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