I just watched a episode Dateline ID It was focused on a woman Angelika Graswald who was charged with killing her fiancee.Has any one heard or watched the episode .I would like your opinion .I personally think she was wrongfully charged.A case study of what not to due when going kayaking.
The way I understand legal obligation, unless she did something to cause the drowning, she isn’t responsible. A parent has a legal responsibility for a child, but not sure about spouse - until death do we part.
April kayak trip, no PFD, 3 ft waves, both drinking, getting late. She apparently didnt like him and wanted him dead, but apparently no evidence that she was culpable. Suprised she did 6 weeks. Court red in her favor. Done! He had a $250,000 insurance policy. She celebrated her release with drinks and a steak. There’s a lesson in that somewhere.
Hopefully she was deported back to Latvia.
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Apparently she’d removed the scupper plug.
This is an old story from 2015. Angelika Graswald eventually pled guilty to negligent homicide and spent 31 months in Orange County Jail then one month in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility before being released on 16 months of parole All but 2 months of jail time was before her guilty plea and were credited as time served. Graswald as last reported in 2019 had become born again and was living in a small cabin in Orange County where she works for a room and board at a small camp connected to her church. Supposedly she said that she wanted to straighten out her immigration status and return to Latvia.
Due to her guilty plea she probably never collected on two $250,000 life insurance policies that her then fiancée took out. The police made several crucial errors in their investigation. Graswald has never expressed remorse for her fiancée’s death
drain plug
Yes, you’re right!
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That case was barely about kayaking to start. If they had not been in boats, some series of strange events would have happened on land.
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I give tours to Bannerman’s Island which is where the murder happened, they filmed clips of the tv show on the beach we use to launch kayaks as well. Knowing the area, going out in the weather they did in those tiny boats without bulkheads was a super dumb idea, current is also pretty quick in the area the man capsized. I think there is a 95% chance she is innocent, even if she had it out for him. The most of the case was built on ridiculous “evidence”, such as the fact his drain plug was missing. Turns out he knew it was missing beforehand and it was also on top of the kayak. A missing drain plug is somewhat of a non issue when you consider the potential for water getting in a 1/4 in hole vs a giant cockpit.
They weren’t married.
Neither had PFDs or were dressed for immersion. They presumably did not know how to do a self or assisted rescue. If Vince had a PFD on and help was called for right away, he almost certainly would have survived. He lost his boat and paddle and was last seen trying to use a seat cushion for floatation. I would assume, given the time of year, that he drowned due to cold water immersion causing swim failure. His body was recovered about a month later.
At first the authorities thought it was an accident, but later changed their minds after digging into the couples backgrounds and Angelika’s apparent lack of caring about the incident. They made a major mistake of questioning her for hours without mirandizing her. Later she changed many of her answers, but the authorities could not use her previous answers to challenge the inconsistencies in court.
The prosecutors, having no concrete evidence of murder and fearing they could not get a unanimous guilty verdict offered her a negligent homicide charge with little more time to serve. Angelika not wanting to take a chance on a trial agreed to it.
There being no witnesses or concrete evidence there’s no way to get at the truth of this incident. There’s also no way to determine if 911 was called right away.
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My mistake thanks for the correction
Good info synopsis.