Under sunny skies, with her hair pulled up in a high ponytail and wearing a gray parka, tan pants, white shirt, and white athletic shoes, Angelika Graswald walked out of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women on Thursday, December 21, 2017, about six weeks after her sentencing. With Richard Portale by her side carrying a full grocery bag, she walked over to a vehicle and climbed into the back seat. The driver placed the bag in the hatchback compartment, got up front, and drove through the jail gates.
Once off the grounds of the incarceration facility, the vehicle parked. Portale and Angelika got out of the car and approached a wide array of microphones beside a busy street. Two women emerged from the vehicle. One pointed a camera at reporters, recording them as Portale read a statement to the gathered media. Angelika stood quietly by her attorney. As he spoke, she looked at the passing traffic, down at the ground, and up at Portale’s face.
Addressing the crowd, Portale said, “Angelika is grateful to be here today. She’s grateful for this day. She’s excited to be able to reconnect with her family in a meaningful way. She plans to FaceTime with her family as soon as we can. She’s grateful to be able to breathe in the fresh air, walk in the fresh air. But, to be sure, reconnecting is going to be difficult, and reconstructing her life is going to be difficult. Her day-to-day, her reality, is much different today than it was thirty-two months ago. She’s excited to be able to do that and, at this point, we’re going to get started. So, thank you very much. We’re not going to take any questions, but I want to say, we appreciate all of you for having covered her story in a fair and evenhanded manner. We do appreciate that. Thank you.”
The two returned to the waiting vehicle and drove away from the jail and the press. A man, who identified himself as one of Portale’s lawyers, followed in a Range Rover. He hopped from lane to lane, preventing any press vehicles from pursuing the car carrying Angelika. On his erratic journey, he cut off a school bus and stopped at a green light to foil the dogged media.
After losing them all, Angelika and company pulled up to a white-tablecloth surf ’n’ turf eatery, the Lexington Square Café in Mount Kisco. Lawyer, client, and the two women went into a private room on the second floor, where their meal began with martinis all around. Angelika ordered a thirty-eight-dollar steak, cooked medium.
When Angelika had pleaded guilty, Richard Portale had initially told the media that she absolutely was not going to attempt to claim Vince’s life insurance money. Now his statement was laden with uncertainty. “I can’t comment on whether she will [ever] try to collect the claim. This is still ongoing and there are so many variables pending.”
After her release, Angelika would have to spend sixteen months on parole living in a halfway house in Orange County. The possibility of deportation hung over her head.
In January 2018, the amount of the insurance payout—which would have gone to Angelika if Vince’s death had been natural or by accident—was revealed to be higher than previously reported. Instead of a quarter of a million dollars, she was to receive 45 percent of the policies, for a total of $545,000.
On January 16, Laura Rice appeared before Judge James Pagones of the Dutchess County Surrogate Court, asking that the court confirm that Angelika had forfeited her rights to any assets when she’d admitted her responsibility for Vince’s death. The judge ruled that the court was required to conduct a hearing and that Vince’s family had a burden to present “a preponderance of credible evidence” to prove that Angelika’s actions on April 19, 2015, were reckless. The legal definition of one “recklessly” causing the death of another person required that the perpetrator was “aware and consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk that such a result … [would] occur or that such circumstance … [existed]. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.”
Most of the public believe that if you are found guilty of causing someone’s death you cannot benefit from it. However, there are limitations. If the court had found Angelika guilty of first or second-degree murder or manslaughter, the situation would be different. But because she’d pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide, she was placed in the same category as those who had committed involuntary manslaughter. The court would decide the outcome.
The family continued to wage a legal battle to prevent Angelika from getting any proceeds from the insurance policies. They felt that Portale was doing his best to drag out the procedures, and those delays were costing them a great deal of money. They put the civil wrongful death case on hold to await the outcome of the case on the insurance, because legal costs were too expensive to pursue both at the same time.
On January 25, 2018, in Albany, New York, Woodbury Democrat Assemblyman James Skoufis introduced a bill that would cause an automatic forfeiture of life insurance payouts when the beneficiary was determined to be guilty of any involuntary manslaughter charge, including criminally negligent homicide. If this bill was passed, the “slayer rule” that New York judges have followed since a court of appeals decision 130 years ago would finally be codified.
In a press release, Skoufis said, “This isn’t simply a matter of finances and insurance, it’s a matter of justice. Any life insurance benefit ought to go to a loved one, not a convict who is intrinsically responsible for the person’s death. Individuals like Angelika Graswald should never see a penny of insurance money from their homicide victim’s policy.”
The final chapter of the legal battle was settled in August 2018. It was decided that the Viafore family and Angelika would share the insurance money; the amount of Angelika’s portion was not disclosed.
In addition, Angelika dropped the appeal of her conviction, and the Viafore family ended their wrongful death civil suit against her. The Viafores’ attorney reported that the family was “happy it was now all behind them.”
Whatever the amount, Angelika will not directly benefit from the financial windfall. She signed over any money she would receive from the life insurance policies to her legal team. The cost of her defense exceeded $1 million.
In February 2018, 20/20 aired an updated story on Angelika’s case. In Richard Portale’s interview with the show, he continued to cast doubt on the state’s case. “When [… the police] realized there was a gun missing, that’s when they really cranked it up, ’cause that’s when they thought that she maybe shot him.”
The state police investigators denied that allegation. They’d learned very quickly that the missing weapon was in the possession of Vince’s second wife, Suzanne Viafore. Had the investigators not located the gun and they suspected it was a murder weapon, they would have immediately rushed to the island with forensic experts to look for any evidence that a gun had been used there.
On the show, Angelika once again claimed that she loved Vince and did not kill him. She took umbrage at the possibility of being deported: “It’s not right. I want to be able to choose whether I want to stay here or go.”
When she was reminded that others thought that her light sentence meant she’d gotten away with murder, she insisted that there was no murder.
Was this the truth or magical thinking? The only person who knows for sure is Angelika, and she has nothing to gain by admitting to anything more.