Jul 8, 2026 · 47 min · 20 segments
Anthony sends investigators to learn more about Howard Gombert. The women they speak with illuminate a signature crime. Award-winning investigative journalist and longtime Rolling Stone Magazine…
Paul SolotaroffHost
Anthony DiPippoGuest
By the time Anthony's second trial finally started, he gathered reams of proof pointing away from his guilt and pointing instead to Howard Gombert as Josette's possible killer.
Alas, proof compiled in prison is a far far thing from proof presented at trial.
To simply get a hearing is a Herculean climb for someone serving life without parole.
If you somehow get that hearing, you must then convince the judge to let in new relevant facts, not just the ones presented at your previous trial.
And as Anthony had learned in Putnam County, the judges there seemed deeply disinterested in new facts.
But to convey how strong his new proof was, we'll need to return our attention to the Devil.
When last we left Gombert, he pulled up stakes and moved across state lines to Connecticut.
His father, Howard Senior, owned a ramshackle house in the working class hamlet of New Fairfield.
At some point in his boyhood, Howard either ran away or was kicked out by his dad, said those women.
By the age of 15, he was living in the woods, sleeping in a tent in the dead of winter.
He knew every square inch of those woods, the women told us, and fed himself on what he stole or killed.
So when he returned to Connecticut in '95 as a man in his early 30s, he went right back to those woods in New Fairfield.
By the time Anthony's second trial finally started, he gathered reams of proof pointing away from his guilt and pointing instead to Howard Gombert as Josette's possible killer.
Alas, proof compiled in prison is a far far thing from proof presented at trial.
To simply get a hearing is a Herculean climb for someone serving life without parole.
If you somehow get that hearing, you must then convince the judge to let in new relevant facts, not just the ones presented at your previous trial.
And as Anthony had learned in Putnam County, the judges there seemed deeply disinterested in new facts.
But to convey how strong his new proof was, we'll need to return our attention to the Devil.
When last we left Gombert, he pulled up stakes and moved across state lines to Connecticut.
His father, Howard Senior, owned a ramshackle house in the working class hamlet of New Fairfield.
At some point in his boyhood, Howard either ran away or was kicked out by his dad, said those women.
By the age of 15, he was living in the woods, sleeping in a tent in the dead of winter.
He knew every square inch of those woods, the women told us, and fed himself on what he stole or killed.
So when he returned to Connecticut in '95 as a man in his early 30s, he went right back to those woods in New Fairfield.
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