NY Child Murder Case Reopens As Podcast Debuts

NEW YORK, NY— A child murder case in Putnam County, New York, long believed to be settled, has returned to the center of an active investigation as a convicted predator nears release after decades in prison.

That discovery became the spine of Bone Valley Season 5: The Devil’s Quarry, a production from Lava for Good with Rolling Stone Films and Signal Co. No1.

At the Tribeca Film Festival, investigative reporter Paul Solotaroff debuted the eight-episode podcast developed over nine months of reporting.

Solotaroff said the case remains active, with a timeline tied to the expected release of a key figure in the investigation, which he described as a driving force behind the series’ structure.

“Listen with your voices and listen with your viscera,” he said.

The case began, as so many do, with a missing person report.

Then, a hunter discovered human remains in woods near Carmel, about 40 miles north of the Bronx, belonging to Josette Wright.

“A rope was found tied around her wrists, and her underwear was shoved in her mouth,” Solotaroff said. “She was only 12 years old.”

The podcast follows multiple figures pulled into that narrowing circle, including Anthony DiPippo, who revisits his conviction from inside prison walls.

Another thread runs through Howard Gombert, whose name, Solotaroff said, appears again and again across case files in more than one jurisdiction.

A newly formed task force, operating under new leadership, has reopened parts of the original case file.

Investigators have gone back through leads that had gone cold, reexamining decisions made years earlier under a different administration.

“They have now sat first with our lawyers and then with me and my squad to essentially beg for our assistance," Solotaroff said.

The reversal, he said, would have been unthinkable during the early years of the case: the years when interrogations shaped outcomes and when, he argued, certain suspects were locked in while others were never fully tested.

The podcast itself grew out of a wider body of reporting, including years of work with the Innocence Project and investigations into wrongful convictions and police misconduct in multiple cities.

“I don’t have a deadline, I don’t have a budget,” he said. “I can spend as long and as much as it takes to dig to the bottom of these huge kind of epic injustices.”

The podcast is available to listen here.