Page 83 of Dead Man's Hollow
CHLOE: Jimmy, his brother, was a rookie officer. Jimmy would always page Rich to give him a head’s up if he could. So I said goodbye to Andre and then started to run back to the fire to find Amy.
MAISY: But you never made it. Why not?
CHLOE: I heard a commotion back where the guys were and I turned around to see what was going on. Rich had stepped up to Andre, and they squared off. Andre shouted for his friends, and three or four guys came running.
MAISY: Was this the fight we heard about?
CHLOE: Yes, it was over quick because the police were arriving. I could hear sirens. Rich and his friends left, and the Allderdice guys took off in the opposite direction. But then Frankie came running back up the hill. Andre was sitting on the ground, retying his shoes. He got up in a hurry. Frankie poked him in the chest twice and basically told him I was Rich’s property. Andre didn’t like that and said someone should have told me. Then, real fast, Frankie hauled off and punched Andre in the chest. It was just the one punch, but Andre staggered back, then collapsed face-down in the dirt.
We stopped the recording so Chloe could gather herself. When she was ready, she continued her story.
CHLOE: Frankie was gone by then. Andre wasn’t moving, so I ran to him and turned him over. He wasn’t breathing. I took CPR as part of a babysitting class, so I tried to give him mouth to mouth and then chest compressions, but … he was dead.
MAISY (gently): Do you remember where Frank struck Andre? Which part of his chest?
CHLOE: Uh, the left side. Above his heart.
MAISY: Are you sure?
CHLOE: I’m positive.
MAISY: What happened next?
CHLOE: Rich heard me screaming and ran back to the flat rock. He says he saw me pounding on Andre’s chest. When he realized he was dead, he told me to run, that he would take care of it.
Chloe didn’t remember any of this until she returned to Pittsburgh to reunite with her sisters. The morning after she arrived, Rich took her back to Dead Man’s Hollow, telling no one, including Chloe, where they were going.
MAISY: Switching gears for a minute, Chloe, when did you remember these details?
CHLOE: The morning after you brought me and my family here to meet my sisters. We stayed with Amy. She had asked Rich to leave. They were having problems. It turns out that she’d just found out Rich and I had been together in high school. He’d not only kept that fact from her for their entire twenty-five-year marriage, but also the fact that he’d gotten all of his friends to withhold information from the police, basically stonewalling the investigation into my disappearance. So, she felt betrayed. I mean, who wouldn’t?
MAISY: Then how is it you ended up alone in the woods with Rich the next morning?
CHLOE: I guess he came to the house to get some clothes and toiletries. There were lots of people there. It was basically a party. I slipped outside into the garden for a quiet moment because I was getting overwhelmed. Rich showed up and offered to take me to see the house where I grew up. At that point, I still didn’t have any of my Heather memories back, and I was curious, so … I went with him. That was a mistake. He lied about where we were going, and took me to Dead Man’s Hollow instead.
MAISY: Why would he do that?
CHLOE: Once we got there, he got really aggressive with me. He insisted I was lying about having amnesia. He told me I had to admit what I’d done.
MAISY: What is it he thought you’d done?
CHLOE: He said he knew I’d killed Andre. Being in that place again, with Rich yelling at me the way he had that night, it brought it all rushing back. So I knew I hadn’t killed him. But I was afraid to tell Rich my memory of that night was returning because he was so incensed.
MAISY: Why was he so angry?
CHLOE: He claimed he knew I must have killed Andre in self-defense. So he made Andre vanish. After I left, he says he dragged Andre’s body deeper into the woods. Then, in the middle of the night, he came back with two of his friends and they buried Andre somewhere on the property. He kept saying he did it for me and all I had to do was never come back. He was really mad.
So mad, in fact, that he threatened to kill Chloe. I witnessed this myself, along with Chloe’s husband. We’d come to the park looking for her and Rich and heard their exchange, including Rich’s admission that he buried Andre Newport and later phoned in the false tip about the gang summit from his brother’s desk at the police station, as well as his threat to kill Chloe.
My recorder was running the entire time. However, on advice of counsel, I will not be publishing the recording of their conversation. My attorney, Will Volmer, of McCandless, Volmer & Andrews explains the reasoning for this decision.
WILL: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is one of the thirteen United States known as a two-party state. This means it is unlawful in Pennsylvania to record a private conversation without the knowledge and consent of all parties to the conversation. There are certain specific exceptions to this law, and there’s an argument that this encounter in the woods falls within one of these exceptions. But, out of an abundance of caution, I’ve advised the Farley Files not to share the recording at this time.
I can recount for you what I heard with my own ears, though, as can Chloe and Bastian. There are others who also have relevant information. The one person you will not be hearing from is Rich Marino. This is because the Farley Files’ mission is to amplify the voices of victims, not their victimizers.
We’re going to take a short break, and then I’ll be back with part two of this two-part episode.
Transcript of “The Farley Files Podcast Season Two:
