On Monday, after Angelika Graswald had spent eleven hours in an interrogation room, Investigator DeQuarto filed a felony complaint against her stating that she had committed second-degree murder, intentionally causing the death of Vince Viafore.
The document, however, contained no indication of how she’d accomplished this act of second-degree murder.
Later that day, Major Patrick Regan, the Troop F Commander of the New York State Police, stood before reporters at the state police barracks in Middletown and read a statement: “‘The New York State Police at Montgomery and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office announce the arrest of Angelika Graswald, age thirty-five, of Poughkeepsie, New York, for murder in the second degree, a Class A-one felony.
“‘On Sunday evening, April 19, 2015, state police responded to a report of a missing kayaker on the Hudson River. At approximately seven forty pm, Angelika Graswald contacted Orange County nine-one-one and reported that she and her fiancé, Vincent Viafore, both of Poughkeepsie, New York, were kayaking on the Hudson in between Plum Point and Bannerman Island. Graswald reported to nine-one-one that Viafore’s kayak capsized due to choppy waters and she could not locate him in the river.
“On Wednesday, April 29, 2015, State Police Investigators who had been pursuing leads in this case obtained enough information to charge Graswald with intentionally causing the death of Viafore.
“The investigation into the circumstances surrounding the murder remains ongoing. Anyone with information is requested to contact the New York State Police.…
“Graswald was arraigned in the Town of New Windsor Court under the Honorable Richard W. Thorpe and remanded to Orange County Jail without bail.
“The body of Vincent Viafore is yet to be located and efforts to locate him remain ongoing. The New York State Police are seeking the assistance of the boaters, hikers, and fishermen on both sides of the Hudson in locating Mr. Viafore’s body and preserving the discovery area for any possible forensic evidence that may exist. If anybody encounters anything that they believe might be connected to this incident, they are asked to call the New York State Police before disturbing anything in the area of the find.
“In efforts to pinpoint or reconstruct the last hours, minutes, and seconds of Mr. Viafore’s life, the investigators have maintained contact with Ms. Graswald. Initially, we believed her to be a survivor of a tragic accident. [While] … trying to piece together the best places to locate him in the river and what may have led to what occurred, some inconsistencies of the accounts she gave of those last minutes led investigators to be suspicious.”
When a reporter asked about the inconsistencies, Major Regan responded, “She implicated herself in her involvement in his intentional death.” He added that they believed Vince had been killed in the water, not on the island. “We believe we know what happened. We believe she indicated how this occurred.”
In the immediate aftermath of the charges being filed against Angelika, her friends refused to believe that she could possibly have done anything to harm Vince. Some of his friends found it difficult to accept, too. “I do not want to believe she murdered my friend,” Sean Von Clauss told People magazine. Amanda Bopp, who’d known Vince since before he started dating Angelika, said, “She made him so happy. I know he was so in love with her. I’m not passing judgement on Angelika at all yet. I don’t know what to think.” She added that she found it impossible to believe that the petite woman could have overpowered Vince.
After her arrest and incarceration at the Orange County Jail in Goshen, Angelika, like all inmates, was screened for placement and suicidal ideation. Although she was not deemed at risk of taking her own life by standard assessment procedures, the transporting officer reported that he thought she might be, because she was acting in a strange, “almost cheerful manner” for someone who had experienced a significant loss. She was placed under “constant supervision” because of his input and “due to the severity of her crime.”
After her arrest, Angelika gave a series of interviews to local and national media. She insisted to Blaise Gomez of News 12 Westchester that she had been falsely accused of intentionally causing Vince’s death. The reason, she believed, was the diary entries she had written about Vince’s interest in rough sex and threesomes. She’d also written that she wished he were dead. She claimed those statements were made in anger during a problematic patch in their relationship. She asserted that she was very much in love with Vince—they loved each other, problems and all. She told People magazine that she felt the police had tricked her into telling them what they wanted to hear. With regards to her suspicious behavior in the immediate aftermath, she told WNBC New York, “Of course I didn’t do it. He was the love of my life. It was a crazy time. I was doing crazy things.”
An attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Orange County prepared for Angelika’s preliminary hearing, scheduled for May 5 before Judge Richard W. Thorpe in the Town of New Windsor. But the hearing was canceled because the grand jury was still in session working on the case.
Soon after her incarceration, Angelika was sent into lockdown for yelling an expletive at a female corrections officer and adding, “I will spit in your face.” This was the first of four incidents requiring disciplinary action in her first few weeks behind bars.
May 8 was a consequential day for Angelika. The Embassy of the Republic of Latvia in Washington, D.C., entered the fray, with a fax requesting to be informed about any court dates and their outcomes. Even more pivotal was the arrival of Richard Portale as Angelika’s new defense attorney. Portale had short brown hair, prominent cheekbones, and an engaging smile—when he chose to use it.
Portale came on the scene with a rather unusual past. He’d begun his career as a campaign consultant for then–Westchester County District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, now a Fox News personality. She won reelection in November 1997, and Portale was hired by her office that December.
His employment there raised a few eyebrows since he had a questionable past—he’d been arrested twice in Niagara Falls. The first arrest occurred on May 29, 1993, when he was at the Pleasuredome dance club and bar with Timothy O’Keefe. When an employee tried to eject O’Keefe for vandalizing the restroom, Portale had allegedly punched the employee in the eye. Ultimately, the charges were dismissed against both. The second time, he was charged with speeding, expired insurance, driving without a seat belt, and driving with an expired license. The violations were settled without a criminal charge.
After those two incidents, Portale went to Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and spent the following summer working for a lowly six dollars per hour as a law clerk for an attorney in Niagara Falls. Until he graduated from law school in 1997, he earned money as a beer vendor for the Cleveland Indians and, for a short time, as an assistant manager of the Fitness Shops in Lyndhurst, Ohio. Eventually, he settled in New York to work for Pirro and kept out of further trouble for four years, while he worked in the Westchester District Attorney’s Youth Violence/Gang Unit. In his spare time, he played rugby and played it well, competing in the Empire State Games. In 1999, he was named to the USA National Rugby Team.
Then, in December 2001, he traveled to Florida to compete in a rugby tournament as a member of the semiprofessional New York Knights. He and his teammate Arlen Gerritson were arrested at the Days Inn in Tampa. According to the sheriff’s office, the men had hired two exotic dancers but then decided they wanted sex. When the 18- and 25-year-old women insisted they were only there for dancing, Portale would not let them leave the room, leading to a charge of false imprisonment.
In addition, one of the women called her bodyguard and when he arrived an altercation broke out. Portale and Gerritson were both charged with battery. Portale’s attorney, Anthony Quinn, said that the charges were an act of revenge against Portale for an accusation he’d made that the women’s bodyguard had stolen items from his teammates’ rooms. Later, one of the alleged victims dropped her complaint and the charges were dropped.
The district attorney’s office suspended Portale, but he continued to receive his $72,131 annual salary. He officially resigned from his position on January 14, 2002, and went into private practice. In 2015, he took on Angelika’s case.