Chapter 1 | Remember Me

Paul Solotaroff (0:00)

This series includes sensitive and potentially distressing topics, including sexual assault and abuse involving children. Listener discretion is advised.

It's two weeks after Halloween 1997 Snow's blowing sideways and swirls and stabs, stinging the eyes of the cops and firemen gathered around Nichols Pond. That's a dark squib of water in Putnam County, New York, curtained by a stand of woods.

Penny Osborn (0:46)

If anyone wanted to commit a murder, up here would be the greatest place in the world to hide the body. But no one will find it.

Paul Solotaroff (0:55)

The onlookers stamp their feet for warmth as five men in dive suits take turns wading in. The pond hasn't frozen yet, but as the sharpness of slush as divers slide beneath the surface.

Several arm lengths from the cops stand a mother and father, eyeing the ripples intently. It was a supernatural vision that launched this search.

Penny Osborn (1:21)

I remember seeing a skull in the pond.

The skull was smiling and the skeleton's hands were outstretched, palms facing outward. It scared me.

Paul Solotaroff (1:36)

That's Penny Osborn. She was sure the skull belonged to a girl, a girl named Robin Murphy.

Robin had gone missing more than two years prior. Now, long after, a trail's gone cold, the cops and Robin's parents are hanging their hopes on the divers at the bottom of that pond. Well, that and Penny's paranormal prowess.

Anthony DePippo (2:11)

I'm very agnostic when it comes to things, like spaceships and God, and I look more for evidence.

Paul Solotaroff (2:19)

That's Anthony DePippo, our protagonist from Season 1

As a man who taught himself the law in prison, Anthony's all about facts. But six years ago, when someone slipped in Robin's case file, he caught a chill on the back of his neck.

Anthony DePippo (2:35)

I feel like, you know, like, when I get spoke, it's authentic.

Paul Solotaroff (2:43)

He was sitting in the study of his penthouse apartment, which he'd purchased with a chunk of the $12 million payout for his wrongful conviction in the murder of 12-year-old Josette Wright.

Now Anthony's a big man, six foot five and 300 pounds easy. But while reading through that scene, he heard a loud bang behind him and catapulted out of his chair.

Anthony DePippo (3:07)

And the picture had fell over and it got a dent in it. And I got spooked.

Paul Solotaroff (3:15)

In his parlor, he saw a scene from a paranormal flick. His favorite painting had dropped off the wall and been gashed by a selfie stick. It was a portrait of Anthony and his hero, Hulk Hogan. That stick had opened a gouge over the Hulkster's eye.

If ghosts are phantoms with unfinished business, Robin Murphy had just dropped her card off.

Anthony DePippo (3:40)

I'm bugging out. This is really kind of scary. And I didn't look at it anymore that night.

Paul Solotaroff (3:48)

I first met Anthony six years ago, around the time you got hold of Robin's file. My deep dive feature in Rolling Stone helped to quit his best friend, Andy Krivak, who'd also been falsely convicted of Josette's murder. Anthony's conviction for her murder was the pinch point of his life. But then a second girl vanished in the span of six months in the sleepy little town of Carmel, New York.

No, Anthony knew that the job wasn't done. Josette's killer was still out there, and the man who disappeared Robin as well.

In Anthony's mind, the same man was responsible for both girls, the devil of Putnam County. And so last year, he asked me to return with my shovel. He handed me a copy of Robin's case file. I shared it with my team. We divvied up its 3,000 pages and promptly went to work. In the episodes that follow, we'll train her floodlights on a phantom.

Penny Osborn (4:54)

I don't think she realized how dangerous the situation was.

Paul Solotaroff (4:57)

On every move by those Carmel cops.

James Blaisdell (5:00)

They didn't really take the whole thing seriously, I don't think.

Paul Solotaroff (5:04)

They actually thought they're going to get a confession out of him. On every lead they followed.

James Blaisdell (5:10)

And that's exactly what made us all think he had something to do with it.

Julie Sakara (5:16)

You want to see a real ghost?

Paul Solotaroff (5:20)

Why? Because the devil's in those details and we'll find him there.

I'm Paul Solotaroff and this is Season 2 of The Devil's Quarry. Tina Scorza was raised in Putnam County. Her best friend Robin Murphy was not.

Tina Scorza (6:40)

She moved to Carmel our freshman year of high school. And, you know, she would like go to school and like Doc Martens and Fishnet stockings, and, you know, cut off Jeanne Short, the middle winner.