The Murder of Josette Wright: Her Sister Speaks Out Against Bone Valley: Part One

Summary

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Murder Sheet: The Murder of Josette Wright – Her Sister Speaks Out Against Bone Valley (Part One)

Podcast: Murder Sheet
Hosts: Áine Cain & Kevin Greenlee
Guest: Shelly Wright (sister of Josette Wright)
Date: June 10, 2026

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Overview

This episode focuses on the 1994 murder of 12-year-old Josette Wright. Her sister, Shelly Wright, joins journalists Áine Cain and attorney Kevin Greenlee to share deeply personal insights into Josette’s life and to rebut claims made during the fifth season of the true crime podcast Bone Valley, which recently began covering Josette’s case. Shelly addresses inaccuracies and omissions in the Bone Valley coverage, particularly the lack of family involvement and the podcast's framing of her sister's story and its suspects.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introduction & Context of the Case

• Josette Wright was 12 years old when she vanished from Carmel, NY on October 3, 1994. Her remains were found over a year later on Thanksgiving Day 1995, the victim of a violent, sexually motivated murder. (04:43)
• Two local men, Anthony Depippo and Andrew Krivak, were convicted in 1997, but both were later retried and acquitted by 2023. (02:34–03:11)
• The Bone Valley podcast (by Lava for Good) recently began investigating the case, promoting the view that the two originally convicted men are innocent. Shelly Wright strongly disputes this framing. (09:10)

2. Bone Valley's Approach and Family Exclusion

• Shelly confirms no one from her family was contacted to participate, despite being discussed in the podcast. She finds this approach one-sided and unfair, especially since statements made about her and her family are negative and go unchallenged. (07:30)
  • “There’s always two sides to the story, not one that tells the truth.” – Shelly Wright (07:53)
• Áine Cain notes that even back in journalist Paul Solotaroff’s Rolling Stone coverage, family interaction was limited to a brief call with Shelly's mother, and the podcast did not note any family refusal to speak. (08:31)

3. Josette Wright – The Person and Family Life

• Shelly warmly remembers Josette’s sense of humor, maturity, and her aspirations to teach and start a family. (10:34)
  • “She was pretty funny. She was smart. She was very happy-go-lucky ... she really aspired, whether or not to be a teacher. And she wanted to have kids.” (10:34)
• Shelly describes the family’s close but typical upbringing in Carmel. Their mother worked hard, sometimes juggling two jobs to provide for her daughters. (11:54–13:31)

4. Refuting Claims Made in Bone Valley

“Rachel” and Her Claims

• “Rachel,” an anonymous source in Bone Valley, is not considered credible by Shelly or her sister Chloe; she did not have a close relationship with Josette or spend much time in their home. (14:07)
• “I've never seen her with Josette. I never saw her at our homes. I don't think that's considered a close friend in my...world.” (15:04)
• The claim that Josette asked to “run away” and move in with Rachel’s family is described as “not Josette at all.” (20:28)

Home Environment & “Party House” Assertions

• Shelly refutes Bone Valley’s depiction of the Wright home as a party house filled with substance-abusing adults and neglectful guardianship.
  • “My mom doesn't drink any alcohol. That's her own personal choice.” (24:08)
  • “If we had some wild parties, the cops would be called ... we were not the known one [for parties].” (25:45)
• Teenage smoking and occasional gatherings were acknowledged, but the idea of a recklessly permissive household is dismissed, emphasizing normalcy and parental oversight given the era and setting.

"Wandering the Streets" & Social Life

• Claims that Josette was seen walking alone at odd hours are rejected as implausible.
  • “If Josette was 10, 11 or even 12 ... wandering the town ... in the middle of the night ... [police] would have picked her up.” (29:55)
• Shelly describes Josette as popular, with a large circle of friends and strong bonds within the family. (22:14)
  • “She had a list of, I believe, almost 300 names of her friends that the police had to call individually ... she had five of her friends claiming that they were her best friends.” (22:19)

5. Family & Personal Dynamics

• Shelly details birth order, family closeness, and their mother’s work ethic. (11:29–13:31)
• She insists there was no significant conflict in the house, despite normal sibling dynamics. (20:44–21:42)
• Shelly recounts the day Josette disappeared, correcting Bone Valley’s narrative about arguments or mistreatment. (34:54–36:27)
  • “There was no fight. It was just more like, don't come out this door, go out the other door ... So that's why Josette went out the front door.” (34:54)
• Regarding the moment Josette left and said “goodbye” – Shelly confirms it, felt it was odd, and describes her confusion and subsequent search. (37:06–39:07)

6. The Aftermath: Grief, Judgment & Community Response

• The Wright family endured 13 months of not knowing what happened to Josette, suffering guilt, community scrutiny, and unhelpful speculation. (41:21–43:24)
  • “There's no book on what to do when your sister goes missing ... people start to criticize you” (41:21)
• The family never believed Josette was a runaway; her belongings were all left behind. (43:36)
• Shelly describes the devastating discovery of Josette’s remains on Thanksgiving, the police notification, and the family’s emotional devastation. (47:05)
  • “When something traumatic happens, everything goes in slow motion. ... They knocked on the door ... and [told] us that they found Josette and she was deceased ... all hell broke loose.” (47:05–48:14)

7. Law Enforcement Interaction

• Sheriffs' detectives Castaldo and Quick kept the family informed once it became a homicide case, showing them evidence and asking them to identify jewelry. (50:00–51:17)
• Shelly emphasizes wanting the actual perpetrators to be caught—not scapegoats. (51:20)
  • “You want to get the right people convicted, tried, and put away for life.” (51:20)

8. Perspective on the Convicted Men & Evidence

• Shelly disputes Bone Valley’s assertion of the men’s innocence, citing evidence such as Josette’s jewelry found in the van and admissions from the accused themselves. (09:30–10:10)
  • “There is overwhelming evidence to their guilt, both of them, Andy and Anthony, and the evidence is still there.” (09:30)
• She strongly contests depictions of Anthony Depippo as “teddy bearish.”
  • “[That’s] very inaccurate. He is 6 foot 8 ... he looked like a serial killer gone wild.” (52:07)

9. Rumors, Suspects, & Community Narratives

• Family first heard rumors about suspects from the town; there was no close relationship with the men ultimately charged with Josette's murder. (45:34–46:43)
• Shelly disputes claims that Josette frequently interacted with or knew the accused, saying the story about them offering her a ride was based on their own questionable testimony. (54:26–55:38)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Podcast Ethics:
  “They didn’t want to have the other side say the real truth. ... it’s victim blaming.” – Shelly Wright (32:04)

• About Josette’s Character:
  “She loved them. ... So many pictures [of] Josette with our two little cousins. ... It was really telling how...maternal...she was and how real she was as a person.” (44:15–45:13)

• On Emotional Impact:
  “When something traumatic happens, everything goes in slow motion. ... and [they] told us that they found Josette and she was deceased ... all hell broke loose.” (47:05–48:14)

• On Narrative Control:
  "I believe that the other side is doing that because it makes them look good. ... It's victim blaming. It's blaming everyone but themselves for what they did." (31:07–32:22)

• On Wanting Justice:
  “You want them in jail. You don't want the wrong person going out and doing this to someone else's family member, which would be horrific on me, to want justice for the wrong person." (51:20)

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |-----------|-------------| | 03:30 | Introduction of Bone Valley’s coverage & approach | | 04:19 | Family's exclusion from Bone Valley | | 06:12 | Shelly joins the interview | | 09:30 | Bone Valley’s claim of the suspects’ innocence disputed by Shelly | | 10:34 | Shelly’s memories of Josette | | 13:38 | Discussion of Bone Valley's narrative about their mother | | 15:04 | Shelly on Rachel’s lack of credibility | | 20:28 | Shelly rejects notion that Josette wanted to leave home | | 24:08 | Refuting the “party house” allegations | | 29:55 | Claims Josette “wandered the streets at all hours” refuted | | 34:54 | The day Josette disappeared—Shelly’s account | | 41:21 | 13 months of “not knowing” and grief/judgment | | 47:05 | Discovery of Josette’s remains on Thanksgiving | | 51:20 | On wanting the real perpetrator, not just anyone, convicted | | 52:07 | Depippo’s alleged “teddy bear” image refuted | | 54:26 | How Josette encountered the accused—what the confessions actually say |

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Tone & Language

The tone is respectful, empathetic, and rigorously factual, balancing Shelly’s firsthand emotional narrative with the hosts’ probing but sensitive questions. Shelly is candid, forthright, and at times raw; the hosts maintain supportive, clear, and thorough journalism throughout.

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Summary

This episode gives voice to Josette Wright’s family—left out of prior high-profile media coverage—and offers a powerful counternarrative to the Bone Valley podcast and similar “wrongful conviction” media. Key claims about the family’s household, Josette’s behavior, suspects’ connections, and the legal process are corrected or challenged by Shelly, who insists on centering her sister and the truth over sensationalism or exoneration campaigns. Shelly’s vivid recollections and rebuttals ensure Josette is remembered not merely as a case, but as a beloved daughter and sister cruelly taken too soon.

To Be Continued in Part Two.

Transcript

[Shelly Wright]

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[Kevin Greenlee]

I'm Kevin and today we will talk with the sister of a murdered girl who just had her loved one's case covered on the season of Bone Valley, which started today.

[Anya Cain]

Content Warning this episode contains discussion of the rape and murder of a young girl.

[Kevin Greenlee]

On October 3, 1994, 12 year old Josette Wright vanished. She was a little girl living in Carmel, New York in the Empire State's Putnam County. Putnam county is located in New York's Hudson Valley. Josette went out after school one afternoon and never returned home.

[Anya Cain]

For months, Josette's mother, Susan and sisters Shelly and Chloe endured the hell of not knowing where she was, whether she was alive or dead.

[Kevin Greenlee]

On Thanksgiving Day of 1995, the Wright family received two devastating news Josette was dead. Hunters had discovered her skeletal remains. The evidence strongly indicated a violent death, a sexually motivated murder.

[Anya Cain]

Two local drug dealers, Anthony Depo and Andrew Krivack were arrested and charged with Josette's rape and murder. They were first convicted of those crimes in 1997.

[Kevin Greenlee]

In 2012, Depipo received a new trial because his attorney had failed to disclose that he had previously represented an alternate suspect named Howard Gombert. Dipipo was again convicted after a jailhouse snitch came forward and claimed Gompert had made incriminating statements. Both Depipo and Krivac ultimately received new trials. In 2016, Depipo was acquitted. In 2023, Krivock was acquitted.

[Anya Cain]

Now Josette's case is being covered on the fifth season of Bone Valley. The show is perhaps best known for covering the murder of Michelle Scofield and the conviction of her husband, Leo Schofield. Bone Valley is a podcast from the network Lava for Good. That network also runs the Wrongful Conviction podcast.

[Kevin Greenlee]

They're calling this season Bone the Devil's quarry. The first two episodes actually came out today, June 10, 2026. This season, the writer and host of the show is Paul Solotarov. Lava for Good describes him as a longtime contributing editor at Rolling Stone.

[Anya Cain]

Magaz Solotarov also covered the murder of Josette wright in a August 22, 2021 feature story for the magazine. The Lava for Good website claims he's been working on reporting this case for five years.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Well before we knew about Bone Valley's latest season, we had been in touch with Shelly, Josette's oldest sister. We talked to her about her sister's case. We intended to cover it. When we learned about the Bone Valley episodes, we listened to them. We were shocked by some of the claims they made and by some of the choices they made with their coverage.

[Anya Cain]

Namely, Bone Valley did not include any members of Josette's family in their show. We have found that they have also omitted a lot of information. So we invited Shelly on the murder sheet to share her side of it and address some of the claims made. In talking to Shelly. We will take you through the ins and outs of Josette's case, through the evidence and through the trials. Some of these things did not come up in Bone Valley's coverage.

[Kevin Greenlee]

More importantly, we will reframe this story as Josette's. She, after all, is the victim. She was 12 years old when she was raped and murdered. Her life was taken away from her far too soon. She deserves to be remembered. We want you to know who she was as she is remembered by someone who loved her dearly, her older sister.

[Anya Cain]

My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist and I'm Kevin Greenlee.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I'm an attorney.

[Anya Cain]

And this is the Murder Sheet.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases.

[Anya Cain]

We're the Murder Sheet.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And this is the murder of Josette Wright. Her sister speaks out against bone Valley Part 1. It. Foreign.

[Anya Cain]

First of all, Shelly, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

[Shelly Wright]

I do too. Thank you, Anya and Kevin, I appreciate it too.

[Anya Cain]

Can we just talk about why we're talking to you today? What. What is going on? Maybe tell us about your connection to a case that was recently featured on Season 5 of Bone Valley.

[Shelly Wright]

The case is on my sister, Josette Wright, who was brutally raped and murdered in 1994. Her body, her remains were found in 1995, 13 months later. And this is all about her. But Bone Valley is really putting all the emphasis on her killers.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Did the creators of Bone Valley, as far as you know, did they reach out to you or.

[Shelly Wright]

No, they did not. They didn't reach out to myself.

[Anya Cain]

And so you all did not participate in this in any way, did you?

[Shelly Wright]

Not at all.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And one thing about that is interesting is that when people listen to this Bone Valley show, there are some things said about your family, including you by name, that aren't very positive. And how do you feel about them putting things like that out there without giving anyone from your family a chance to rebut it or respond to it?

[Shelly Wright]

Well, I feel that there's going to be a podcast that goes and does a deep dive on a very, very sensitive topic about a 12 year old girl's murder. My sister. And they want to have both sides represented. They did a poor job because as far as I know, that's only one side. And it's. There's always two sides to the story, not one that tells the truth.

[Anya Cain]

This whole series of Bone Valley this season is hosted and seemingly written by a writer named Paul Solotarov, who is with Rolling Stone. Now, my understanding from reading his previous Rolling Stone article on your sister's case is that he had previous interaction with your mother. Is that correct?

[Shelly Wright]

Yes. He had previously contacted my mother beforehand, called her at her residence.

[Anya Cain]

There was some interaction. Is this true between your mom and maybe someone working for the podcast, but no one really remembers who that person was or what that entailed.

[Shelly Wright]

Correct.

[Anya Cain]

So there's no participation, though. I mean, having listened to these episodes ourselves, like you guys are not at all in it. There's no statement from you and there's not even any acknowledgment that There was an attempt to get your side of it and that you declined to comment. So I think. Does that kind of spell it out?

[Shelly Wright]

Yes, that's actually exactly what it is. It's basically an anonymous source named Rachel giving their account of what they believe happened. And they are not a family member. They were not the accused. So I don't know why their account is taking so heavily, and I don't know why it can't be disputed. It should be.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Before we get too much further, the overriding thesis, for lack of a better word of this season of Bone Valley, is that the two men who were convicted of your sister's rape and murder are innocent and the crime was actually done by someone else. Do you agree with that assessment?

[Shelly Wright]

I 100% do not agree with that assessment at all. There is overwhelming evidence to their guilt, both of them, Andy and Anthony, and the evidence is still there. Witness testimony, the jewelry found in the killer's van, and they can't dispute that it's there.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And when you talk about jewelry found in the van, this is jewelry belonging to your sister that was found in the van where she was said to have been attacked by these two men. And if they didn't commit that crime, it's difficult to understand how that jewelry got in the van. Is that correct?

[Shelly Wright]

That is correct. That's exactly it. It would be very, very hard to. To account for her jewelry being in the van if she's never been in the van.

[Anya Cain]

Let's go into the person who really should be the center of this discussion and any discussion about this case, because it is her case. It is the case of Josette Wright. Can you tell us about Gisette? What was she like? Just like. Tell us about her personality before any of this awful stuff happened.

[Shelly Wright]

My sister Josette, as she's the youngest of three girls, and I say was, but she really is, because in theory, she should still be here. But they. She's been taken out at a young age. She was pretty funny. She was smart. She was very happy. Go lucky. And that's a lot of. A lot of that's not been brought out because the trial has not been about her or who she was or her personality or who she was like as a person. And she really aspired, whether or not to be a teacher. And she wanted to have kids. She wanted to start a family. And at her age, I thought that was pretty interesting because when I was 12 years old, I did not have those aspirations. So it was interesting that she looked so far down the future to what her life would and could be like for herself.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, it shows a maturity. I'm wondering, can you tell me. So she's the youngest. Where do you fall in the birth order and what was the age range of you and your sisters?

[Shelly Wright]

Oh, I'm the oldest of three. Three of the three of us. And my sister Chloe is 16 months younger than myself. And so Josette is the youngest by five years younger than myself and four years younger than Chloe. So she was the baby of the family.

[Anya Cain]

In terms of your upbringing, can you tell us about what was it like growing up in your family? Tell us about your family as a whole.

[Shelly Wright]

My sisters and I were close because my parents divorced when we were young. We moved to Carmel, New York when I was probably around 6 years old. Josette was a baby, so she didn't really get to know my dad very much. And we great were raised in Carmel, New York because it's a relatively safe place. Good schools, blue ribbon schools and a good, you know, just basically a well rounded place to live. And we did go swimming every single summer. I had a country club in Kent, New York. And we just, you know, as younger kids we just played outside and did all the things that kid used to do. Ride their bikes, learn to swim, go to the neighbors, play till it was dark out. And that's kind of our life. It was kind of simple and nothing spectacular, nothing crazy.

[Anya Cain]

So with your mom, we. One thing that the episodes assert in Bone Valley is that she was working two jobs to support you all. Is that accurate? And can you tell us about her career and sort of what she's like?

[Shelly Wright]

Yeah, she worked at the schools and the food services. She worked there full time. And after school she did have a job near the DMV in Brewster at a manufacturing company. So she worked there most evenings for a couple of hours until she came home. So she would come home around 6pm which is not really uncommon because a lot of parents work like they. A lot of people worked in the city and they would come home and commute, that kind of thing. So she did have two jobs. Not at all times, but most of

[Anya Cain]

the time it sounds like she was a hard worker to support her family.

[Shelly Wright]

Is that what you're saying? Yes, yes, that's a very fair statement. She was definitely a hard worker and didn't shy away from doing what she needed to do to raise us.

[Anya Cain]

Now we get to maybe more into Bone Valley.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah, they have a person on the show who they don't name. They call her Rachel. And you've told Us. You're pretty sure who that is?

[Shelly Wright]

I am.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Okay. We're not going to name her because she claims to have been a victim of sexual assault, and so we're not going to name her. But can you tell us about Rachel and what sort of a person she is and if you find her to be credible?

[Shelly Wright]

I don't believe she's a credible person in any sense of the word. Rachel is the same age as myself, so she would have been also five years older than Josette. She grew up in a household where they moved a lot. Is my understanding she lived in subsidized housing down the street and she didn't stay in the same location. We were there for years in Carmel at her house. She didn't stay at the same place. She was in Brewster. They were in Carmel. They moved to. I believe they moved out of the county into Pauling. They moved all over. So for her to make statements as to my sister's state of mind or who she was as a person, she didn't live there very long.

[Anya Cain]

Do you have a sense of how long she would have lived near you all?

[Shelly Wright]

I would think probably about a year, tops. She didn't really stay there very long.

[Kevin Greenlee]

She made it sound like she had a close relationship with Josette. Does that match what you recall?

[Shelly Wright]

No, my recall is that I've never. I didn't know her. She was in my grade. I've never seen her attend my classes. I've never seen her with Josette. I never saw her at our homes. I don't think that's considered a close friend in my. In my world.

[Anya Cain]

She made all sorts of claims in these episodes that Josette was over at a group home where she was living and. Or girls home or whatever you want to call it. And also over at her mother's apartment when her mother moved into an apartment in Carmel. Can you. Is that something that sounds like Gisette?

[Kevin Greenlee]

Would.

[Anya Cain]

Would she have hung out with this lady? I mean, like, is that something that matches your recollection?

[Shelly Wright]

I don't believe so, because Josette never told me she was going to have. With this anonymous person that I know who she is. I don't believe she really had much of a closeness with her. When she did have her baby as a teenager, Josette did have the baby's picture, but she loved kids, so I wasn't surprised that she had the baby's photo in her room at some point. But as far as that, when she had the baby, she didn't watch the baby. She didn't go to the hospital. She never. I didn't even know the baby's name. So it was just more like, oh, so and so had a baby and this is the picture and I thought, oh, okay. But I don't believe that they were close at all.

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[Shelly Wright]

Yeah.

[Kevin Greenlee]

This person going by the name of Rachel, she even tells the story about when she and her family were moving out of the area. She claims that Josette came over and basically said, take me with you. I want to move with you. People won't even notice I'm gone. Does that sound like the Josette you knew?

[Shelly Wright]

No. Josette came home every night. Josette never expressed to myself or my sister, and I don't believe my mom either, that she wanted to move out of the household.

[Anya Cain]

Were things okay at home? Was Josette getting along with everybody at this time?

[Shelly Wright]

I believe so. She was the youngest and we thought she was babied because as being the youngest of the three girls. And she felt she got kind of like the short end of the stick. But I think that everyone thinks that the young, I'm the oldest. I felt like I had the most responsibility. My middle sister Chloe felt like she was maybe, you know, the middle child. And we, and, and I did agree, Chloe and I did agree because we were close in age, that Josette got a lot more attention than us. But I think it was also given her age that my mom did make sure she got up in the morning, got her onto the bus and that kind of thing. So I don't think so. I don't believe so.

[Anya Cain]

I grew up not too far away from you in a family with four girls. And I can tell you, first of all, you're right, because I'm the oldest, and the oldest does have to do everything. And, you know, but there's always that kind of birth order discussion in general. Did you feel like you had a close relationship with Gisette? Like, if something was really bothering her, would she go to you? Or was she a little bit more secretive than that?

[Shelly Wright]

I don't believe she was that secretive because we were far enough apart in age where we didn't really fight. We didn't fight over anything in common, whereas Chloe and I might use the same hairbrush or wear the same shoes. And Jocelle was just younger enough where we didn't have that conflict or anything that was going to cause a problem for us. So I felt I was pretty close with her, and our bedrooms were right next to each other. So I heard if she was on the phone or talking to somebody or what she was doing or listening to music, I would hear her talking. And, like, I just kind of knew what she was doing when she was around me.

[Anya Cain]

So was Gisette a popular young girl? Was she. Did she have a lot of friends?

[Shelly Wright]

She had a lot of friends. Josette had so many friends that when she initially disappeared, the police took her backpack because she didn't take that with her. And she had a list of, I believe, almost 300 names of her friends that the police had to call individually and see, who are these people and how did they know her and how close were they? So that kind of spoke to how many pages of papers with 300 up to 300 names on it that they had a contact, and they couldn't believe how many friends she had. And, in fact, she had five of her friends claiming that they were her best friends. And I thought that was funny because usually I wipe one or two, but she had five, so they didn't know that the other one was the best friend. So it's kind of interesting. I found that out, like, during the trials that she had many best friends. So I feel.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah, that really says a lot about what kind of a person Josette was. I want to get back to this Rachel person for a second a minute ago. Did I understand you to say that Rachel didn't really spend time at your house?

[Shelly Wright]

She's never been to my house. In fact, I even asked my sister Chloe, I said, has this individual Rachel ever been to her house? She said, no, I don't. I've never seen her there, because she knows who she is. And I said, I've never seen her. I've never known her. I don't even know if she knew exactly where we lived, even though we lived maybe a mile or a mile and a half up the road from her. I don't know if she actually knew where we lived.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And the reason I wanted to clarify that is because on the first episode of season five of Bone Valley, Rachel says your family house was a party house. Adults in the home were drinking. She says it was the house to go to. It was a place where kids went to hang out to get drunk. Does that sound like the house you grew up in?

[Shelly Wright]

I grew up in a house. My mom doesn't drink any alcohol. That's her own personal choice. My sister Chloe would have friends over, have gatherings, but, you know, maybe on a weekend we'd have, like, you know, her, she'd have her friends over because we had an acre of a. Of land. So it wasn't like we. We were in a cramped apartment or some kind of housing like Rachel was in. So I don't know if she was jealous or how she knew about this or just knew that people came to our house like hearsay or hearing other people speak about us, but it was just a regular house we had. We grew up in a hilltop manner. And I. And I think if we had some wild parties, the cops would be called by the neighbors because we had, you know, a working class neighborhood we lived in.

[Anya Cain]

She will be. I don't know if she's claiming this, but the podcast claimed.

[Shelly Wright]

Quote.

[Anya Cain]

I'm going to read the quote.

[Shelly Wright]

Okay.

[Anya Cain]

Quote. The house was the sort of place where the adults often behave like teens instead of authority figures. They partied just as hard as the kids they were raising, shared their beer in Newports with them. So is that something that sounds like the house you grew up in?

[Shelly Wright]

I never smoked, so I know as far as that Freddie might drink beer, but I don't know if he smoked. But I think the. My sister's friends, Chloe's friends did smoke cigarettes because some of them her age, maybe two years older, and they did smoke.

[Anya Cain]

So you're. You're noting that there was some teenage smoking or possibly drinking at times, which is, you know, definitely. Which is. Yeah. Which is hard for the, you know, wow.

[Shelly Wright]

Right.

[Anya Cain]

But at the same time, this, you know, contingent of people calling this like a party house, free for all. You're saying that's not accurate?

[Shelly Wright]

No. In fact, we didn't really party at people's houses. We went into the woods and would party. But if we had a party house, this was not the one because we did not have a lot of money. We Weren't rich where someone's family would leave for the weekend and you go to their house. So we were not the known one. As far as I'm aware, we were not it.

[Anya Cain]

So you mentioned Freddie, and I want to ask about that because that he. He is. Becomes an issue in this podcast as well. Can you tell us about Freddie? Who is he?

[Shelly Wright]

Freddie Moore is someone my mom had dated previously just at disappearing and after he didn't live with us, he lived in Putnam Lake, which is a section of Patterson in New York. And that was. They just dated. So if he did spend like a couple nights a week, he didn't live there. His. His belongings were at his house over there.

[Anya Cain]

So what was he like?

[Shelly Wright]

Freddie was very outgoing. Freddie did. Was a stonemason, so he worked really hard. That's very hard work. He did a little stone wall next to our driveway. So I saw him put that together and that. That was a lot of work. So that's what I know him to be. Was like a hard worker, you know, went did his job, that kind of thing. I didn't, you know, I got along with him pretty well. He was just a little. He was just a little loud for me. But I'm kind of a quieter person, so I'm not drawn to louder people.

[Anya Cain]

They claimed he was doing odd jobs in carpentry. Is that accurate?

[Shelly Wright]

No, he's just stonemason. So as far as I know, he wasn't doing carpentry. I never saw him do anything with fine tuning. He was very good with, like, jackhammering and that kind of thing. So it's more rough, hard labor.

[Anya Cain]

Did he have a criminal record as far as you knew?

[Shelly Wright]

I believe he did, but I'm not really sure what his criminal record, what his charges were. I've never looked it up.

[Anya Cain]

And. And was he a guy who was. Had a lot of tattoos? Was anything like that?

[Shelly Wright]

He had tattoos on his arms, I believe. Yes. On his arms? Like. Yeah, maybe both of his arms, but not covered.

[Anya Cain]

Were you aware of any involvement with him in terms of, like, white supremacy or, like, white supremacist prison gangs or anything like that?

[Shelly Wright]

No, I'm not aware of any gang activity or prison or anything like that.

[Kevin Greenlee]

There was a suggestion on the episode that at one point he may have hit Josette. Is that something that sounds familiar to you?

[Shelly Wright]

No, that doesn't sound familiar to me. I would have known about it. In fact, I think Chloe would have been very upset because she was more protective than I was. She didn't want people to Hurt her younger sister. Yeah.

[Anya Cain]

And, and that's, that's certainly so that incidents like that. Did Josette and Freddie generally get along or was. Was there tension there?

[Shelly Wright]

Oh, they did get along because my mom would often take Josette to Putnam Lake and they would go to his mother's house and she would hang around. There was a neighbor girl next door named Tara and she did hang out with her quite a bit. That was the girl that she was supposed to go see the day she disappeared and she fell asleep. And that's why she didn't end up going there, because Josette couldn't reach her by phone. So she didn't. She abandoned her plans. They did hang out quite a lot, the three of them. She didn't really leave Josette with us. She kind of. If Josette was 11 years old, she didn't want us to have to watch her or make sure she was safe and everything like that. So she would take her along with her, take to dinner or go see Freddie's parents.

[Anya Cain]

One quote that they have in here though, I'm just going to read and this, this will give us a sense like, is this accurate or not? A mile up the hill from Carmel's town square stands the house where Josette lived. On her walk down that hill, she'd passed the girls home on the left, meaning Saint Cabrini. Is that accurate?

[Shelly Wright]

Yes.

[Anya Cain]

Okay, so that location is at least, right?

[Shelly Wright]

What?

[Anya Cain]

Go ahead.

[Kevin Greenlee]

I wanted to ask something else and this is something that in some of our earlier conversations you've mentioned that you feel is strongly is not accurate. There's a line in the show where they say to keep herself busy, Josette wandered the streets. She was constantly seen walking the towns at all hours alone from the age of 10. Would you like to respond to that?

[Shelly Wright]

Oh, I definitely do. That is something that's definitely not accurate. If Josette was 10, 11 or even 12 years old and she was wandering the town of Carmel in the middle of the night or anything past 10pm somebody would have, between the Carmel police or the sheriffs, which were all located right in the town, would have picked her up.

[Anya Cain]

Could you also contextualize, you know, in 1994, is a 10 or 11 year old walking around going to friends houses during the day. That's something that would be seen as especially odd?

[Shelly Wright]

No, not at all. Not, not where we were. No. No one took that as a scary situation could possibly happen or anything that's out of the ordinary.

[Anya Cain]

As far as you knew, was she wandering the streets at night, like early in the Morning or at night all by herself?

[Shelly Wright]

No.

[Anya Cain]

Okay.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You may not have an answer to this, but I'd like to ask. What you're telling us is a lot of the information that is being put out there is not true and that they're saying things about your family and about Josette that are not accurate. Why would you imagine they would be doing something like that?

[Shelly Wright]

I believe that the other side is doing that because it makes them look good. It justifies what they're saying about us, kind of characterizing us in one way and want everyone to see everything in one particular way when that's not really the truth. They weren't able to prove it in court. They. We didn't see her in the middle of night. And in fact, Rachel did testify that at 2 in the morning she would see her walking. And the prosecutor asked her, did you help her? Did you pick her up? Did you take her to the house? And she said no. She said she drove past her. So if she was overly concerned about Josette's well being, she would have picked her up and either called the police. Go on the police station, which was

[Anya Cain]

right there, I will say, like having seen this first episode, like, there is a lot of dehumanizing and frankly derogatory implications that are made about your family, which I think is really odd, given that there didn't seem like there was much of an effort, if any, to get your side of it on the story.

[Shelly Wright]

Right. They didn't want to have the other side say the real truth. They don't want the truth. They just want you to hear their side, their side only. And what. That's just their narrative. It's victim blaming. It's. It's blaming everyone but themselves for what they did.

[Anya Cain]

In terms of October 3, 1994, can you tell us about the day Josette disappeared, your memories of that?

[Shelly Wright]

Yeah. So on October 3rd, it's the day after. It was the day after my mom's birthday. So her birthday was October 2nd. And I had made plans two weeks previous, I believe, with the DMV to get my learner's permit at 17 years old. So my mom was working at the school. I attended the same high school, Carmel High School. And she and I made plans. She was going to take me to the dmv, and she was going. And I took my driving examination. And then she told me that she. The. My mom's place that she worked at, her second job was right. Right behind the dmv. And they said to her they had a cake for her birthday to commemorate her birthday. So she wasn't going to go to her second job, and Josette didn't know that. So when my mom dropped me off at the house and said, I'm going to my second job, tell Josette I'll pick her up later. And Josette Kay off the bus, and I told her that. And she wasn't very happy about that. But she kind of just hung around the house, went down the road, came back, and when she went back down the road, I never saw her again. I never. She went out the front door. I never, ever saw her again. So I thought maybe she went to another friend's house. She wasn't particularly mad. She just seemed annoyed. She tried calling my mom at work. My mom explained the situation, saying they had a cake for her. She felt like she had to go to work, and she did. So it was a change of plans that day. So that's basically why my mom didn't take her to her friend Tara's house in Putnam Lake.

[Anya Cain]

I want to run by the quote that this podcast includes about describing the circumstances and if you could kind of address some of this or talk about what's accurate or what isn't. October 3, 1994. It was the last day Josette was seen in Carmel. She stepped off a school bus in front of her small ranch house at 3 o' clock that afternoon. The house, per usual, was packed with teens. Josette's two older sisters, their friends. Putnam detectives would later interview those teens. One said Josette had argued with her sister Chloe and tried to mix in with her clique, but the older girls would have none of it. That day, nasty words were exchanged, according to those teens. Josette called her mom, saying she was going over to a friend's house. Then she went to the basement and made a second call. She briefly left the house and stood on the porch wearing her thin brown jacket. When no one showed up, she went back in the house. Is there anything to that?

[Shelly Wright]

So I wasn't hanging out with Chloe at all. Chloe had her friend Lisa, she had her friend Tom, and she had her friend Bob over. So those were the teenagers. There was three additional teenagers in addition to myself and my sister Chloe and Josette, you know, showed up. But my sister said, just go out the front door, don't come out this door, because her friends were hanging out in the back patio. There was no fight. It was just more like, don't come out this door, go out the other door. So that's why Josette went out the front door. We had Three doors to her house. So she did make the phone call. She did, but she wasn't waiting for my mom. I'd already told her she wasn't coming until probably 5:30 or 6. So she wasn't wait. She wasn't waiting for my mom because she knew she wasn't going to be there yet.

[Anya Cain]

Is it possible. I'm trying to give the benefit of the doubt here. Is it possible that one of the witness statements is in the sheriff's report that we don't have, that it made it out more like, oh, they seem to be fighting. I mean, I'm just trying to think of, like how they kind of come to this versus your recollection.

[Shelly Wright]

Right. Well, they took all our statements, so mine was taken. My sister and I believe the other three people were taken. I don't know what statements they gave to the sheriff's department, so if they said that, that would be their interpretation. But yes, Chloe did not want Josette hanging out with her because she was hanging out with her friends and they were, to be fair, they were 16, 17, 18 years old and she's 12. So it kind of didn't make sense that she was hanging out with them. If they started cursing or saying something crazy, she'd be sitting there listening, so. And 12 year olds are kind of like sponges, so.

[Anya Cain]

So next I'm going to read to you another part. This is where they kind of talk about your experience and I wonder if you could do the same and just kind of give us what happened and how accurate or inaccurate or shaded this version of events is that went into this Bone Valley podcast. Okay, is what they said. Quote there she did a very odd thing. She, meaning Gisette, went up to her sister Shelly, stood in front of her staring, then said goodbye and left. At 3:45 she went walking down the hill, headed toward the shops downtown. That night, when she didn't come home for dinner. Let's just stop there. So this she stares at you and says goodbye. Is that accurate?

[Shelly Wright]

She did. That's exactly what I said, yeah.

[Anya Cain]

Did it strike you as particularly odd to say goodbye before leaving?

[Shelly Wright]

Yeah, because I knew she was coming back. So I thought, why is she saying bye right now when she knows my mom's going to come home and she's going to take to her friend's house? So I thought, is she just saying bye in case I'm not here when she comes back? I had been in the kitchen the whole time, so I was just excited. I passed my learner's permit and I was going to tell everyone. Friends. So, yeah, I did. That's the only thing that surprised me was that I knew she was going to go out the front door. Probably because Chloe didn't want her in the back. In the back. And it was more the direct route. So you could go to the road. So. Because she was cutting across the lawn to go to. Down the. Down the road. Yeah. I was just surprised if she was saying bye when she was supposed to come back.

[Anya Cain]

So in terms of just. I'm sorry, just so I can follow. Just so she. You thought she was coming back? Like you thought she was gonna wait for your mom to drive her to her friend's house or you thought she was gonna go to the friends and then come back?

[Kevin Greenlee]

What?

[Anya Cain]

Which one?

[Shelly Wright]

I thought she was gonna wait for my mom. And then she said she was gonna go down the street. And I said, why don't you just wait for mom? And she said, no, I'll come back. And she said, bye. And I thought, why did she say bye to me? She's gonna. She's gonna come back in like 20 minutes because it wasn't that far down the road. It's just downhill. She said, bye, and that was it. And I thought, okay, maybe my mom came home and my mom picked her up on. You know, saw her on the way home. And I thought, no, my mom's not home yet. And then my mom did come home. I said, jill set went down the road, didn't come back. And we didn't really know where she was. And she. My mom called her friend in Putnam Lake who didn't answer the phone because she fell asleep. So then we were kind of wondering, where was she? Where. Where did she go? Mom went down the road and couldn't find her down Don't. Where the shops were. And she didn't see her. And then we thought, well, maybe she's at her friends. So my mom started calling her friends later on after she didn't say anything about. She didn't call us to let us know where she was. So my mom just started making phone calls and no one knew where she was.

[Anya Cain]

I'm just so sorry your family went through this. I. You know, to continue on with their quote, quote. At 3:45, she went walking down the hill, headed toward the shops downtown. That night, when she didn't come home for dinner, her mom, Susan, called around to Josette's friends and knocked on the doors of their houses. None of them had seen her since school let out. So Susan asked her daughters if she should call the cops. Her oldest girl, Shelley, nix the idea saying that cops do nothing till 48 hours passed. Nonetheless, Susan called the next morning when there was still no sign of Gisette.

[Shelly Wright]

Can you talk about that right now? When I was younger, I was 17 at the time when Josette disappeared, I had always thought that you had to wait unless there was some kind of situation that was urgent and we weren't really sure where she was. So my mom is the adult in the situation. If she wanted to call the police, she could have, but I don't know that they would have been alarmed at 8 o', clock, 8:30 at night, thinking, well, maybe she's still at her friend's house. You know, it wasn't, it was getting dark because it was October, but it wasn't, hadn't been dark for hours. So I don't think they would have been totally concerned. So I did probably encourage her to give a little more time. And then she, the next morning she reported her missing. So she didn't listen to me, but this is fine.

[Anya Cain]

So, you know, I just thought the word nixed there was really odd in terms of, you know, making it sound like you, the 17 year old girl, were the sort of boss of the family.

[Shelly Wright]

Right? I was absolutely not the boss of the family. Oh, no, no. Chloe was a much more dominating figure than I was.

[Anya Cain]

It's also been, I mean, we've done other cases where this kind of perception that 48 hours must pass in order for a missing person, that's very commonly held.

[Shelly Wright]

Yeah. Nowadays, I know it's less common because, you know, if it's been a couple hours, you can report them. There's no, there's no definitive time, time limit or time range. But back then you always thought, oh, give it some time and they'll come home, that kind of thing. That was my, my understanding too.

[Anya Cain]

Absolutely. So she disappears in October. Then can you tell us about all of these months where she is a missing person and you all have no idea what happened to your sister and to your daughter in, in your mom's case? Can you talk about that time period

[Shelly Wright]

when we realized Josette had not come home and we had no idea where she was and none of our friends or family knew any clue where she was and no one had, as far as I knew, I was the last one to see her and I didn't know who had seen her next. No one that I knew, had, was aware of was such a surreal feeling because I'm torn with. Do I go to high school Today, do I go look for my sister? What do I do? Because there's no book on what to do when your sister goes missing, and then day after day, you really don't know what to do, and people start to criticize you, and they want you to stop your own world and go look for her. But where do you look? I had no reference point as far as where she could have been, and I didn't have a car, so I couldn't just freely drive to where she or I think she would have been. And it was really hard to go through 13 months of not knowing what happened to your sister and having that guilt of, you know, maybe if you looked a little harder, you would find her. I had no idea where she was.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, that. That's horrible. So people in town were sort of like, giving you a hard time either way of like, oh, you need to go look for her.

[Shelly Wright]

I had classmates that I had one in particular. She came up to me in my art class and she said, why aren't you looking for her? And I thought, well, that's really horrible for her to say that. But then I also think that's really brave of her because you don't know what my reaction was. Instead of being empathetic, she was more criticizing me. And I thought that was really interesting. And no one really knew how to respond to her. I said, well, I am looking for her. I just can't look for all the time, where do you look? And I said, where would you look? And she said, I don't know, but I would be out looking. So. Well, that's you. That's not me. I don't. I don't know where to look. We have the police looking for her. Her friends, if they see her, they're. They're going to tell where she is. If the belief was she was a runaway, and I knew she wasn't because her backpack, all her belongings, she didn't take any clothes with her. So I know wherever she went was not planned to not come back.

[Anya Cain]

So there was in town. Sounds like there were some people saying she's a runaway. Sounds like you were thinking, this is a lot more ominous because there's no back. Like, she didn't take stuff with her, which you would expect for a runaway to do.

[Shelly Wright]

Right. She took absolutely no money with her. Nothing. Like, if you're going to run away, at least you're going to have a little bit of forethought to take something with you. Maybe a little bit of money, maybe like an extra pair of Clothing, you know, think you're gonna be gone for a week? No, she didn't take anything. And to know her bedroom was left the way it was. We just left it that way because you hope she's gonna come back and then just resume her life. I mean, I wish she had ran away. That would have been the best case scenario. Even looking back, that sounds terrible, but she didn't run away. She didn't hate us. She. She wanted to be with us. It's.

[Anya Cain]

I mean, you've. Do you feel like Gisette loved you all?

[Shelly Wright]

I do. Yeah.

[Anya Cain]

And you loved her.

[Shelly Wright]

Yes, we have. I have. We have. At the time, My aunt had two young. We had two young cousins that were 8 months old and 14 months old. And she would never have left them that we knew if she was going to leave and get mad at us, she was never going to leave them because she was very close with them.

[Anya Cain]

She loved the little kids, basically.

[Shelly Wright]

She loved them. Yep. There was more pictures with her and that them as babies than any of us. There was. There were so many pictures. Jo sat with our two little cousins. It was. It was just so nice to see her being a very maternal young girl, just taking on these responsibilities and wanting to bathe, wanted to change their diapers when my sister Chloe and I had no interest in that and we were older. So it was really telling how. How maternal, like I said she was and how. How real she was as a person.

[Anya Cain]

I want to ask you, were there suspect discussions around town or within your own family about, like, okay, we're concerned, or like this person's popped up in either the rumor mill or the. Just police have mentioned something or like, what kind of possibilities, as you're dealing with this horror of missing her, are you sort of encountering.

[Shelly Wright]

I'd heard a few names pop up. Adam Wilson was one of them. And then my mom had said she thought Andy and Anthony. And I said, who are they? Because I didn't know who they were. And quite honestly, I should have because Andy was in my grade and I never saw him. They were high school dropouts, all three of them. And I guess it kind of turned to their. Their criminals. They. They were the drug. The note. The town drug dealers. And everyone kind of knew that. And that's the only reason I knew who they were, because they would hang out near the high school and sell drugs. And that's terrible, but that's what they did. And my sister Chloe had said, I think, that they. Did they know something or did something to her. And I Thought, how do you know? And she said, I just. I've heard it. So we kind of started hearing that, and then when they arrested, it kind of made it like they were. They knew what they were talking about, because I didn't know.

[Anya Cain]

So you were. You were vaguely aware of these people, but they weren't. I know there's been claims that they were, you know, knew you or knew your sister or whatnot, but it sounds like there was not a close relationship there.

[Shelly Wright]

No. I've never to this day ever spoken to Andy or Anthony in my entire life. I've never had a conversation with any of them before Josette was missing or even till this day.

[Kevin Greenlee]

What was it like when your family received the news, which I believe happened on Thanksgiving, that they had found Josette?

[Shelly Wright]

Yes, it was on Thanksgiving Day. As a family, we gathered when Josette went missing. We didn't celebrate Thanksgiving, and we thought we should celebrate it. She would want us to be together. And I think my mom was hoping that she would just come home on holiday, which would have been really, really good in hindsight. So we were gathered. We were in the middle of dinner, and it was. When something traumatic happens, everything goes in slow motion. And so we see these two detectives going past our picture window, and they're wearing the long trench coats, and it just. They knocked on the door. They told my mom, I think you're. We have some news for you. I think you're going to have. Need a seat to sit down. And she said, no, whatever you're going to tell me, just tell me now. And they said, please have a seat. And, you know, and they proceeded to tell us that they found Josette and she was deceased. And quite literally at that moment, all hell broke loose, because that was not the outcome we were hoping for, like, at all. So it was really, really bad.

[Anya Cain]

I'm so sorry. I can't. I can't. I can't even imagine what your family has gone through and unfortunately continues to go through.

[Shelly Wright]

Yeah, it was. It was really bad. It's just amazing when you. Everyone has a different reaction when someone is giving such devastating news. My sister lunged at the police, the sheriffs that arrived. My grandfather held her back because she was so angry. And I honestly, I was really angry, too. And then I didn't realize that my grandmother was screaming at the top of her lungs. So I. I felt like she needed to leave the house. So we went outside and I just. We just talked because she was so upset, like, she's finding out her young granddaughter was dead. And we don't even know what happened to her or how she was found at that point. We didn't know for a long time. And the neighbors had thought it was my mom screaming. It was really my grandmother, because she was just carrying on. But, I mean, I was trying to hold it together for her because as bad as I felt, I couldn't believe people felt. Felt worse than I did. So it was really a truly devastating moment to learn that.

[Anya Cain]

And how old were you when you heard this?

[Shelly Wright]

When I was 17 is when she went missing. And when we found out what happened to her, I was. I was 19.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, that's. I'm so sorry. In terms of what happened next, you know, this is being. This has been investigated. It's been a missing persons case. Now it's a homicide investigation, obviously. Can you talk about sort of, were police keeping you updated on all the developments in the investigation as far as what happened to Josette, or were you all more in the dark?

[Shelly Wright]

They did have two main detectives from the sheriff's department, and they did let us know what was going on once they knew it was a homicide case. Because I had said, how do you know it's a homicide case? They're like, it's the way she was found. And they were kind of keeping everything tight because they didn't want anything to come out before the trials in 1997, which. Which is fair, because as much as we were victims, just like my sister, of what had happened, we didn't have. We didn't. They said we would find out in trial. Detectives Castaldo and Detective Quick were the ones we basically spoke to most of the time. They'd either call us with information or say, we're going to come right over. Are you guys home? Or they would just literally stop in and say, do you know this piece of jewelry? Do you know what this ring. Do you know if it's Josettes and that kind of thing? And I appreciated that because they showed that they're working on the case and they had evidence and they were trying to link Josette to it. And honestly, some of the rings I didn't even recognize. My grandmother had. Some other people had. So they. My grandmother had given her a piece of jewelry. A neighbor across the street had given her an earring that was found in the van. So they did. They did keep us. Even though it was like in the 90s, we. And no one had cell phones. They did tell us what was going on and what leads they were following.

[Anya Cain]

Do you care in. In the macro sense of who it is.

[Shelly Wright]

Or I want the right people to be convicted, not just anybody. You want them in jail. You don't want the wrong person going out and doing this to someone else's family member, which would be horrific on me, to want justice for the wrong person, just to have justice. You want to get the right people convicted, tried, and put away for life.

[Anya Cain]

It's not like, okay, if it's person A versus person B versus person C, like, you're kind of like, whatever, what's the evidence?

[Shelly Wright]

Right.

[Anya Cain]

So in terms of this, these two people who are then charged and, and then ultimately convicted of the murder and the rape of Josette, the creep back into Pippo in. In this podcast, somebody described Anthony as Teddy Bearish. Do you feel like that's accurate based on what you've seen?

[Shelly Wright]

That's very inaccurate. I don't think that's a fair statement whatsoever. He is 6 foot 8, and if you even just looked at his. His initial arrest for my sister's murder, he looked like a serial killer gone wild. And I'm not even kidding. I would encourage everyone to look it up.

[Anya Cain]

In terms of their backgrounds, did either of them come from money?

[Shelly Wright]

Anthony Pippo's family didn't have money, but his mother divorced. He was. She married someone who was in the garbage business. So Anthony's stepfather sold the business and had a lot of money as a result. So his initial. His family didn't have money, but through marriage, they. They acquired more money.

[Anya Cain]

One thing that Anthony seemingly says, I believe it's Anthony. It's, you know, kind of we're. We're looking at who's saying what. But there was a claim made by one of the men convicted of Josette's murder. I believe it was Anthony saying, quote, you would see Gisette walking around, you'd see Gisette in the deli there, the Glenida deli and the laundromat and this little area, Is that something that's accurate? Is that something that, you know, sounds accurate to Gisette's activity when she was young and alive?

[Shelly Wright]

I don't know her to have walked around that much. I did work at the Ponten county office myself down the road. I worked in the passport office. And I would have known when I was walking home at 5 o', clock, if she was walking around, I probably would have run into her. So I don't know how often he's referring to that. I don't really know. If she did go down the road, that would be down to the deli and the Laundromat, I guess. Like, they were kind of connected. And the library was like, in front of it. That's where she would go and the kids would kind of hang out because Carmel is kind of a boring place. And then she. She would go back up and she went to. There's a church behind it. She went to preschool there when she was younger, so I know that's familiar to her. So. So

[Anya Cain]

at one point, I believe Anthony also claims that she once asked him for a cigarette and he gave it to her. Does that sound like, consistent with Josette's

[Shelly Wright]

behavior if she smoked? I wasn't aware of her smoking.

[Anya Cain]

Okay. Would she have known these guys, Anthony and Andy, or Kack and depivo?

[Shelly Wright]

I don't believe so, because what happened was, was she initially, I. The last time I saw her, I wasn't the last person to see her. She did continue down to the middle of the Carmel. The Carmel Hamlet. And she went to look for another friend because the first one had fallen asleep. And she went to go see her friend, and her father said, she's grounded. She can't come out. He owned like a sporting good store down, up, like right near the deli where they would sell their drugs. So my understanding was from Andy's test, his confession, his signed confession, this is what he said. He said that she. They saw her at the. The deli on her way back, heading towards our house. And he said, hey, do you want a ride? And she didn't know them. She didn't indicate to them. They're like, we're friends with your sister. And I think by saying that, that broke down her guard. So if they were, she was familiar with them. I don't know why he would be introducing himself if she was so aware of who they were. That is a lie, because they're not friends of mine or Chloe's. They were never friends. I never even interacted with them.

[Anya Cain]

This also brings up the Saint Cabrini girls home. In the podcast, it's kind of indicated that these two drug dealers would go hang out and flirt with young girls in this girl's home, and that when Josette would hang out there, she'd be a part of that. Was she known to actually hang out at that spot and sort of be in the mix at the girls home at all?

[Shelly Wright]

No. The only people that could attest to that, as far as I'm aware, are Rachel, who was part of the group home at one point, and the two killers. Because they would go there, is what they admitted to saying. So that was my understanding. I never went there ever, so I can attest to that myself. But this is their words, so I'm not. I don't think she hung out there because I would have. Someone would have told me if she hung out there.

[Anya Cain]

It seems really odd that a lot of things that are sort of carrying the day in this podcast are things that are only spoken about by the men convicted of killing Josette and Rachel, right?

[Shelly Wright]

There's no other people to back up those statements, and I don't believe that they found anybody at this point. So it's just their words and just simply their words.

[Kevin Greenlee]

What was some of the evidence that convinced you that these men were guilty of this horrible crime against your sister?

[Anya Cain]

We will get the answer to that question and a lot more in our next episode. We want to thank Shellie for taking the time to talk with us and share her story. And again, our hearts go out to her and Josette's whole family.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email [e-mail] if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[Anya Cain]

If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www.buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the [e-mail] if you're looking to talk with

[Anya Cain]

other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet Discussion Group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.