On the second day of proceedings, lead defense attorney Richard Portale began the cross-examination of Senior Investigator Aniello Moscato. He focused first on the lead sheets generated in the investigation—logs that keep track of when new lines of investigation are opened in a case. The attorney tried to imply that the police started looking into Angelika as a suspect on April 19, 2015, because that date was on the lead sheet. Even after Moscato informed him that the date on the forms referred to the incident date, not when the form was filled out, Portale kept pushing.
“In reference to the lead sheets,” Moscato explained, “that did not commence until the evening of the twenty-ninth. We tried to start treating this as a major crime investigation after the arrest was made, not prior to the arrest.”
“Are you aware that there is a lead sheet dated 4/19/15 by Trooper Freeman, that says the lead was assigned by you?” Portale pressed.
“That’s right,” the investigator said. “And that probably wasn’t assigned till the twenty-ninth. Do you see where the lead was reviewed and completed on the bottom? It should reflect. The lead may have been assigned on the twenty-ninth and it reflected what was done on the nineteenth. That is very much possible.”
Portale moved on. “So, you were first assigned to this case on April 19; is that right?”
“Yes. I wasn’t technically assigned,” Moscato clarified again. “I’m the supervisor. And I was called in. And because of the nature of what it was, I responded down to Cornwall Yacht Club on the nineteenth.”
“So, because you’re a supervisor, you didn’t really get assigned, you were ‘the guy:’ is that fair to say?”
“I guess,” Moscato said, giving the attorney an incredulous look.
“You can say it. It’s okay.”
“I don’t know if I’m ‘the guy,’ but yes, I responded. My squad is out there. Some of my guys were out there. I like to go and give them support and try to help facilitate things that needed to be done.”
The men discussed the various local police, emergency response, and fire department members Moscato talked to that night, as well as the investigator’s almost daily contact with Angelika before her arrest. “We might have missed a day in between, but we at least met up on the shores of the Hudson in one way or another,” Moscato said. “And we either spoke on the phone or we texted each other. I believe she texted me more than I texted her back, but to this day, she’s still on my cell phone as Angelika.”
Portale established that Moscato hadn’t been present for the meeting Angelika had with DeQuarto on the nineteenth and that Moscato had listened to the 911 call with DeQuarto sometime prior to April 29. “Did he make you aware of the fact that he was suspicious of Miss Graswald after listening to that call?”
“Suspicious?” Moscato asked.
“Yes.”
“No. Listen, Angelika went through a lot in the first couple of days. Everyone reacts to these situations in different ways.”
“Objection,” Portale said, “to the non-responsive part of the question and move to strike it. It was a yes or no question.”
“I’ll sustain the objection,” Judge Freehill said.
A flash of exasperation crossed Moscato’s face.
“Are you okay?” Portale asked him.
“I’m fine,” a clearly provoked Moscato said. The expression on his face and his curt responses to the next few questions said otherwise. He had to elaborate, though, when asked about his reaction to DeQuarto’s statement about Angelika admitting she’d removed the kayak’s plug.
Portale asked, “Is it fair to say that part of the reason you found that hard to believe and that you were in shock was that she was acting happy-go-lucky? That was your testimony [on] direct?”
“That’s not the reason,” Moscato contradicted. He continued with a lengthy answer that seemed to be daring Portale to object. “Number one, I didn’t know about a plug. So that was surprising to me. And, also, like I was trying to say, for nine to ten days we were all on an emotional roller coaster, more so for the family and Angelika than myself. I kind of felt the pain they were experiencing. And she was being treated like a widow, if you will. A grieving widow. So, I was totally shocked that, you know, because of certain actions and behaviors that she exhibited before? I didn’t really put a lot of weight on that. I’m sure you heard she would do cartwheels.
“In fact, on that Friday before, she called me up and she invited me to a nightclub. Said, ‘Hey, what are you guys doing?’ Like, ‘We’re down at the Hudson River. We’re searching for Vinny’s body.’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, it’s too cold out there. Aniello, why don’t you tell the guys to take the rest of the day off and we’re gonna have a little tribute to Vinny.’ I forget the name of the place, but it was across the river on the Poughkeepsie side. She said that it was a tribute to Vinny. And she wanted all of the people that were assisting with the search to join her at the party.
“So, you know, a lot of people are, well, ‘that’s kind of odd.’ But was it odd? Yeah, maybe. But you know what? Everybody grieves differently. Some people hide it. Some people are happy about it. Some people are sad about it. You know, everyone acts differently. So, I didn’t put a lot of weight on that.
“Over the thirty-some years of doing this type of missing persons, and unnatural deaths, homicides, call it what you want—when a loved one’s lost, people’s reactions have been the spectrum of the rainbow. Anything is possible. You can’t go to a textbook and say, ‘This is what they should be doing.’ So, I didn’t put a lot of weight on her doing cartwheels and being happy about everything. Maybe others did, but I didn’t.”
If Portale was affected by Moscato’s impassioned response, he didn’t show it. “Yesterday when you testified that you were surprised that she was acting happy-go-lucky on Bannerman’s Island, what did you mean?”
“Absolutely, I did. This is after she tells Investigator DeQuarto that she pulled the plug and sabotaged the paddle. How could you act happy-go-lucky after making a statement like that? It wasn’t consistent with what she had just revealed … yes. That I was taken aback on.”
“She wasn’t acting like someone that had just confessed to murder; is that fair to say?”
“That’s fair to say,” Moscato conceded.
Portale asked the investigator to describe his actions on the morning of April 29. “Describe what you and your crew did, from the time you arrived to the time she arrived, what did you do—start with you. What did you personally do?”
“Okay. We looked around the island. We spoke to some people there that were on the cleanup committee. Some were planting flowers, others were just cleaning up. And we just, we looked around for any kind of evidence—keep in mind, at this point, we still had not found Vincent Viafore’s body. So, we were concerned that maybe something may have happened on the island. We weren’t sure. Maybe something was left behind on the island. You know, the whole issue that there was a cell phone involved. Maybe some pictures that were taken. Maybe some articles of clothing might have been left behind. Whatever. We had never been to Bannerman’s Island since this incident had occurred. So, we were there to kind of take a first look at it, if you will.”
“So, this incident happened on the nineteenth. In the ten days that followed, you, before the twenty-ninth, you had never been to the island.”
“That’s right,” the investigator said. “And that’s why we made it a point to go out there. You are absolutely right. You know, we were busy concentrating on the scuba searches, you had the shore searches, based on the information that we had. And as time went by and Vincent’s body didn’t surface, we wanted to expand the search, if you will. That maybe he got hung up on some of the rocks on the other side of the island, what have you, and [we] wanted to try to re-create what happened.”
“You just testified that you were concerned that something may have happened on the island, correct?”
“Yes.”
“You mean like foul play?”
“Not necessarily, no,” Moscato hedged.
“Well, what do you mean?”
“Well, I know what I know now, but back then I—”
“What do you mean ‘back then’?”
“Back then, well, I knew Angelika had spent some time on the island with Vincent Viafore. And she had taken some pictures. And I don’t know the extent of all the pictures, but some of the descriptions that she had offered to the investigators and myself were to the effect that they were there enjoying the day and sharing some intimate moments with each other. I don’t know if she—I think I do know, but I don’t know exactly—but she brought a change of clothing and they took some photographs [with] some, if you will, some sexy poses and lingerie. So, perhaps, maybe something was left behind. It was part of our duty to be thorough and take a look to see if we missed something. Not necessarily foul play, at that point.”
Portale tried to get Moscato to give a precise assessment of the times they arrived on Bannerman Island and that Angelika reached the island, but he could only estimate. The attorney criticized him for not writing down the hour and minute.
“I had been meeting with her for ten days. I never wrote down any of those times either that I met with her,” Moscato argued.
“You’re not suggesting that she confessed to murder any of those other times?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But this time was a little different, right? This time—”
Moscato didn’t let Portale finish his question. “I didn’t have a crystal ball and knew what was going to happen—”
“Would you answer my question?” Portale asked. In the same breath he turned to the judge and pleaded, “Your Honor?”
When the attorney got no response from Freehill, he continued, “What I’ll do is, I’ll ask a question and then I’ll give you an opportunity to answer it. Can we do that?”
“I know how the system works,” Moscato snapped.
“And I promise I am not going to interrupt. I’ll try not to.” Portale paused and then continued, “This time was a little bit different. It was a lot different than the other times you met with Miss Graswald because this time, you’re saying she confessed to murder, true?”
Now it was ADA Mohl’s turn to object.
“What’s the basis?” Portale asked.
“Number one,” she said, “it’s argumentative, and what time are you talking about?”
“I don’t see this as being argumentative,” the judge said. “I’ll agree with the other part. Sustained. Rephrase the question.”
Portale forged ahead. “The Bannerman’s Island meeting with Miss Graswald was different than the meeting leading up to [it] because in the Bannerman’s meeting on 4/29, you’re saying that she confessed to murder?”
“No.”
Julie Mohl objected again and was sustained by the judge. Richard Portale withdrew his question and the judge struck the answer.
Portale changed his query. “You testified on direct that you have gone to Bannerman’s Island on 4/29 and were searching for clues. That true?”
“That’s right.”
“So, with regard to the communication that took place between you and Miss Graswald prior to arriving on Bannerman, there were some phone calls or text messages?”
“Yes.”
“You called her and she returned your call?”
“No. The opposite.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive.”
“So, she called you first and then you returned her call?”
“She called me. I answered the phone. This was at Gully’s,” Moscato said, growing irritated. “This is the part where you didn’t allow me to explain.”
“Just answer the question,” the judge remonstrated.
“You were at Gully’s?” Portale asked.
Moscato confirmed again and described the phone call he’d received from Angelika. “And later on, at the island, she showed up. We didn’t tell her to go there. I didn’t tell her not to go there. She had planned on going there, on her own. And when she arrived at the island, yes, it was like any other time of the nine days prior of meeting with her. I had no idea that she was gonna confess to murder when she came to that island.”
Portale moved to strike for non-responsiveness and the judge refused his request. The attorney asked, “My question to you, really [is] who called who first. That’s the question, who called who first?”
“Well, I answered that three times and you didn’t believe me,” Moscato retorted. “And I even said positive. She called me first.”
“You said you walked around the island. Did you walk along the outside of the island, the shoreline?” the attorney asked.
“It’s hard to walk around the shoreline on the island. I don’t know if you know the layout of it, but it’s kind of cliffy. We docked. We went up the steps. There are trails up there and leading up to the house that was built up there. We walked around there and then we walked down to the shoreline. But it’s hard to walk around the perimeter of the island, given the terrain of it.”
Then Portale brought up Angelika’s arrival on the island. “So, from the time Miss Graswald disembarked the boat on Bannerman’s Island, to the time she got on your police boat, either yourself—aside when she was in the bathroom—either yourself or one of your troopers were with her, right?”
“Not all the time.”
“Were there other places and times she wasn’t with a trooper on Bannerman?”
“The island is not a big island. So, we were there on the island. Were we holding her hand? No. Was she free to go? Absolutely.”
“She was gonna go where?”
“Wherever she wanted to go.”
“But it’s an island,” Portale snipped.
“How did she get there?” Moscato pointed out. “She got there in a boat. She could have left there the same way. She was free to go. She was not in custody. And we had no reason to keep her there. We didn’t—we really didn’t invite her to come out there.”
“She wasn’t handcuffed?”
“No. Absolutely not. In fact, even after she admitted to what she did, she still wasn’t handcuffed.”
“This is on the island now?”
“Yes.”
“So, you testified that on the island, as you were talking to her, at some point you sat down on the trail; is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And prior to that, you had allowed her to smoke a cigarette, you had allowed her to go to the bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“Objection, Judge,” Mohl interrupted, “as to the characterization of ‘allowed.’”
Portale tried to clarify: “Did she ask you?”
“Sustained,” Freehill said.
“Withdrawn,” said Portale. “During those times, did [she] say, like, ‘Can I go to the bathroom?’ Did she ask you?”
“It was more of a statement. ‘Hey, I got to go to the bathroom.’ ‘All right, go to the bathroom. Who’s stopping you?’ ‘I want a cigarette.’ ‘Sure. Have a cigarette.’ It wasn’t like I gave her permission to do it, no. If she wanted to do it, she was free to do it. I don’t think she was looking for my approval for that. She’s a grown woman; she needs to go to the bathroom, she goes to the bathroom. It wasn’t like I was stopping her from going to the bathroom. I wasn’t stopping her from having a cigarette.”
They talked about the friendship that had grown between Moscato and Angelika in the ten days after the incident and then went through the details of the time before Angelika went off alone with Investigator DeQuarto—mild topics, but still the tone remained contentious.
When Portale accused him and the other investigators of asking Angelika pointed questions, Moscato responded, “I wanted it in her own words. It wasn’t like an interrogation thing where we’re asking her questions. I wanted her to tell us so that we could better get the picture of what actually happened, so that we had a better idea of where we could concentrate our efforts in looking for Vincent Viafore’s body. Remember, at that time, we still had not found Vincent Viafore. So, that was one of our main concerns as law enforcement.”
“Did you just testify that it was not like an interrogation; is that what you said?”
“I don’t believe it was, not on my part. Now when—”
Portale interrupted, challenging Moscato’s depiction of the conversations on the island. They bantered through several questions and then Portale asked, “Do you recall asking Miss Graswald, ‘Angelika, what you are holding inside of you is burning a hole. If you don’t let it out, it’s gonna eat away at you from the inside out.’ Do you recall asking her that?”
“I may have said something to that effect, yes.’
“That’s exactly what you said to her, right?”
“I don’t know my exact words, but something to that effect, yes.”
“Because you didn’t believe what happened on the river was an accident, you thought she killed Vincent Viafore, true?”
“No,” Moscato said firmly. “The reason I said that to her was because of the way she was acting on the dock. She had a hard time telling me exactly where they docked the kayaks. So, she was holding back something. Did I know at that point that she, in your words, had murdered Vincent Viafore? No, I did not know that. But, obviously, something was bothering her. And I kind of sensed that. That’s why I said, ‘Hey, you got to let us know what is going on.’”
“Well, no, what you said was ‘what you’re holding inside is burning a hole in you’; is that right?”
“Okay. If that’s what I said, that’s what I said. You’re telling me that’s what I said, right?”
Portale asked several questions about Susan McCardell approaching to check in on Angelika and then said, “At no time upon Bannerman’s Island on April 29, 2015, did you ever advise Miss Graswald that she was not a suspect, true?”
“Can you just say that again, please?”
“I didn’t understand that either,” the judge added.
“At no time—”
“At no time. It was a double negative,” Moscato commented.
“Let him say it, please,” the judge said, trying to ease some of the tension in the courtroom. “Let’s all just take it in and hear the question.”
“Why don’t we phrase it in a different way, if that will help you,” Portale said.
“Thank you.”
“On April 29, 2015, on Bannerman’s Island, did you advise Miss Graswald that she was not a suspect?”
“I didn’t tell her that she was a suspect, no.”
“Did you tell her that she was not a suspect?”
“Did I say: ‘You are not a suspect’?”
Portale confirmed.
“No. I don’t think that subject came up. Again, I hate to harp on the last nine or ten days, but we had very similar conversations for the past nine or ten days. You know, up until the point where she started opening up to the three of us, and I decided it was best, in fairness to Angelika, to have her speak solely to one investigator, which was Investigator DeQuarto.”
The defense attorney turned the questioning to Angelika’s missing cell phone and beat on that topic for a while before switching back to her status as a suspect.
Moscato said, “She had the most information that we were trying to glean from her. To characterize her as a suspect, that’s going too far, in my opinion, at that point.”
“Was there someone else that you were focusing on?”
“No. Like you said, she was the one that was last seen with him. She had the most information that would be of interest to us in pursuing any viable leads in order for us to try to figure out where Vincent Viafore’s body could have either drifted to, drowned at, or got caught up on.”
“Without the statement that Miss Graswald allegedly made to Investigator DeQuarto, she wouldn’t have been placed under arrest at that time, correct?”
“Objection. Calls for speculation, Your Honor,” ADA Mohl said.
“Speculation?” Portale exclaimed. “He’s the senior investigator.”
“He can answer. Overruled,” the judge answered.
Moscato responded, “As senior investigator out there making a decision, no, she would not have been immediately placed under arrest if she hadn’t made the further statements to Investigator DeQuarto. However, we would have continued our investigation. But, no, she would not have been placed under arrest prior to her admissions.”
“When you say ‘we would have continued our investigation,’ you mean of Miss Graswald?”
“No. I mean locating Vincent Viafore and trying to determine exactly what happened.”
Portale then asked a long series of questions about the kayak paddles. He gave Moscato a hard time when the investigator said that he had not noticed the plug was missing from the kayak, and then battered him over semantics about the condition of the paddles.
Without warning, Portale shifted gears. “You testified that you had gone to Bannerman’s on April 29, 2015, to search for clues on the island, correct?”
“That is right.”
“What tools did you have with you to collect those clues, if any?”
“My eyes,” Moscato retorted.
“Okay. Besides your eyes, what else did you have?”
“Tools?”
“Yeah, tools.”
“None.”
“No forensic tools?”
“No.”
Portale asked about specific tools, naming them one by one: camera, measuring tape, rulers, notepads. Moscato said he had none of the above but knew that there was a camera since some photographs were taken. He didn’t know if anyone had any of the other items.
“Well, of the three of you, none of you took notes when you were having this discussion with Miss Graswald on the trail, right?”
“No, I didn’t take any notes.”
“Nobody did, right?”
“Well, if that’s what you’re saying, nobody. I didn’t take any notes.”
“You were sitting on the trail?”
“Right.”
“Miss Graswald was there?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t have any notes, right. She wasn’t taking notes, right?”
“Right.”
“Investigator DeQuarto was there. He wasn’t taking notes, right?”
“Right.”
“Investigator DaSilva was there, and you saw him, and he wasn’t taking notes, right?’
“Right.”
“So as far as you know, neither yourself, DaSilva, [nor] DeQuarto had a notepad with them on Bannerman’s Island?”
“That’s correct. As far as I know, no one had any notes, that’s right.”
“Did you have any evidence bags with you?”
“No. Not me personally.”
“Did DaSilva have any evidence bags with him? No?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“And Investigator DeQuarto didn’t have any evidence bags with him?”
“I don’t believe so.”
At the request of the defense, the court took a five-minute break.