Death on the River Read online

  Their friends talked Angelika into coming along and treated her to one more drink at Schatzi’s Pub before calling it a night. At 11:00, Vince and Angelika went home, where they resumed arguing as soon as they walked into the apartment. When they were both tired of raising their voices in anger, they went to bed and made up the way lovers often do.

  The next morning, they disagreed on whether to go kayaking and bickered about it for quite a while. Finally, Vince brought it to an end. “We’re going. We’re going,” he said. Angelika acquiesced and threw together supplies while he packed up the Jeep.

  Before leaving, Vince texted Laura, informing her that he and Angelika were going kayaking. He described their launch at Plum Point and told her their destination was Bannerman Island. He even sent along a diagram of the locations. He ended by saying he would text her again later that day. The message struck her as off—Vince had never texted her about an afternoon’s plans before.

  It was the last time she ever heard from her brother. A short time later, Vinny and Angelika headed out on a romantic kayaking trip, and only Angelika lived to tell the tale.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The day after Vince disappeared in the Hudson River was Marathon Monday in Boston. Sean Von Clauss, who was in New York City that weekend performing four shows, was relieved to be away from his home in Boston, as it bulged with out-of-towners and celebrations before the big event.

  Because he was away from home, busy and out of touch with Hudson Valley news, he was unaware of his good friend’s tragedy. When he returned to Boston, he had thirty-six messages on his phone—all about the accident in the Hudson River. He listened to every one of them, his shock and horror rising. He didn’t want to believe a single word, but the sorrow drowned his resistance to reality.

  “My life has forever been changed,” he said, “as well as the lives of everyone who knew Vinny. We will never have another cookout or St. Columba gathering. Vinny was the source of peace. He was the peacemaker.”

  * * *

  New York State Police detectives continued to pursue information that would explain what had happened on the Hudson River on April 19. In interviews with Vince’s friends, they all agreed that the incident made no sense. Many described Vince as safety conscious and insisted he would never have gone kayaking without a life vest. They believed that the presence of only one PFD that day must have been due to Angelika’s neglect: either careless or deliberate. They believed that if Vinny had been faced without enough safety gear for both of them, he would have insisted that she wear the vest.

  Two days after Vince’s disappearance, a small army of family and friends gathered at the river to search the shoreline, with the fervent hope that they’d find Vince injured but still breathing. Laura happened to overhear Angelika speaking to a friend, offering to give away Vince’s smoker. She said, “Vinny would want you to have it.”

  Laura was appalled. For most of them, hope might have a feeble pulse, but it was still alive. Obviously, that was not the case for Angelika, as she was already giving away Vince’s possessions.

  Vince’s lifelong friend Kevin Beisswinger came down to the river to help with the search whenever he could. Angelika’s attitude bothered him as well. To him, she appeared to regard the riverbank searches as social events: “She seemed far less shaken than the rest of us.”

  Nonetheless, Angelika, was present almost every morning to aid in the search. Senior Investigator Moscato was somewhat relieved on the days she did not show up. A missing person case was traumatic enough for those close to the victim, and he dreaded the thought of her being there when they actually found the body. He had given her his cell phone number and they met regularly for updates on the search for Vince. Even on days when he didn’t see her, she usually called to check in.

  * * *

  On April 23, the search area was expanded from the area around Newburgh to include Beacon Bridge and Bear Mountain Bridge. Choppy water kept divers out of the water and bad weather grounded the helicopters, but still they pushed on with shoreline explorations.

  That same day, Angelika was interviewed by News 12 Westchester. She wore subdued makeup and barely there lipstick that dimmed her pallor, and a leopard-print top that drained even more color from her face. She had pulled up her hair into a disheveled bun. As she spoke, she alternated between showing her grief—dropping her head in her hands and audibly sobbing—and behaving in a matter-of-fact manner, insisting that she was doing well.

  She told the reporter that August 15, 2015, was the planned date of their wedding on the Baltic Sea in Latvia. She revealed more provocative details of the ordeal on the river: “I never wore a life jacket myself when I went kayaking—that was the first time. He insisted that I wear it.” She even told the reporter that Vince had told her, “I don’t think I’m going to make it,” when he was in the water.

  When Investigator DeQuarto listened to the interview, he was surprised. DeQuarto had asked her numerous times if Vince had said anything while he struggled, but Angelika had been adamant: the only thing he’d said was, “Call nine-one-one.”

  * * *

  The week after Vinny disappeared in the frigid waters of the Hudson River, Kevin Beisswinger wanted to get friends together in Vince’s honor at one of his favorite restaurants, Shadows on the Hudson. He worried, however, that it might be too soon, so he reached out to Angelika for her opinion. She loved the idea and immediately took over planning the food, layout, and other details. Kevin was happy to let her run with it—dismissing any misgivings he had by rationalizing that everyone handles grief in a different way.

  The group gathered that Friday, five days after Vince went missing. Many tears were shed as they shared memories of Vince and prayed for the recovery of his body. Angelika, however, was in a far different place—arguing with friends over small details at the event and clearly enjoying the attention.

  “It didn’t feel right. And each of my close circle of friends that loved Vin from high school began to feel that she was somehow responsible for Vin’s ‘accident,’” Kevin said. “She was dancing and flirting the night away, as so many of us were grieving and praying that Vin could be found and laid to rest.”

  Angelika had personally invited Senior Investigator Moscato to the event and said she wanted all the search-and-rescue workers to come to the party. At the restaurant, she had a section roped off with her name on a large sign. On Facebook that evening, she posted a dark, noisy video from the restaurant that drew to a dramatic end as the camera zoomed in on a lonely tea light burning bright on the bar.

  Steve Hammond, one of Vince’s close friends, was struck by the contrast between the behavior of Vince’s ex-wife Suzanne Viafore and his current fiancé. Suzanne was shedding tears and sharing deep, soulful hugs with attendees. Steve could feel the intensity of Suzanne’s grief when he wrapped his arms around her. However, his hug with Angelika had a markedly different vibe: “I didn’t feel anything, and it just seemed odd.… She seemed to be relishing the attention she was getting.”

  While at Shadows, Angelika called Sean Von Clauss, who was on his way to a music gig at Eleven 11 grille & spirits restaurant in Fishkill, about half an hour from Poughkeepsie on the other side of Wappingers Falls.

  “I want to play with you,” she said, asking to join him onstage at his performance

  “I’m driving. I’ll call you right back,” Sean responded, and hung up. He wasn’t sure who was calling, thinking it was a different person. When he parked the car, he pressed redial.

  Again she said, “I want to play tonight.”

  Sean thought he recognized the voice but doubted his own ears. “Angelika?”

  “Yes, dummy, it’s me.”

  “Are you okay? Do you think Vinny is okay?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “I want to play with you. I want to do ‘Hotel California.’” Angelika abruptly disconnected the call.

  Angelika left the restaurant, swiping a trifold display card one of Vince�
�s high school friends had created. Arriving at Eleven 11, she requested Sean and his band play “Shama Lama Ding Dong” for Vince. Sean complied, and she slow danced by herself, holding up the trifold and smoking a cigarette.

  Then she was ready for “Hotel California,” a song filled with dark and ominous lyrics. Her performance was miserable—she forgot the words and stumbled over them, even when Sean prompted her. Following that debacle, she insisted on playing Sean’s guitar.

  On break, Sean asked her, “How are you doing?”

  “I’m happy,” she told him.

  “What about Vinny?”

  Once again, she said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Angelika drank to excess that night and had to get a ride home. Jennifer Colvin, her former boyfriend Mike’s sister, came to her rescue.

  Vince’s friend Jackie Bracco was at Eleven 11 that night, too. “Angelika was a little too happy for someone who just lost her fiancé,” she said.

  Rumors were beginning to swirl about what had really happened to Vince and how exactly Angelika was involved. Some friends were insistent, in the beginning, that the couple was deeply in love and that Vince would want everyone to give Angelika the benefit of doubt. But because she projected the attitude that a gigantic weight had been lifted off her shoulders, the whispers grew among Vinny’s friends. An outlandish theory surfaced that Vinny had declared bankruptcy and was running a scam, faking his death. It was a bizarre theory to embrace, but it was better than the alternative.

  The next day, Vince’s family came together for mutual solace at Laura and Kevin Rice’s home. Angelika was there, too. She smoked cigars, drank scotch, and did cartwheels in the backyard. The family were united in their discomfort—something was not right.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  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, so
mebody 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.