POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — They seemed the picture of love, a handsome couple who doted on their cat, partied with friends at local pubs and paddled the Hudson River in kayaks they stored in their apartment here.
Then, on a Sunday evening in April, Angelika Graswald, 35, made a desperate 911 call from the river. Her fiancé, Vincent Viafore, 46, had capsized, and she could not find him in the cold water. He is presumed dead.
Ten days later, as she laid flowers in his honor on Bannerman Island, the spot the couple had been visiting the day of Mr. Viafore’s death, the police arrested Ms. Graswald and charged her with second-degree murder. At the time, the police said that after his disappearance, she made a number of conflicting statements that implicated her in his death.
But at a bail hearing in Orange County on Wednesday, prosecutors went further. Julie Mohl, an assistant district attorney, quoted Ms. Graswald — in what sounded more like a confession — saying that she had tampered with Mr. Viafore’s kayak and that it had “felt good knowing he was going to die.”
Ms. Mohl said Ms. Graswald was aware she was the beneficiary in two life insurance policies belonging to Mr. Viafore. Ms. Mohl said Ms. Graswald stood to gain $250,000 and “talked about what she could do with the money” after his death.
At a news conference after the hearing, Ms. Graswald’s lawyer, Richard A. Portale, seemed baffled by the turn of events. The leap from inconsistencies to an apparent confession was “a really big difference,” he said.
Mr. Portale attributed some of what prosecutors claim Ms. Graswald said to a language barrier. A native Latvian, she speaks Russian and still struggles with English, he said.
“You think you’re communicating effectively, but you’re really not,” he said.
In the days after the kayak trip, Ms. Graswald created a flurry of Facebook posts that made her seem less grieving than liberated. There were initial photos of the couple together and inspirational bits of poetry, then selfies in which she is practically beaming, a video clip of her doing a cartwheel, and a racy cartoon depicting an old married couple. Less than a week after he died, she turned up at a local pub with their friends and took the stage to sing “Hotel California.”
In an interview Ms. Graswald gave to News 12 Westchester, hours after her arrest on April 29, a motive had been suggested.
According to the news report, Ms. Graswald said the police found her diary, in which she had written that Mr. Viafore wanted to have a sexual threesome and that she wished he were dead. She said she had written that in a momentary flash of anger and did not mean it. She also said the police thought she had tampered with Mr. Viafore’s kayak, which has been recovered.
At the bail hearing, Ms. Mohl said that Ms. Graswald had, indeed, tampered with the kayak and that though Mr. Viafore capsized at 7:15 p.m., she did not call 911 until 7:40 and then intentionally capsized her own kayak to make it look as though she had tried to save him.
The Town of Poughkeepsie Police Department said that a male body had been pulled from the Hudson on Wednesday morning but would not comment on whether it was Mr. Viafore’s.
Before the bail hearing, some of the couple’s closest friends said they could not fathom how Ms. Graswald, who is about five feet tall, could have killed Mr. Viafore, who was 6 feet 2 inches. Nor, they said, did they see a motive.
“He was smitten with her, and she was smitten with him,” said Sean Von Clauss, a musician who grew up with Mr. Viafore and planned to play at their wedding. “They both came to a show I gave in December. They were slow dancing, and he spun her around. They were so in love.”
This would have been the third marriage for both Mr. Viafore and Ms. Graswald, who first came to this country from Latvia at age 20 as an au pair for a family in Connecticut.
A former boyfriend, Mike Colvin, said she had been known to act rashly when love did not go her way.
After she separated from her second husband, Ms. Graswald moved in with Mr. Colvin, a D.J. and former radio host in Dutchess County whom she had known for only three weeks. She arrived with scores of items belonging to her former husband, including a television set, wall hangings and even paper towels.
“She had wiped him out,” Mr. Colvin said. (A court later ordered that they be returned.)
When she and Mr. Colvin broke up in early 2010, he said, they fought over custody of their cat. Ms. Graswald wanted it; Mr. Colvin resisted. “I didn’t trust her,” he said, calling her irresponsible. So Ms. Graswald lay down behind his car, he said, to keep him from leaving. At that point, he said, “I was like, ‘Take the cat.’ ” (She returned the animal a few days later.)
Mr. Viafore grew up along the river, in a tight-knit, middle-class neighborhood in Wappinger, in southern Dutchess County. One friend, Gena Vanzillotta, also grew up there. “Half the neighborhood was Italian, and the other half was Irish,” she recalled. “It was almost like a little Bronx or Yonkers.”
An athlete in high school, Mr. Viafore could be found most weekends with the same circle of friends from his childhood in one of any number of river town bars.
“He liked a good party and a good cigar,” Ms. Vanzillotta said. “You couldn’t find anyone who would say a bad word about him.”
Indeed, friends say Ms. Graswald and Mr. Viafore met at either Mahoney’s Irish Pub or the Pickwick Pub, both on Poughkeepsie’s Main Street, in September 2013. They were soon living together in his rental apartment, on the second floor of a modest, tan-brick complex here. She easily joined his social world.
“No matter where they were, he always had his arm around her,” said Mr. Von Clauss, the musician.
The police have asked their neighbors whether they heard the couple fighting. One neighbor, who declined to give her name because of the case’s notoriety, said she had not noticed any quarreling.
Mr. Viafore, a construction manager, had struggled financially: He declared bankruptcy in 2010. Bankruptcy records listed his salary in 2009 as $167,000. But his liabilities outstripped his assets by more than $26,000, and his Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stingray powerboat were repossessed.
When the couple began dating, Ms. Graswald was working as a bartender at Grand Centro Grill in nearby Fishkill; she left that job last year, and Mr. Viafore was supporting her. For the past three years, she has volunteered in the gardens every Wednesday at Bannerman Castle, on an island that is part of the state park system.
The island is home to the moody ruins of a castle built at the turn of the last century by a Scottish-born munitions dealer.
Neil Caplan the executive director of the Bannerman Castle Trust, said the couple should not have been on the island by themselves. Because of the hazardous ruins, access to the island is by guided tour only. He also questioned the decision to go kayaking in April, when the water is dangerously cold.
“I don’t know why anyone would go out on the river when it’s 46 degrees,” Mr. Caplan said, referring to the water temperature on April 19, the day of the kayaking trip. “You get hypothermia.” And while Ms. Graswald was wearing a life vest, Mr. Viafore was not, the police said.
When Ms. Graswald showed up at a pub in Fishkill five days after Mr. Viafore apparently drowned, she was simultaneously supported and scrutinized. Mr. Von Clauss was performing, and the couple’s friends watched as Ms. Graswald drank and laughed. Finally, she sang the Eagles anthem “Hotel California,” which she had crooned at least once before while out with Mr. Viafore.
Her voice was shaky, but soon the whole room joined in the singing.
Mr. Portale, her lawyer, had dismissed criticism of her behavior and her seemingly lighthearted posts on Facebook, saying the police were overlooking her upbringing, which favored putting on a good front, rather than indulging in grief.
After the bail hearing, he said he believed the statements were coerced. “I’m not buying any of it,” he said in a telephone interview.
And, at the news conference, he declared: “Today was a success. We forced their hand to reveal what was happening.”
Ms. Graswald’s bail was set at $3 million in cash or $9 million bond. She remained in jail.
More in N.Y. / Region
Police Shoot Hammer-Wielding Man Sought in 4 Manhattan Attacks
CRIME SCENE
A Police Shooting in Midtown’s Seedier Side
If Disney has taken over Times Square, then Eighth Avenue is its sooty back lot.Kayak Suspect Reportedly ‘Felt Good’ Fiancé Would Die
Amtrak Train That Derailed Was Going 106 M.P.H., Officials Say; 7 Killed
Amtrak Commuters’ Struggles to Continue for Several Days
Program Providing Legal Help to Immigrants Will Expand Beyond New York City
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered