’48 Hours:’ Woman Heard Talking To Interrogator About Death Of Fiance On

“How could you best put it”, one detective asks Graswald, according to 48 Hours.

“What is it?” the detective asks.

Angelika Graswald has been charged with killing her fiance Vincent Viafore while the two were kayaking on the river, but her lawyer says the medical examiner relied on speculation from police. “The plug was already out”, Graswald says.

A newly released 911 recording captures Angelika Graswald screaming for help while searching for her fiance in the Hudson River last April.

But Jim Trainum, a former detective with the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and a national expert on false confessions, tells “48 Hours” investigators “cherry-picked” her statements out of 11 hours of contradictions and denials.

“The police theory of this case is really outrageous”, forensic scientist Mike Archer tells 48 HOURS Correspondent Peter Van Sant. “This is an accident that made into a criminal offense due to their gut feeling”.

According to authorities, Mr Viafore and Graswald set off in separate kayaks at around 4.15pm and went ashore, where they spent a couple of hours. He wasn’t sporting a life vest.

Police noted in their reports that water temperatures at the time of the incident were around 40 degrees and Graswald was treated for hypothermia at a local hospital and released.

Then, before the call ends, Graswald told the operator, “I think he drowned, I need him to be rescued”. “I can’t get to him. The waves are very strong, I can still see his head”, Graswald said during the 15-minute call. “He’s getting farther and farther away from me”.

Graswald has pleaded not guilty to murder and manslaughter charges. “I was devastated that she would do that to my son, who was so good to her”.

During the 911 call in April, Graswald said she and her fiancé had run into bad weather, and that Viafore had disappeared after his kayak collapsed. Additionally they argue that paddling with the plug faraway from the drainage gap – a small opening on the highest of the kayak – would not have prompted Viafore’s kayak to fill with a considerable amount of water.

“It was an entire shock”, Viafore’s mom Mary Ann tells “48 Hours“. Viafore’s body was recovered a little more than a month after he vanished.

But prosecutors said she removed a drain plug from Viafore’s kayak, then delayed calling for help and pushed a floating paddle away from him as he struggled in the 40-degree water.

“He told me he wanted the same things but he wasn’t doing anything for it… he was driving me insane for a long time”.

See the complete story on “48 Hours” on Saturday, September 12 at 10 p.m. on CBS2.