Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Florida TikToker Kills Six People in Deadly 151 MPH Crash

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. A school janitor admits to doing disgusting things with food that children were going to eat. And that's not all Giovanni Impellezzeri has admitted to. I'll detail the disturbing case out of New Jersey. Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm

Starting point is 00:00:25 Anjanette Levy. I'm just going to tell you right now, after hearing this, you are probably never going to let your child, if you have one, eat school lunch again. After reading all of the court documents, I'm really glad that I pack my son's lunch every day. Giovanni Impellezzeri, he's in big, big trouble in Cumberland County, New Jersey. He was a janitor at Elizabeth F. Moore Elementary School in 2023 when school officials started receiving anonymous tips that Impelizzeri was posting things on Telegram, specifically videos that were disturbing to say the very least. At the time, a court document stated, the reporting party stated that while on Telegram group thread,

Starting point is 00:01:06 he observed Giovanni Impellezzeri texting and posting videos of himself at what appeared to be a school setting, performing sexual acts with items from the school, as well as doing things that would endanger the well-being of the students at the school. Can you believe that? The school janitor performing sex acts with items from the school at the school. Can you believe that? The school janitor performing sex acts with items from the school at the school. And it gets worse. New Jersey State Police said that Giovanni Impalazzari was taking utensils and other items from the school and wiping his private parts with those

Starting point is 00:01:39 items and then putting them back. And again, it gets worse. The complaint goes on to say, Giovanni Impalazzari was seen masturbating and urinating on pillows and kitchen bowls. Videos showed Giovanni Impalazzari spraying bleach into a container of cucumbers that was later served to children at the school with the intention of harming the students. This is beyond disturbing. And police said there were videos that showed Impelizzeri wiping his private parts, all of them, with several pieces of bread and then putting them back in the container. And that bread would later be served to children at the school. This was in October of 2023. The prosecutor charged Giovanni Impalazzari with a number of crimes, including aggravated assault, tampering with a food product, endangering the welfare of

Starting point is 00:02:32 children, and official misconduct as a public servant. Now, this is a school janitor. He's supposed to be cleaning the school, mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, and likely cleaning the kitchen and school cafeteria. Instead, the prosecutor said Impelizzeri was pouring bleach on cucumbers and doing disgusting things with bread. These are things that kids would eat. In addition to the charges I already mentioned, the prosecutor said police found child pornography on Impelizzeri's phone. He wasn't accused of manufacturing it, but he was charged with possessing and distributing it. It's been well over a year since Impelizzeri was charged, and now

Starting point is 00:03:10 he has pleaded guilty to the official misconduct as a public servant charge and possessing child sex abuse materials. The total sentence the prosecutor will recommend will be eight years, but Impelizzeri will be eligible for parole after serving five, and the prosecutor will ask that he be under parole supervision for the rest of his life. I want to bring in Dr. J.P. Garrison. He's a forensic psychologist. You probably know him better, though, as Dr. G on YouTube. So, Dr. G, Giovanni Impelizari, he has pleaded guilty to some really creepy, creepy stuff. I mean, sex acts with food that was being served to kids at a school, at an elementary school. I mean, not only did he plead guilty to doing this, but to videotaping it and posting it on telegram. That's where they got a lot of this evidence. So,

Starting point is 00:04:12 my God, just the thought as a mom of my kid going to school and maybe getting school lunch when somebody had rubbed bread on their private parts and then put it back in the bag, I just can't even imagine. Yeah, it's disgusting in a way that's hard to even wrap your mind around that somebody would do this. But unfortunately, there's some pretty sick folks out there. What motivates this type of thing? I mean, he's accused of, well, he's pleaded guilty to it now. He's admitted to doing it. It was on video. What motivates somebody to do something like this?

Starting point is 00:04:38 Obviously, there's something not right up here. And then he also, they said, sprayed bleach into a container of cucumbers that the children were going to eat. So there's really two things. One is anger. So acts like this, even though there is a sexual component clearly for him, anger is what motivates it. It's about control. It's about the idea of inflicting control on others even whether they ever find out about it or not then the other part of it is this we call it a paraphilia so it's a sexual

Starting point is 00:05:11 excitement about something that's truly non-sexual so it's a combination of anger and paraphilia together that can be a really dangerous combination clearly what what kind of paraphilia i mean obviously i mean you're you're a forensic psychologist and you have not examined him. So, you know, I don't want you to diagnose him per se, but what kind of paraphilia are we talking about here? What could it be? contaminating other people or the idea of having that type of control other people of other people is sexually exciting for him we see this in sexual assault as well it's not about sex it's about control so truly even though he associates sexual feelings with this it's really about control i mean these these kids could have been really sickened um by what he did i mean depending upon you know the concentration of the bleach depending on sure the cleanliness of his body parts i guess i mean my mind goes wild thinking about what these kids could have happened and we're this is just what we know about this is what was on video we

Starting point is 00:06:19 don't know if there were other things that went on so it's's sadistic. So in other words, sadism is enjoying the pain and suffering of others. And so this may be somebody who literally enjoys that. Most of us are shocked and revolted when we see somebody else in pain. We want to help heal that pain. For somebody like this, the connection of wanting to help when they see someone in pain, they may not be wired correctly, so they may feel excited, happy, sexual. There could be all sorts of feelings that come when they see somebody suffering. So sadism truly is one of those types of psychological issues that it's very, very difficult to change. And it's one that universally is not good. I mean, I work with a lot of couples as well. And when I talk to them,

Starting point is 00:07:09 whether if somebody's sadistic, then that's a really, really bad indicator for relationships. Oh, yeah, most definitely. Because as you said, they enjoy inflicting pain upon people. You know, this investigation starts with the food, you know, the food and him rubbing the food on his private parts and putting it back into the school cafeteria where kids are going to, you know, this food's going to be served to kids and then spraying the bleach on the cucumbers and all of this stuff. And then as the investigation unfolds, they, they find out that he is in possession of and has distributed child pornography so there's another aspect of this involving children so we have this added layer to it so what what does that tell you the the whole thing I mean this whole thing involves children it's an added layer but not a surprising one when somebody

Starting point is 00:08:01 wants to harm someone who's vulnerable like children or someone who's disabled or those types of things that does we're talking about somebody who has no capacity for empathy the desire to harm someone who has who is vulnerable is so despicable so the idea that he not only did this but he also had sexual abuse material is not shocking they It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to go from what he was doing to having that type of material. So it really is all pretty much in the same bucket, so to speak, as far as those behaviors go. So he's going to go to prison.

Starting point is 00:08:36 I mean, there's a, you know, there's a sentence that he will get, you know, that he's reached a plea. He's pleaded guilty. He will be sentenced in March. He will go to prison, but he's going a plea he's pleaded guilty he will be sentenced in march um he will go to prison but he's gonna get out of prison someday so how how do you how do you make him better i mean how do you make him be able to once he gets out of prison someday how do you make him be able to like rejoin society and not i mean He, I'm trying to think about how you stop somebody from not doing this again, from reoffending.

Starting point is 00:09:11 You just have to have a lot of guardrails. Yeah. You got to make sure that everybody around them is safe or to protect other people from being exposed to someone like this, because issues like this are extremely treatment resistant. That doesn't mean you can't help them, but they are very, very resistant to treatment. It's unlikely the treatment is going to work completely.

Starting point is 00:09:29 It's unlikely that somebody like that truly can be trusted in any situation where somebody's vulnerable or where they have access to anything like food or anything where somebody could somehow be exposed to the types of issues that he's shown in the past. So really more so than treating him, it's protecting everybody else from him honestly and he has to want to change absolutely and part of the challenge with folks like this is they

Starting point is 00:09:53 don't have the insight to understand their own behavior anyway so there's no motivation to change it's too exciting for them to do these things so secretly they just want to get away with it they don't really want to change it and And therein lies part of the problem. You know, it makes it's interesting to me that he would want to get away with it when he's posting the video on Telegram. I mean, Telegram is one of those things where I mean, people people are going to see it. Well, fortunately, a lot of folks like this believe that they are a lot smarter than they actually are or believe they can get away with things. And they just think that they've sort of that they can outmaneuver everybody else. And they overestimate their ability to do that, fortunately, because it helps us catch folks like this. But he probably just underestimated how much access law enforcement would have to his telegram account or whatever it is that he thought he could

Starting point is 00:10:45 post it to. You know, he's a relatively young guy and it kind of makes me wonder, you know, where, how did he get this way? I mean, how did he end up this way? What was going on, you know, back in his life where this is, this is what he does? I mean, that he gets some type of gratification out of doing this. That's a great question because most of our brains have guardrails in place that prevent us from feeling sexual thoughts or feeling sexual feelings

Starting point is 00:11:18 about things that you're not supposed to. So clearly there is something, well, not clearly, I shouldn't say, but I guess I would think something's organically wrong. In other words, part of it has to be wiring. Part of it has to just be how his brain developed. I don't think experiences would lead most anybody to actually enjoy doing these kinds of things. So it's a combination maybe of some experiences he had, but a lot of it's probably the neurological structure of his brain. Yeah. And that kind of makes you wonder, I mean, what goes on? I mean, when you're talking about neurological structure of the brain, we're talking about something that goes on, I guess, while you're developing in the womb, I guess, however you are developing. Yeah. a lot of these issues we believe to be genetic. So it's whether it's inherited or whether it's something that was in utero, whatever it is, we do think that people can be hardwired for this.

Starting point is 00:12:14 That doesn't mean that it always expresses itself like this with people. But to have the capacity for that degree of sadism and that lack of empathy, there has to be more than just trauma or life experiences that would lead to that. Well, I have, you know, just my mind. I can't imagine somebody's mind going there to grabbing food, doing what he did, and then putting it back somewhere for children to eat. I mean, obviously, it sounds like he wanted to hurt kids. And he got a job as a janitor in a school with access to being able to do that. So that's that's not only part to me as well. Right. And not only did he want to hurt them, it was exciting to him and so exciting to him that it seems like he had a sexual connection with all of this.

Starting point is 00:12:56 So this is really profoundly disturbing. And fortunately, there's really not a lot of people out there that have this degree of disturbing fantasies, thoughts and behaviors. They exist, but they're fortunately few and far between. Yeah, let's hope that there aren't that many of them out there and that they aren't working in schools with access to children. I mean, thank goodness, you know, he was a janitor. He has access to the cafeteria, but thank goodness he didn't have other access to the kids or closer access. Right. Dr. G, thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:13:31 Appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Florida TikToker Kills Six People in Deadly 151 MPH Crash

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