Introducing - Bone Valley Season 5 | The Devil's Quarry: Preview

**Paul Solotaroff** (0:00)
This series includes sensitive and potentially distressing topics, including sexual assault and abuse involving children. Listener discretion is advised.
On November 22nd, 1995, a hunter named Peter Erickson walked the woods of Carmel, New York, 50 or so yards in from Fields Lane. He was out there that morning with a buddy of his named Bruce. It was the first day of hunting season in Putnam County, and the two friends were setting up a tree stand that morning. That's the perch that hunters hide in, waiting for a deer.

**Peter Erickson** (0:44)
My buddy was down below, he was afraid of heights, so he was handing me stuff, and I was up in this tree.
And all of a sudden, I look out in the road, and there's like 20 cop cars pull up, you know, all at once. And then they start walking into the woods, and you're like, what is going on here?

**Paul Solotaroff** (1:05)
The Carmel's County seat of Putnam, it's still a pretty small town. Enough so that Peter knew some of the cops who swarmed the woods that morning.

**Peter Erickson** (1:14)
I recognized a few of them. One of them, Pat, his name was Pat Castaldo.

**Paul Solotaroff** (1:20)
Pat Castaldo, a detective for the Putnam County Sheriff, was straight out of a drugstore novel. He slicked his hair back in a tight pompadour and wore a topcoat even when it was warm.
Oh, and he moonlighted on weekends as an Elvis impersonator at several of the local dives.

**Peter Erickson** (1:41)
The guy kind of looked like Elvis a little bit, but that's why he was so memorable to me. It wasn't my friend. It was like an acquaintance that we knew from working there in the jail periodically doing electrical work. So as they were coming in, I said, hey, Pat, how are you doing? What's going on?
And he goes, well, somebody found something in the woods.

**Paul Solotaroff** (2:02)
Earlier that morning, another hunter had stumbled over something in those woods.
He bent to check it out. It was the skull of a preteen girl.

**Peter Erickson** (2:12)
He had found that skull, took it home, took it home.

**Paul Solotaroff** (2:18)
Later that day, the hunter called the cops. And now, as Castalho told Peter and Bruce, he was out there looking for her body.

**Peter Erickson** (2:31)
So we're like, no way, you know, this is Putnam County. Back then, it was a quieter town.
You don't hear this stuff here.
So my friend Bruce and I said, do you mind if we kind of look around and help you? So he goes, yeah, no problem.

**Paul Solotaroff** (2:49)
Cops rarely let civilians walk their crime scene. According to Peter, though, that's what happened here.

**Peter Erickson** (2:58)
So I'm walking, I'm looking, and my buddy Bruce goes, hey, come over here.

**Paul Solotaroff** (3:05)
Castaldo and the other cops rushed over to Bruce.
He was crouched in the clearing between the trees, over a mound of sticks and leaves that looked composed. He lifted one of the branches and a chunk of the ground cover came up. He saw something underneath it.

**Peter Erickson** (3:23)
It was her skeleton.
There's a tremendous amount of debris as well. I mean, you see the skeleton, but it's not like this bright white thing that's sticking out in the woods. There was a mandible, the lower part of the jaw, and her brow was tied in the mandible, it was sitting on the ground. There was hair there. You could see there was hair there, dirty blonde-like hair, just laying there in the leaves. It was the rib cage, it looked like, it's kind of sick, you know what I mean? It looked like the rib cage was mostly intact. This skeleton was small too.
It was a small skeleton, it was horrible.

**Paul Solotaroff** (4:09)
The body belonged to a 12-year-old girl, a girl who had gone missing a full year prior. Her name was Josette Wright, and it was Castaldo they put in charge of finding her.
The cops taped the site off and gathered forensics. There were clothes draped over the body, including the coat she was last seen wearing. It was badly moldered, with plant roots growing through it. Her bra had been tied around her head. Forensics pros would later say that it had been used to gag her, along with her underwear, which had been stuffed in her mouth.
Her hands were bound in a complex odd tie. A sash cord ran from her wrist to both her neck and ankle, yanking her right foot back behind her. And not far from her body, cops found a hunting knife rusted in the damp.