Dateline Originals - 13 Alibis - Ep. 1: Behind Bars

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

Is Richard Rosario an innocent man? Or is he a murderer? Dan Slepian begins his investigation at a prison in upstate New York, and at the scene of the crime in the Bronx. This episode was originally published on May 16, 2019. 

I'm innocent. And I'm going to always be innocent, no matter what the justice system does. That's Richard Rosario speaking from a maximum security prison, nearly two decades after being convicted of murder. I just, I still don't understand what I'm doing in prison. I hear claims like this a lot. I'm a producer for Dateline NBC. I've been investigating these kinds of cases for two decades now.

And every time, it's a long journey to the truth. Sometimes my reporting has helped innocent people walk free. But I have also been lied to many times from convicted killers looking for any way out. So is Richard Rosario telling me the truth? I believe he did it. I don't think he's innocent at all. In these kind of cases, I need to sort through what is fact and what is emotion. The biggest thing I could lose in life is my father. Think about this.

If, let's say, 98% of the prison population is guilty, then that means there are about 40,000 innocent people right now sitting in a cell for a crime they didn't commit. It happens because we live in a world that is upside down, okay, where jurists who have sworn to uphold justice don't do it. They look for ways to turn a blind eye to this s***, and it's f***ing gross. This story brings up a lot of strong feelings. But at the heart of it is a simple question. Is Richard Rosario an innocent man? I'm Dan Slepian, and this is 13 Alibis.

When I first heard about Richard Rosario's case, I was curious. I started digging. Six years later, I'm still astonished by what I found. We're on our way up to Sullivan County Correctional Facility in New York. It's about two hours north of Manhattan. We're on our way to see an inmate by the name of Richard Rosario. I started recording my investigation in March 2014. It's a cold, dreary morning, a couple of days after a snowstorm. I'm in a car driving north on the New York State Thruway. The headline of this case is that Richard says while this murder was happening in the Bronx, he was in Florida. Rosario is serving 25 years to life

for the 1996 murder of a 17-year-old named George Colazzo in the South Bronx. I heard about Rosario from another inmate I'd done a story about. I'd read a bit about the case, but there's nothing like sitting across the table from someone face to face, which is why I'm paying Rosario a visit. We're going to look him in the eye and we'll see what he has to say. No matter how many times I do this, every time I pull up to a prison, I feel a little tense. Big prison. this. Every time I pull up to a prison, I feel a little tense. I'm led through the sterile and chilly hallways of Sullivan Correctional Facility. All I smell is bleach. This place is home to nearly 500 maximum security inmates, including serial killer David Berkowitz, the son of Sam, and Richard Rosario. I'm brought to a small room with fluorescent lights,

a linoleum floor, white walls, a table, and two chairs. About ten minutes later, officers lead Rosario into the room. Good to see you. How you doing? And he seems edgy. Don't be nervous. I'm saying that to you not to be nervous. Yes.

My first impression is that Rosario seems tough, hardened. He has a scar on his cheek. Looks like it's from a knife, maybe. And he is all muscle, like a thousand push-ups a day kind of muscle. As we sit down and begin talking, he asks if the corrections officer can leave the room. And the officer has to be here for the interview when we're speaking about my case? I tell the officers I don't mind being alone with him.

Still, they leave the door open a crack, which is fine by me. Rosario explains to me in prison, you keep to yourself. And he doesn't want anyone, including the officers, knowing his business. I start by giving him my ground rules. Don't bother lying about anything. including the officers knowing his business. These guys just listening to our conversation. I start by giving him my ground rules. Don't bother lying about anything, because I check everything out. All I care about is the facts. So if you're actually innocent, the facts can't hurt you. The facts can only help you.

Absolutely. Rosario tells me he didn't know George Colazzo and he certainly didn't kill him. He tells me he only found out about the crime when he called home a week later and heard police were looking for him. As soon as my mother told me

and I spoke to my sister, I spoke to my wife and I found this out, I mean, I just came back. And when he came back to New York, he says, he voluntarily called the NYPD, telling them they'd made a mistake.

Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at my mother's house. And what'd you say? Said I was in Florida. And what'd they say? They said, we still got to take you down to the precinct and question you down there. And I left with them. Detectives took Rosario to the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx, where he says he gave them a list of witnesses

who could confirm he was in Florida at the time of the murder. Their phone numbers, their addresses. And you gave them all of this that first day? Everything. The first day? The first day. How many names of witnesses did you have? Thirteen.

Thirteen. Thirteen alibi witnesses. Sounds like a lot to me. He tells me he thought that would be it. Cops call the witnesses, witnesses confirm his story, and he goes right on home to his family. This is the way it's supposed to work. I mean, you didn't commit a crime.

You're in another state when this happens. I mean, how does it supposed to work? But here's the thing. Detectives had two eyewitnesses who said they were certain Rosario was the killer. They look at these photographs. Yes. And somebody picks you out. Yes.

He said you were the guy. Well, he got to that point. I really can't say. Prosecutors say because they picked the right guy. Well, you know, they're going to always say they got the right guy. Well, it was good enough for the cops. And clearly it was enough for a jury. And it was enough to deny nearly 10 appeals over two decades.

As I sit across from him, Rosario is in the middle of his 18th year behind bars. Stolen, he says, from his life and his family. You know, my family, my children, my life, right in front of me, just taken away. I can't help but think, if he's telling the truth, imagine all that's been lost. Rosario was 20 when he was locked up. Now he's pushing 40. He showed me a picture taken in the months before his arrest. It looks like any other loving family. A little girl, a baby boy, two smiling young parents. I'm not the only victim of a wrongful conviction.

My daughter, who's 21 now, has missed her whole life having her dad by her side. My son, my family, you know, I've missed their lives. After our interview, I'm not quite sure what to believe. Maybe he's guilty, maybe he's not. But as I leave the prison, I know I want to keep going, especially because of how simple it all seems. I mean, he was either in Florida when this murder was happening, or he was in New York committing the murder. I want to learn more about those alibi witnesses for sure, but first I need to learn more about the crime and how it all went down.

So I spend the next few months getting my hands on police reports and legal paperwork and try to begin to make sense of it all. But to really understand it, there's nothing like visiting the crime scene. So I grab a cab and head uptown. We're on our way up to the Bronx right now, to where George Collazzo was murdered. I like to see for myself where people were standing, what they could see, and what they could hear. And to help me make sense of it all, I knew just who to ask. You look a little older since last time we did this.

How are you doing? Good. That's former NYPD homicide detective Bobby Adelarado. He wasn't involved with this case in any way, but he was a cop for 20 years on these very streets where he took down vicious gangs and locked up killers. I'd worked on another story with Bobby and knew he was one of those honest, salt-of-the-earth guys.

He'd tell it to me straight. So explain to me what happened. How did this go down? It starts right around here. This is where the initial contact happened. Bobby explains that four people were involved with this. The victim, 17-year-old George Colazzo, and his friend, Michael Sanchez, who were walking through a parking lot,

and two other men walking toward them. According to the police reports, it's a bump. There's words passed. Bobby and I bumped shoulders as we walked past each other. So I'm the victim, so I'm going this way. So there was a brief confrontation and some smack talk. According to the reports, it was a random encounter. The victim, George Collazo and his friend Michael Sanchez, walked down here and make a left.

The police reports show that as George Collazo and Michael Sanchez walked together down a side street, the other two men split up. One went to a car waiting at the corner, while the shooter followed Collazzo and Sanchez. The shooter said something to George, and he turned around. And he turns and shoots the kid point blank. He goes, what's up, man? And it's bang. Where was he shot? Shot in the face. Shot right above the lip. After the shooting, the shooter went back down the street,

got into the car, the car makes a U-turn, and goes southbound on White Plains Road. Cops and an ambulance arrived within minutes. George Colazzo was rushed to the hospital, where attempts to revive him failed. George Colazzo had become another statistic in the 90s crime wave of New York City. But he was just a 17-year-old kid, just two years older than my daughter is now. It's hard to imagine the agony his family had to endure. He had his whole life ahead of him, but in a second, that was taken away from him by a single bullet.

Back at the crime scene, police combed the area for any evidence, but they didn't have much to go on. Unfortunately, 1996 was 1996, 20 years ago. Now there's cameras everywhere. You see three cameras on that building right there. So, no video. But there were those two eyewitnesses. The first was the man walking with the victim, his friend Michael Sanchez.

The second eyewitness was Robert Davis, a porter who was sweeping about 10 feet or so away from the shooting. So they take Michael Sanchez and Robert Davis back to the station house. They ascertain as much information as they can from them. Both Sanchez and Davis described the shooter as a Hispanic man in his early 20s. At that point, you have a physical description, male, Hispanic, and you have your books. Books is cop lingo for binders full of mugshots that each precinct keeps of people who had been arrested in that area. Michael Sanchez, the victim's friend, said he saw the shooter in one of those books

and pointed to a picture of Richard Rosario, a 20-year-old Hispanic man. Sanchez picks out Rosario. That afternoon. Two hours after the incident. Later that evening, the other eyewitness, Robert Davis, also pointed out Rosario's picture. Neither man said they knew Rosario. Both insisted he was the killer.

The fact that his mugshot was in that book meant he'd been arrested before. Now, I'd already done a little homework and actually knew about Rosario's criminal past before I went to visit him, including crimes he committed as a juvenile. But I wanted to test him to see if he'd come clean about it.

I asked him about that when we met. Why was your picture in there? For robbery. Who did you rob? I got caught with credit cards. It's you rob? I got caught with credit cards. It's supposed to say you got caught by credit cards. It's more appropriate to say you robbed somebody of their credit cards. Yeah, of course, of course.

I was your regular run-of-the-mill hoodlum. And it's something that I regret. But it's a part of my life that I can't avoid or deny, you know. I was a kid growing up in the Bronx, and I learned the wrong habits. But that doesn't make me a murderer. And that doesn't make it right for me to be in prison for a crime I didn't commit. Now, this is where things get tricky for me, because he sounds like he's being honest. But maybe I'm being played.

Admit to the robbery, deny the murder, fool the reporter. But if this was a lie, it was such a bold-faced one. Because remember, he not only said he was in Florida at the time of the crime, literally a thousand miles away, but he also claimed he gave detectives a list of 13 alibi witnesses who could confirm his story. But when I read the police reports, I didn't see any interviews with any alibi witnesses. Something is not adding up to me. Did Rosario really have 13 people that could say he was in another state? I'm thinking if he gave them all those names, surely a detective would have followed up, right?

When I was at the crime scene, I asked former detective Bobby Adelarado about that. If the suspect, when you pick him up, says, I was in Florida, and here's some information, do you look into that? I would say you should. Maybe the detectives just didn't have the time. I was, you know, it was busy back then.

I hate to say this too, but it comes down to dollars and cents. You got an arrest, the case is closed. Move on. Are you kidding me? Nope. I was really surprised to hear this. It was shocking to me. I mean, someone's freedom was on the line.

And here was Bobby basically shrugging, saying, that's the way the system works. But I'm the detective. I need to find out if this is true. I need to go to Florida. Go to the DA's office and ask them if they'll pay for you. You're not kidding. I'm not kidding. We were denied to go places. You've got two eyewitnesses, detective, that say this guy did it. Yeah, but he says he has 13 alibi witnesses in Florida. So tell him to bring up his 13 alibi witnesses.

It's more important to him to prove he's innocent at this point. Tell him to put it on his dime and tell him to bring up his 13 alibi witnesses. It's more important to him to prove he's innocent at this point. Tell him to put it on his dime and tell him to come on up. The more I learn, the more I'm hooked. I need to find out what happened here. I need to speak with those alibi witnesses. So 20 years after this crime, I set out to do just that, 1,000 miles away. So here we are in Florida. We just got here. That's next time on 13 Alibis. 13 Alibis is a production of NBC News and Dateline NBC. It's produced and edited by

Robert Allen and Grant Irving. Our music is by Nolan Schneider. If you like the podcast, please share it.