That same Saturday after Vince’s disappearance, miles away from the Rices’ home, one hundred people jumped into the water for the Wappingers Creek Water Derby, an eight-mile kayak and canoe race. One group was racing for Vince. “He got us started with kayaking and canoeing,” Robin Pierantozzi told the Poughkeepsie Journal, “so we can’t stop now.”
Angelika posted a few photographs on Facebook the next day—pictures of Vince, of her alongside him, and others of some of their friends. She added an unsettling and eerie shot—her smiling face with the Bannerman Castle in the background. Why would she want to celebrate the place, considering what had happened when she’d paddled away from it such a short time ago?
She added fuel to the fires of suspicion on the twenty-sixth, when she shared a photo of the castle from the Bannerman foundation’s Facebook page and posted a video in which she performed a cartwheel. She also posted a photo of her doing the same gymnastic stunt along the Hudson River. Cartwheels had always symbolized celebration, not grief. What was she thinking?
Laura Rice was disturbed by Angelika’s behavior and contacted Investigator DeQuarto. “Angelika is acting very strange, unbothered and out of the ordinary,” she told him.
Angelika continued to post photos to Facebook of herself and Vince, along with videos of her playing with animals at the Shepherd’s View Animal Sanctuary. Finding comfort in the four-legged creatures seemed like a nice sentiment on the surface, but her carefree social media behavior turned unsettling when she also changed her profile picture to a grinning selfie of her making the “hang loose” sign with her thumb and pinkie. The lightheartedness felt peculiar coming from a woman who had just watched as the Hudson River likely claimed the life of her fiancé.
Angelika also took time to call her former father-in-law Richard Graswald Sr. to relay happy birthday wishes to him. He asked her about the accident on the river.
“You know, it’s a tragic thing,” Angelika replied. “What can I say about it?”
The answer struck him as odd, but he thought no more of it. “My wife and I never had a problem with her,” he said.
On April 27, DeQuarto interviewed the three men who’d pulled Angelika from the Hudson River. One described hearing the fire department call about a kayak accident on his scanner. He got into a boat with two others and drove out to the point where they could see Angelika. He said that she was paddling “just fine” toward them and didn’t appear to be struggling at all. One of the men said that she was paddling straight for them. When they got within fifty to one hundred feet of her, she seemed to intentionally throw herself into the water. At that same moment, Angelika had lost her connection to the 911 dispatcher. Wearing a life jacket, she was still easy to spot in the turbulent water, but no one on the boat saw any sign of another person or vessel in the water.
The men confirmed that when they pulled her out she was wearing a life jacket and had a black bag strapped over her shoulder. Once on the boat, she’d pulled out an iPhone and attempted to make a phone call. One of them saw the screen light up, showing that the device was working. She’d told them that her boyfriend was missing. They looked around in the water but still did not see another kayak or person in the river. Angelika was cold and shivering, possibly in need of medical attention. They brought her back to shore to get assistance before heading back out to search for two or three hours.
Later that day, Investigator DeQuarto and Senior Investigator Moscato sat down and dissected Vince Viafore’s missing person case. Both detectives were baffled by the failure to locate his body. Looking for any holes in their investigation, they realized that no law enforcement had been out to the island. They knew there was a possibility that a body could get hung up on the rocks on that coastline. In addition, there might be something on the island pointing to the mystery of Vince’s fate. They couldn’t imagine what that might be but knew they needed to search the island to be thorough in their investigation. Moscato made arrangements for a boat to take them on the twenty-ninth.
Investigator DeQuarto asked Angelika to come in for an interview on Monday, April 27. She agreed to stop by the barracks, but she didn’t show up. DeQuarto called her the next morning and asked her, “Why didn’t you come in yesterday?”
“I was at the animal sanctuary and was having a good time there and just went home after that,” she told him. She agreed to come in on the afternoon of April 28.
On the afternoon of the twenty-eigth, Angelika again blew off her meeting with DeQuarto. Again, he called her. Once more, she claimed that she was having too much fun at the animal sanctuary.
“Angelika, you know Vincent is still missing and we haven’t located him yet. There’s some more information we need to discuss. I would hope this would be your number one priority.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll come in later.”
This time, she did as promised, arriving at the barracks with Laura Rice at 7:30 that night. She sat down at DeQuarto’s desk while Laura waited in the lobby.
He said, “I’m sorry to have to get you back in here. I know it’s tough talking about it.”
“No, I understand, because it happened under suspicious circumstances.”
“What do you mean?” the detective asked. It was the first time she’d implied that the incident had been anything but accidental.
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Let’s continue.”
DeQuarto asked her to go through the events of the day again and to tell him a little about her relationship with Vince. She repeated the same story she had told him the first time. However, she was breathing heavily and soon after they started she asked to smoke a cigarette. The investigator walked her down the hall to a side door and stayed with her while she smoked.
Back inside, Angelika was telling the investigator about her wedding plans when DeQuarto changed the subject. “You lost your cell phone in the water?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s a couple of rescue workers who saw you on your cell phone when you got pulled out of the water.”
“Oh, maybe, I don’t remember,” she backtracked. “You know, somebody has that cell phone.”
“Well, Angelika, we need to find that cell phone. That’s important.”
“You know, somebody has that phone—somebody has it.”
“Can you look for it when you go home?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Angelika answered, and held her arms tight around her stomach as she breathed heavily again. Once more, she wanted to stop for a cigarette.
DeQuarto continued, “Let’s talk about when you and Vincent were in the water. What did he say to you as conversation then?”
“He said, ‘Call nine-one-one.’”
“Then you called nine-one-one.”
“Yeah.”
“Was there anything else said?” he asked.
“No.” She clutched her stomach. “I really don’t feel good. I think I want to go home.”
“Okay.” DeQuarto escorted her to the lobby. “Tomorrow, we’re going over to Bannerman’s Island—me and a few investigators—to do a search of the island and walk the shoreline there.”
“Oh great. Maybe I’ll see you, because I’m going to the Cornwall Yacht Club to release some flowers in memory of Vinny.”
Just before they reached the lobby, Angelika pulled a gift card out of her purse. “This gift card is for you, to thank you for everything.”
“I can’t accept your gift card. But I appreciate the offer.”
Angelika walked up to Laura and announced, “All right. Let’s go get some wine and steak.”
“I don’t feel up to going out to get anything to eat or drink,” Laura said.
They exited the building, but suddenly Angelika rushed back in holding a handcrafted figurine, Laura trailing behind. “Here take this, this is for you,” Angelika said.
“I can’t accept any gifts. But thank you anyway,” DeQuarto insisted.
“Are you ready to leave, Angelika?” Laura asked.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll just have him bring me home,” she said, pointing at the detective.
“I can’t bring you home,” DeQuarto said.
“Oh, you can’t? Why not?”
“Because you have a ride. I just can’t bring you home,” DeQuarto said. Angelika’s flirtatious manner and her attempts at gift giving were very unsettling to him. He didn’t know if it was just the way she was or if she was trying to ingratiate herself with him to influence the conduct of the investigation.
With a pout on her face, Angelika followed Laura back to the parking lot. DeQuarto felt relieved as he watched the car drive off a little after 8:00 pm.
Angelika’s friend Joel Goss had learned of Vince’s fate in a text message from another friend. For days, he heard nothing from Angelika, who was staying at the condo she’d shared with Vince, with a night or two spent at the home of Heather Canavan, the president of Shepherd’s View animal Sanctuary.
Then, on the evening of April 28, Joel received a text from Angelika: “Do you have any lemons?”
When he answered that he did, she wrote back: “Come over and bring lemons.”
Joel arrived to find Angelika in the kitchen making risotto. While he helped her cook, she focused intently on the task at hand and desperately tried to ignore the reality of Vince’s disappearance. One moment, she’d be despondent, exclaiming, “It’s been a week!” Minutes later, she would calmly say, “It’s only been a week. Maybe everything will be okay.”
All night, there was an edginess about Angelika. “She never looked serene,” Joel remembered. After midnight, Joel noticed a particularly pained look on Angelika’s face and coaxed her outside, where he pulled out his laser pointer with a splinter that caused the beam to form shapes. He made patterns on the leaves of a tree. “They look like fairies, don’t they?” he told her.
Angelika was delighted by the distraction. He left the device with her and headed home. Joel was convinced that Angelika could not have been responsible for Vince’s death because of her belief in ghosts. “She could not have harmed him because she would fear creating a ghost who would be angry with her from the get-go,” he said.
He believed she was grieving, despite the somersaults and karaoke singing, because of his own experience after 9-11. Joel was in New York at the time and witnessed the “many flavors of grief.” That was what he saw with Angelika. The only answer for Vince’s disappearance, he thought, was that it was a twisted practical joke and Vince would show up in a couple of weeks, laughing at everyone.
The next day, he heard that Angelika had been taken into headquarters by the police.
The cavalier attitude that many thought Angelika displayed in the aftermath of the incident on the Hudson River all caught up with her on April 29. For more than a year, it had been Angelika’s habit on Wednesday mornings to go out to Bannerman Island, where she would weed and plant flowers with a group of ten other volunteers.
As she approached the yacht club parking lot that morning, she again went to Facebook and uploaded a video of her driving. “What a beautiful day!” she exclaimed in the video. Then her phone camera focused on the clock that read 9:22 am. “Nine Twenty-Two is the date that we met,” she said.