Friday, December 21, 2018

A ghost of Christmas Past comes back to haunt Phil Vetrano a few days before Christmas Eve


Sure, it's the Winter Solstice and not Christmas Eve,  but I'm Galewyn Massey and not Charles Dickens  ---  so the first "Christmas Spirit" to visit Phil Vetrano this year will be a little bit earlier than the conventional Dickensian Christmas Spirits 


The reason is simple  ---   this is the first anniversary of a very unfortunate Nancy Grace "Crime Stories" podcast  ---  generally unfortunate for the pseudo-investigators of the NYPD and the Queens County prosecutors trying to put a horse-collar frame around Chanel Lewis  ---  but particularly unfortunate for Phil Vetrano, whose interview segment  during this particular Nancy Grace show demonstrated that  >>>  HE MORE THAN ANYBODY ELSE NEEDED TO BE INVESTIGATED AS A PRIME SUSPECT IN ANY INVESTIGATION OF THE MURDER OF HIS DAUGHTER  ---  even if he might not be the one who is actually the individual who murdered her


The show was routine Nancy Grace hyperbolic clap-trap  ---   with Nancy's overstating the nature of almost each and every item of evidence against Chanel Lewis,  including all the DNA  and the quality and content of his video-taped confession   


However,  since the mistrial in the case against Chanel Lewis, this show is now very useful  ---  it provides us all with a roadmap as to why any rational jury might find Chanel Lewis innocent, and why the actual jury in the trial of Chanel Lewis could not find him guilty of anything  ---  quite simply, almost nothing that Nancy Grace said proved-out at the actual trial of the case


Nancy Grace started her 12/21/17 trip down "Dead End Lane" with a theory of the case that Karina Vetrano was killed during a rage-driven beating, strangulation and drowning, and rape  ---  in which any perpetrator would have come away significantly injured, and a scraped and scratched bloody mess  ---  unfortunately, almost none of that was born out by the actual medical evidence about Karina Vetrano and Chanel Lewis introduced at the real life trial


(BTW,  there might be more Dickensian-style Spirits visiting Phil on Christmas Eve this year ---  right on the traditional Dickensian schedule) 




On December 21, 2017,  Nancy Grace made it sound like the case against Chanel Lewis should be a slam dunk, easily proving the guilt of Chanel Lewis if the case ever were to go to trial.  More than that,  the twangy, overly-southern belle and overly-folksy crime show hostess went so far as to suggest that it was outrageous for Chanel Lewis to be asserting through his lawyers that he was "not guilty" of the crimes for which he had been charged,  based on all the conclusive DNA evidence and his videotaped confession.

However,  if one looks at the real evidence that did get introduced at the trial, and then compared that to what Nancy Grace and her virtual in-house criminalist, Joseph Scott Morgan, and so-called "DNA expert," George Schiro, said on her show last year,  one would have to conclude that  >>>  none of what was called the conclusive “evidence” against Chanel Lewis was anything near what Nancy Grace and her guests described as necessary and/or conclusive enough to prove Chanel Lewis' guilt of the torturous beating,  rape and murder of Karina Vetrano.


GRACE WAS 100% WRONG ABOUT WHAT WAS IN THE CHANEL LEWIS TAPED CONFESSION  ---  AND WHAT ELSE IT ALSO SHOWED ABOUT CHANEL LEWIS

Much of what Nancy Grace repeatedly stated was that Chanel Lewis' video-taped confession was full of details;  and she repeatedly recited those details, which she described as coming from his confession  --  except none of those details about the scene, the description condition of the victim's body and her clothing, the details of how he caused the victim's death, and even his description of his own injuries are even close to being correct or accurate,  based upon other definitive evidence in the case.

Also, both Nancy Grace and her criminalist guest Joseph Scott Morgan made a very strong pitch that this all occurred in the commission of a violent sex crime by Chanel Lewis.  That is something that was apparently completely rejected by the trial jury and at least one of the alternate jurors.

THE REALITY OF DNA EVIDENCE WAS MISREPRESENTED BY BOTH NANCY GRACE AND HER DNA EXPERT

Grace similarly, overstated or misstated the nature, recovery methods, handling, analysis and accuracy of the profile of the DNA obtained at the crime scene and off of the body of the victim Karina Vetrano,  as well as understating the chances of corruption of the samples, and/or the accidental or intentional secondary transfer of the DNA used to make the initial “profile” shortly after the victim's body was taken under control by the police investigators and then later turned over to the medical examiners.


THE PHIL VETRANO SEGMENT ON NANCY GRACE WAS FULL OF ADMISSIONS BY HIM

More important than any of that stuff about the "conclusive evidence" against Chanel Lewis , the 12-21-17 show included a segment of  some of Nancy Grace's recorded statements by Phil Vetrano.  

During that "interview" segment,  Phil Vetrano gave a personal timeline that put himself right into the middle of this murder case in a very unusual and suspicious way.  

Phil Vetrano said that at the time his daughter left on her run, which he said was about 5:30 PM,  she told him that she was going to run on "the trail in the weeds."  He then said he very quickly became very agitated sensing that something was wrong;  he said ".... She was only gone  twenty minutes."  He then recounted the times of his attempted cell calls to his daughter, the victim Karina Vetrano  ---  6:27; 6:28 and 6:30.  After a short chat with his wife, who had just came home, Phil Vetrano then  "went looking for her [his daughter]” by also by going out into the weeds and walking the trail where they usually ran.

During that first walk into the trails and weeds, Phil Verano said he was all alone.  This was a key ADMISSION that he went into the area where the crime was committed,  ie. "the crime scene,"  all by himself,  and this was well before he called anybody connected to the NYPD to begin their search.  As part of his ADMISSION,  he said that he walked to within about 200 feet from where he said she was ( and where HE later mysteriously found his daughter's body).  He said that he stopped there because he and his daughter had never gone farther than that.  It was only after that that he called the police.

Phil Vetrano also described in detail how later he almost miraculously found the broken body of his dead daughter  He said that he did this by going off the trail and into the”pitch black[ness]” and proceeding  about thirty or thirty-five feet into the eight foot tall weeds.  This was all after he returned to the crime scene from walking back home for some not completely-explained reason.  However,  Vetrano explained that he returned to the trails after police called him and told him that they had located his daughter's cellphone.  After seeing the spot near the trail where the phone was found and bagged by police, Phil Vetrano kept walking another fifty feet or so along the trail to a spot where the trail split and no other searchers were looking.

So, more than fifty feet away from where Karina’s cellphone was found by police, and in the opposite direction from where most of the large posse of searchers, including “bloodhounds,” were looking for her, in the darkness Vetrano plunged into the bush on one side of the path.  Once he was in the thick undergrowth about 30 to 35 feet from the trail, he was the very first person among all the searchers to happen upon his daughter's body.   He said that after finding the body at around 10:30 he knew she was dead, because he had picked her up, and he could feel that “rigor had started to set in.”  

Vetrano then described some  jostling and verbal jousting as police tried to get Karina Vetrano from her father's grip, and to secure the crime scene. Vetrano said all of that happened because he thought that his daughter needed her “Daddy to bring her home.” After that he got calls about “rumors,” so he went home.again to tell his wife what had happened.

Interestingly, the so-called NYPD investigators didn't seem interested in any of this.  What makes that even more INTERESTING is all of that should have been only one piece of an investigation of Phil Vetrano, and much of the rest of it would be necessarily based upon his very complex history and all of the possibilities that it should have suggested to real investigators.  However, I'm sure that the NYPD chiefs and psuedo-investigators on this case were among the folks that Karina Vetrano was talking about as her father's "...  many 'friends' he knows who can 'help' him..." in matters of life and death based on the overall context in her literary piece "Freud This".....

THE REAL STORY OF PHIL VETRANO IS YET TO BE TOLD

When it comes to the Vetrano Murder case, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Nancy Grace and her podcasts is the way that she and they were used to propagate the false narrative about what a great guy Phil Vetrano is.  The same is true of almost all of the other media folks that did the same thing. Certainly, that includes the local reporters for the local TV affiliates of CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox.
And of course, Phil Vetrano owes plenty of thanks to the NY Daily News and the NY Post, together with many in the local Queens press.

So far, nobody from the crowd above did a real deep dive into who Phil Vetrano really is;  and more important, all the OTHER things that he has done in his life that are completely different from what has been reported thus fair.  As a result, Phil Vetrano has been allowed to hide in plain sight; even more than that, he's been able to have more than his fifteen minutes of personal fame while being at the center of a major murder investigation.

Of course, if the full story of Phil Vetrano came out, it would be very bad for lots of people;  and everything about Karina Vetrano's murder would have to be looked at from a very different angle by both the police and the media.

BUT THAT IS A STORY FOR ANOTHER DAY.....  MAYBE AS TOLD BY "THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS FUTURE" OR SOME OTHER GHOST ON CHRISTMAS EVE

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, KV's poem 'Freud This': her dream about the whole family being in Rome; guns to her father's head; Karina and her sister the only ones to protect him, in spite of all his strength and powerful 'friends'; Karina using her body to protect her dad and then asking him to hold her like twenty years ago when she was a little girl.

Anonymous said...

Why did a police chief jump into action with the whole NYPD the second he got a call from Phil Vetrano when Karina was missing less than two hours?

Why did John Gotti III say the Vetrano's were safe when the Gotti's watched over Howard Beach, but not when the cops pushed them out and took over that job?

And why did John Gotti III get arrested twice in less than a week after he said that and other stuff about Phil Vetrano?

Anonymous said...

When they finally do make a movie about this whole Vetrano thing, will it be more like "Mystic River" - "The Departed" - "A Bronx Tale" - "Goodfellas" - "Serpico" or "Chinatown"?

Maybe, it will have at least a little bit of all of them, but which one jumps out at you?

Anonymous said...

More like "Prince of The City".

Cops and prosecutors are the real players here. And since its Queens a Judge will always be in it for a taste.

Galewyn Massey said...

RESPONSE: THE "YOU ARE WORSE THAN A DOG WITH A BONE" EDITION

TO: ANONYMOUS SAID... AT 7:57 AM" & "... AT 9:21 AM"

I HOPE THAT YOU GUYS ARE ONLY TRYING TO MAKE A POINT --- REALLY, IT'S JUST NOT THE RIGHT TIME TO BE TALKING ABOUT THIS CASE IN TERMS OF SOME KIND OF MOVIE OR BOOK DEAL

AND "... AT 9:21 AM," I KNOW WHO YOU ARE --- YOUR "PRINCE OF THE CITY" TROPE IS ALL TIED UP WITH YOUR FIXATION ON DETECTIVE LIEUTENANT JOHN RUSSO


Yes, John Russo is involved in this big pot of stew, but he is only one of the ingredients.....

If you want to look at the cops, look at the "Chiefs" not just the warriors in the raiding party.

Anonymous said...

"pot of stew" you say. I think not. Pasta Fagiola maybe.

Anonymous said...

Dirty cops in Howard Beach. Shocked !!

Anonymous said...

Maybe the person who killeed Karina confessed and is in jail.

Anonymous said...

To 3:13 PM the only person sitting in jail confessed to "drowning" Karina Vetrano, but Karina Vetrano was not any kind of drowning victim.
The only person sitting in jail confessed to having to clean his own blood off from the wounds that he received in his fight with Karina Vetrano, but a contemporary medical report shows that he didn't have such wounds on his body.
The videotaped confession of the only person sitting in jail, shows a very simple and polite young man, who seems quite confused about what he is being asked, and whether his answers were the correct ones for the questions that he was being asked.
The only conclusion is that investigating cops fed those things and other facts and theories of the case to the only person sitting in jail.
At on point during deliberations, most of the jury and at least one of the alternate jurors rejected the alleged confession of the only person sitting in jail as being unreliable as evidence.

Galewyn Massey said...

BACKFILL: THE "DON'T BELIEVE FOR A SECOND THAT THIS WAS ONLY ABOUT SELLING SOME PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AROUND THE NABE" EDITION

SINCE SOMEBODY BROUGHT UP PEOPLE SITTING IN JAIL --- IT LOOKS LIKE AT LEAST ONE OTHER PERSON CONNECTED TO THE KARINA VETRANO MURDER CASE WILL BE SITTING IN JAIL FOR QUITE SOME TIME.....

Almost a year ago, in the first real plea deal connected very closely to the Karina Vetrano murder investigation, John Gotti III pleaded guilty to drug charges connected to his two arrests in Howard Beach occurring right after the Karina Vetrano murder and the younger Gotti's complaints about the cops not being able to keep Howard Beach safe after Karina's killing --- in announcing the plea deal, the Queens DA said he was sending a signal.

Don't forget that, among other things, John Gotti said that Karina Vetrano travelled in his "circle," that the Vetrano's were "part of us," and that Phil Vetrano, a man that operated the nearby scrap metal business, under unknown terms and conditions, was "a real man"...

While still searching for murder clues all over Howard Beach just two days after Karina Vetrano's brutal murder, John Gotti III was stopped near his home for for having tinted windows on his car as part of the local police dragnet in Howard Beach.

At about the same time as this first Gotti arrest, police suddenly allowed Phil Vetrano to re-enter the crime scene not far from the Vetrano and Gotti homes in Howard Beach "to help look for evidence and clues" connected to the murder of his daughter.

A few days later, cops broke into the Gotti Howard Beach homestead and John Gotti III was again arrested after he had again made public statements about the cops, the rising crime in Howard Beach and the Vetranos. After the second arrest some Gotti associates were quoted as saying John Gotti III was not doing the right thing selling drugs around the neighborhood.

Suddenly, immediately following the Karina Vetrano murder, the cops, the Queens DA and some Gotti associates were working more closely and openly together to clean up some obvious problems that involved various people in the Gotti circle in Howard Beach, including the Vetranos.

As far as I know, nobody has looked into the connections between the Gottis and the Vetranos and/or the connections of the two police investigations in Howard Beach and/or the Queens DA's prosecutions of the up to now two separate cases involving Howard Beach in August of 2016. What is clear is that there had to be lots of connections that nobody seems to want the public to know about --- Gotti said there were, and lots of the things were happening almost simultaneously in the two parallel cases.....

Anonymous said...

What nobody has mentioned is that there was lots of ongoing police activity in and around Howard Beach on August 2, 2016 at the time Karina Vetrano was violently killed in broad daylight not far from her home, where Gotti lived and some police chief lived. Before Karina Vetrano's body was found, "hundreds" of cops were sent to look for her. This all supposedly happened in what the cops and the Queens DA's Office want everybody to think was a random event.
Give me a break.

Anonymous said...

The Queens DA Richard Brown is a disgrace but hes not stupid like Hynes. Brown will not run for re-election in 2019.

Anonymous said...

The NY Post says Chanel Lewis is guilty. What more do you need?

Galewyn Massey said...

UPDATE & BACKFILL: THE “OUT OF TOWN COVERAGE” EDITION

LEGAL AID SUES TO THROW OUT USE OF "FAMILIAL DNA," WHICH WAS URGED BY THE VETRANOS, AS AN ILLEGAL ACTION BY THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AND FORENSIC SCIENTISTS AGENCIES OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

MANY ARGUMENTS RAISED IN COURT --- INCLUDING THE INTRINSIC RACISM OF THE WHOLE FAMILIAL DNA CONCEPT APPROVED BY THE NYS DIVISION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE SERVICES, THE [NY] STATE COMMISSION ON FORENSIC SCIENCE AND THE DNA SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE STATE COMMISION ON FORENSIC SCIENCE

LEGAL AID PETITION AND BRIEF POINTED OUT THAT IN THE MOST RECENT YEAR FOR DATA, THREE MAJOR CASES IN NEW YORK STATE INVOLVED FALSE REPORTS OF “DNA POSITIVES” AND THAT >>> COVERUPS<<< WERE DISCOVERED WHEN THE STATE AGENCIES ATTEMPTED TO INVESTIGATE THEMSELVES FOR THEIR FAILINGS IN THOSE CASES

The Albany Time Union reports that “Police [investigators claimed that they] had found traces of the killer’s DNA on the battered body of Karina Vetrano…. [And that o]n Dec. 7, 2016, Queens County District Attorney Richard A. Brown wrote a letter to the chairman of New York’s Commission on Forensic Science, imploring the commission to authorize the use of a technique called ‘familial searching,’ in which the state’s DNA database would be searched for profiles of potential relatives of the unknown suspect.” (See “DNA scrutiny of relatives faces legal challenge” by Brendan J. Lyons, 12/23/18, Times Union [https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/State-s-DNA-work-faces-legal-challenge-13464517.php#photo-16673083]).
The Times Union article went on to say that --- “…. The search technique, approved in a dozen states but, at the time of Brown’s request, not New York, was not used and played no role in the February 2017 arrest of 22-year-old Chanel Lewis of Brooklyn, who was charged with Vetrano’s murder. His trial ended with a hung jury — despite what prosecutors claimed was irrefutable DNA evidence — and he remains jailed awaiting a retrial. But Brown’s request set in motion an effort by the state forensic science commission that would lead it to implement a controversial new regulation allowing familial DNA searches….”
The same lawyers as those representing Chanel Lewis are suing to have the recent rules of the New York Commission on Forensic Science allowing the use of “familial DNA” thrown out by the courts.

The case was argued in the New York Supreme Court last week.

Anonymous said...

Was the illegal use of a familial DNA search the real way that the NYPD tracked down Chanel Lewis prior to his arrest for the murder of Karina Vetrano?
The way things were done in this case strongly points to something like that or something equally underhanded.
From the beginning to the end of the 'handling' of Chanel Lewis is just a series of NYPD wrongful acts, followed by the Queens County DA's Office misconduct up to and during the trial.