Meanwhile, Gombert will follow from his cell while keeping one eye on the calendar. And we will watch the prosecutor’s last key witness tell her plainly false story again. We will watch the cops who arrested the boys tell their stories again, though those tales are so shopworn and shot with holes that no jury in any county will believe them. We will watch Gombert’s accusers take the stand and suffer through another public shaming. (Gombert, reached in prison, denied the allegations and impugned the credibility of his accusers.)Ĭome September, then, we’ll watch a grim reprisal of the 2016 trial that freed DiPippo. Instead, Putnam’s district attorney will fight to preserve the lies that protect the county.
So no, Howard Gombert won’t be on trial this fall. The malfeasance is so thick here, you could crack a crown biting into it, and the way you tell crooked cops from common criminals is the size of their pension plan.
But this is Putnam County, a white-flight, Trump-allegiant nonplace in New York state, 40 miles - and 40 light-years - from the Bronx. Instead, substantial evidence points to Gombert as the man behind those crimes. What they want is to be heard in full by men in power. They don’t want our pity or compensation from the state. “To speak for all the girls who aren’t here.” Tina Z.* is still here and can’t be silenced, though she was all of 12 when he first raped her, she’s said. “The universe chose me because I was strong enough to survive,” she says. “No matter how loud I spoke, though, they just didn’t hear me.” Laney B.* is still here and can’t be silenced, though she was only seven when Gombert molested her. “I used my voice, I told everyone,” she tells Rolling Stone. Because Rachel is still here and can’t be silenced, though cops ignored her for a decade. No one knows where it comes from, but we can confirm it exists. There are people born with an extra layer, a quality we call resilience. “I had my own drawer slutty clothes,” Rachel said at trial. He bought her jewelry and showered her with lingerie. He took her fishing on his days off from work.
Years before the secret room in the garage behind his place, years before he ran around sickening the souls of untold girls in Putnam County, New York, Howard Gombert had a jones for Rachel R.* From the day he entered her life with sweet talk and presents, Gombert danced attendance on Rachel. * Some names have been changed to protect survivors of sexual assault and abuse.
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