face, like he was in that sink. His suit, his hair, everything was perfect. He puts these black handcuffs on in front of me.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Anthony had no clue what the cuffs were for. And Ball didn't bother to say. He just steered Anthony toward the back door. Through the window, Anthony sees a mob gathered in the parking lot.

[Anthony]

I see a gamut of 25, 30 reporters, TV cameras. There was NBC, ABC, CNN, whatever, the WB, the Fox, the UPN. Everybody was there. They got all these satellite dishes. And it was like an armada of vans, news vans.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Anthony remembers Ball turning to him and saying, don't I look pretty? Then he grabbed the cross that Anthony wore around his neck, his cross.

[Anthony]

He takes the cross and tucks it into my chest. And he sees all of them. They're here for you. When I got to the other side, I popped the chain back out because fuck you.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Seconds later, Anthony was swarmed by reporters and cameramen shouting questions about Josette Wright. And there in that scrum, it hit him full force. He was being charged with the murder of a 12 year old girl.

[Anthony]

And they said, how do you feel? I said, I'm not guilty. I'll take it to the grave.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Anthony stumbles through the mob of cameras. Ball put him into a police car for the drive to Brewster, where he'd be arraigned for the murder of Josette Wright. And then he saw Andy in a second cruiser. That's when Anthony realized they were charging him too. When they reached the Brewster courthouse, the scene outside was bedlam. Anthony recognized some of the people thronging the courthouse steps. Big Larry was there, Andy's father too. And then he saw Susan Wright, Josette's mom.

[Anthony]

She's all freaking angry. She looks like the Sea Hag from Popeye. They get me in front of the judge and this place is packed. This is a misdemeanor town justice court. And it's like people are literally hanging off the rafters. And I'm in front of the judge. The judge is like, how do you plead? I said, I don't know what to do. I said, I don't make any plea. I'm not saying nothing. You know, he's asking me to plead guilty without a lawyer. I think that's wrong. But, you know, this is heinous. I hold you without bail. So I get back in the car, I get back brought to the jail. I'M now charged with rape in the first degree, murder in the second degree of a a child, a 12 year old girl.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

Back at the jailhouse, one of the guards took pity on him, brought him outside for a smoke. Anthony paced the jail yard, replaying out loud the question shouted at him by reporters.

[Anthony]

How do you. How do you feel they ain't charged with rape and murder? How do you feel about Andrew Krivac ratting you out?

[Interviewer/Investigator]

No, it wasn't just Dom who turned on him. It was his best friend, his brother standing there and smoking with the co. Anthony muttered something to himself.

[Anthony]

Andy's the one that's going to put this on me. Andrew Kac ratted me out.

[Interviewer/Investigator]

The Devil's Quarry is a production of Lava for Good in association with Rolling Stone Films and Signal Company Number One. I'm your creator and host, Paul Solotarov. Executive producers are Jason Flom, Jeff Kempler, Kevin Walter and Gilbert King from Rolling Stone Films. Our executive producers are Alexandra Dale and Sean Woods. Our producers are Kara Kornhaber, Hannah Beale, Jackie Pauley, Austin Smith and Kathleen Horan. Our editor is Joel Lovell. Fact checking by Lucy Croning. Our sound designer is Brit Spangler and our engineer is Austin Smith. Additional reporting by Kathleen Horan. Original music arranged and produced by Alexis Cuadrado at the Plaza Rojas Studio. Head of marketing and operations Jeff Kleiber Publicist Nathaniel Baruch Art director Andrew Nelson Social media manager Sarah Gibbons Legal review provided by Clarice Law and Gibson Dunn. Our theme song, the One who's Holding the Stars, is performed by Alexis Cuadrado at the Plaza Rojas Studio. Vocals by Rob Reddy of Californicorns written by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick at the Florida Department of Corrections Hardy Correctional Facility. Sam.

[Anthony]

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[Narrator/Host]

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[Anthony]

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[Narrator/Host]

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[Anthony]

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[Anthony]

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