Transcript of Haunted: 7

Outside Princeton's impeccable downtown, in the rural outskirts of the borough, a boy follows his father through the trees. They're mostly silent eyes, scanning the shady woods for game. Any words they do exchange are in quiet italian.

Tony Federico's father, Benito, had grown up hunting in Italy's apennine mountains, 60 miles from Naples. After he came to Princeton to work in the university's dining commons, Benito raised his son to be a hunter.

By the time Tony was old enough to hunt by himself, it was his favorite pastime. That's what his son, little Tony, told us as we stood on the porch of his lake house in Maine.

He said he remembered as a kid, like literally getting out of high school, walking out of Princeton High, going home, grabbing his shotgun, and walking across. 206.

Wow. The house in Maine is bedecked with mounted deer heads. Tony's stuffed trophies Kevin and I are.

Not hunters, but my dad is. As a kid, I got him to take me hunting once. I'll never forget stepping quietly through those woods, scouring the snowy ground for the sharp little hoofprints that meant a deer had been there. We came across plenty of tracks, even the snowy beds where they'd slept. But we never saw a single deer that day.

Many hunts and with nothing to show for it.

Tony's cousin, Dan Federico, remembers one hunting story Tony told him about the one that got away.

The one time I saw Tony get really mad, he shot what he said was the biggest buck of his life, tracked it to a place and found a gut pile. So somebody else had was hunting nearby, saw the thing drop. Yeah, and he was livid. So this was like even years. He was still livid.

Tony thought he really had that buck.

But you don't always get your prize, no matter how badly you want it, how much time you've spent following the trail, heart pounding as you're pulled along by the intoxicating thrill of the chase.

Sometimes people want the thing so badly, they're even willing to bend the rules, cut corners. They let the obsession get the best of them. I'm Rebecca Everett, and Im Kevin Shea, and this is in the shadow of Princeton, a podcast about the cold case killing of Cissy Stewart.

In this episode, its tonys story, how he got to the point where he was so all in on his theory of the case that he was seeing things no one else could, trying things no one else had, and ultimately maybe seeing guilt where there was none.

This isnt a totally comfortable topic to explore. Tony was a source of mine for years. I grew fond of him. And we bonded over this case.

And weve gotten to know his son and interviewed people close to him, but were journalists, and we have to look at this objectively.

Without really meaning to, we immersed ourselves in Tonys life. I mean, we went to Maine and dug through all of his old things.

There were yearbooks, keepsakes, a baby book his wife made when little Tony was born. This is your parents, like wedding invite, I guess.

Yeah. They got married at Prince University Chapel. They had their wedding at the prospect house.

Tony Federico cherished his wife Lisa, a beauty from South Brunswick who would later work in dining and catering at the university. They had 25 years together. Their love letters are scrawled in the anniversary cards tucked into boxes in Little Tony's garage.

Tony always wanted to be a cop, and obviously his career and his passion for this work was a huge part of his life. But he wasn't just the job. His family came first.

Little Tony told us in the interview at the diner how he and his dad would be out on their boat on the Delaware river almost every weekend in the summers.

Yeah. Whether I liked it or not, when I was in high school and stuff, sometimes I wanted to sleep in and I was woken up at six in the morning and drug out of bed. But it was always fun.

Tony delighted in making his son a part of his policing world, too. By the time Little Tony was ten, his dad was a lieutenant and lisa sometimes worked nights. So if there was something exciting going on in Princeton, little Tony was probably tagging along.

When we had the bank robbery in Princeton that night, my dad got the call, I got in the car with him. We flew to Princeton and I hung out with the dispatcher behind the front desk all night until my mom could pick me up. Yeah, I was like I said, they all raised me.

Tony would make friends with the new FBI agents who transferred to the county. He'd take him to dinner and tell war stories, and of course, he'd bring his kid along.

I mean, for a kid to go hang out with FBI agents, you know, it's pretty cool. But yeah, that's, that was my childhood.

When Bill Evanina joined the FBI field office, Tony was gracious and friendly. Bill said Tony had the hugest heart, made his family feel welcome, invited them to barbecues, snuck them some passes so they could take their toddler to the community pool.

He had just the biggest ability just to entertain my, at this time, two year old, three year old. And Tony was just that kind of guy, right?

And of course, Tony was trying to recruit any federal authorities he could to help on what he called the hottest cold case in the county, the Sissy Stewart investigation.

So what was it that transformed Tony from your regular police captain sitting behind a desk all day to the guy we later see grilling alibi witnesses, wearing a wire to secret meetings with Jeb Stewart, and working a confidential informant?

Through all of this, I've always wondered if there was something more that got Tony so obsessed with this case. Was it something personal, like an old grudge? But there is zero evidence of that.

There was this other kind of simmering tension that might have played a role.

It's this dynamic between a blue collar police force and the powerful elites of Princeton. It's always there in the background, but sometimes it boils over.

I reported on a case where, for years, Princeton students were suspected of shoplifting from a local convenience store. Finally, the owner got fed up and installed high tech cameras, and the cops started arresting all these kids. The students acted like they could do anything they wanted, but honestly, so did the university. I dealt with Princeton officials back then, and they seemed annoyed by the cops, like, how dare they arrest our kids and how dare I report on this?

So did this question of privilege have anything to do with Tonys attitude toward the case? His son thought so.

I think he also was just upset in the fact that, you know, these kids, these elite kids, you know, just kind of could do whatever they want and get away with it.

Tony got his start in Princeton's campus security. He worked his whole life in this storied town. Maybe he saw privileged people who were untouchable, and maybe he saw this case as a chance to reverse that.

And we know Tony was a passionate guy, always going like a freight train.

But when you're running an investigation that full throttle way, you run the risk of derailing the entire thing or gathering.

So much steam, you roll over everybody.

Which had us wondering, what if all this time, Tony Federico had the wrong guy?

I said to Roger, the last thing.

You are fair and balanced. That should have been my slogan.

When the Fox News Channel first went on the air, it promised to change television.

Few broadcasts take any chances these days, and most are very politically correct. Well, we're going to be different. It's going to be kick ass, and I want to be part of it.

I'm Josh Levine. In this season of Slow Burn, we'll look at the moment in the early two thousands when Fox News became a political and cultural force.

I'm okay with wearing an american flag. And if you're not, I think you.

Need to examine who you are.

You'll hear from Fox insiders, many who've never spoken out before.

I was not told about that beforehand for good reason. I wouldn't have gone along with it.

And you'll hear from the activists and comedians who tried to stop it.

He said, you're being sued by Fox. And I went, really? That's fabulous.

Slow burn season ten, the rise of Fox News. Out now. Wherever you listen.

It's a Friday night in April of 2006. Both Tony Federico and Nick Sutter should be taking their wives to dinner or otherwise relaxing after a long workweek. But instead, they're driving 45 minutes from home on a very unorthodox mission, maybe even a foolhardy one. But Tony wants it to work.

He needs it to work at this point. He's been working the case on and off for more than three years. There was speculation in the press that Tony was thinking of retirement, but the chief wasn't ready to go. And still eating him up inside was the need to solve this case.

And now he was desperate enough to step outside of the usual police playbook.

It's like Tony's fervor is what's fueling the drive down 295 to Moorestown, New Jersey.

They park their unmarked car. The passenger climbs out of the backseat.

Tony and I take him to this hypnotist in Moorestown.

Yeah, this is where Tony's fixation has taken him. He's decided he's going to have a hypnotist extract memories from an important witnesse, one of Craig Stewart's key alibi witnesses.

Now, if our listeners are like, what, the hypnotist? I was right there with you. Like, really? This is how we're gonna solve a murder case, right?

This is desperation.

And really, this could do more harm than good. A memory expert told me that hypnosis can corrupt witnesses memories of. So they imagine things that never happened. Sometimes it forever destroys their credibility in any courtroom.

Was Tony just throwing caution to the wind for a chance to get some memories from a witness?

I mean, does that really surprise you, though?

Uh, I guess not. Really.

It doesnt make you feel very confident in the case that after all the interrogations and DNA testing, Tony just put all his hope on this one alibi witness who Nick said seemed surprisingly willing.

To help, like he had nothing to hide at all. Very open, totally open and intuit. But he overthought everything.

The guy didnt trust his memories and were not going to name him because we dont want to out him as a collaborating witness. But Tony was determined to try to pull something usable from his brain, and he agreed.

So we don't know exactly what happened during this hypnosis session. We just know what happened after what the hypnotist said.

The guy comes out, he's like, he's not, he's thinking too hard, he's not submitting, he's not letting himself. He overthought everything, right?

So he couldn't sort of be hypnotized.

Yeah, he couldn't be hypnotized. The guy was like, I can't hypnotize him.

How long were you there for?

Hours. Like 2 hours.

At least 2 hours. You have to be driving home thinking, well, I guess seeing a hypnotist was a stupid waste of time, but thats.

Not what Tony was thinking.

According to nick, tonys all pissed off, and I think he was pissed at him.

Of course, Tony already had his plan b lined up. And it veers further into the realm of fantasy.

A trip to circumental, a psychic. Honestly, I dont get this.

Like, usually when desperate cops go to a psychic, its for a lead, a place to look for a body, or who the suspect might be. But what could a psychic do with this witness? Read his mind.

Regardless, they visit this clairvoyant on what turns out to be April 2, 2006, the 17th anniversary of Sissy Stewart's murder.

It's also my wife's birthday. This is why I remember this.

So.

Cause I'm like, I gotta go up to the psychic on my wife's birthday, like, of all days.

Again, Nick is sitting outside as Tony the witness and the psychic talked and talked. He said Tony was enthralled.

I'm literally there for like four or 5 hours, just sitting on the deck. You know, how do I say this? But I guess I'll just say it turned out to me to be a lot of bullshit. Because we, you know, I sit there and she comes out and she's like, well, you know, he's got this aura about him. And she goes into this whole thing, and it was all generalizations, a lot of bullshit.

This wasn't even the first time Tony had gone to a psychic. In this case.

To me, it looks like Tony may be so consumed by his theory that he's willing to do almost anything to back it up. And thats not how policing is supposed to work. Thats not unbiased fact finding.

Well, look at what Nick Sutter took away from it. About that alibi witness.

The piece that came out of that whole thing was that he was willing to do it. He went along with everything.

Right? This guy was not part of some big conspiracy to cover for Craig Stewart. He was risking a lot to help the cops.

But Tony looked at this witness and just couldnt see that.

I dont think Tony believed him. I believe him because he, in my opinion, have anything to hide.

Psychics, a hypnotist. Its all evidence of Tonys willingness to do anything to uncover the truth. But its also evidence that he had become so single minded in his pursuit of Craig and Robert that he ignored a far more logical explanation.

Right. We spoke to Doctor Deer and strange, a memory expert and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal justice, about whether these friends memories could just be muddled, first by time and then by conversations with each other.

You should expect inconsistencies, she said.

You've had so much conversation going on, so many new pieces of information. There is little independence of memory and what is actually being offered. It's all just a corruption soup.

But Tony could only see conspiracy, especially in Robert's interviews. Robert eventually said he couldn't remember if Craig watched the hockey game with him that Sunday, Tony wrote, but he said.

It only after Tony hammered him with contradictory info. A person in that situation could doubt their memory and try to solve the cognitive dissonance.

That's not a comfortable stage. So you look for an alternative explanation.

You might start to believe maybe I was wrong and Craig wasn't there.

The changing stories could be innocent. But Tony doesn't seem to consider this.

He just makes an even further leap. He sees Robert's insistence he was in Pittsburgh Sunday as a sign he was involved. And he thinks the same thing about Robert's senior thesis, a work of fiction about a guy dealing with the death of his girlfriend.

There is no evidence that Robert was involved in Sissy's murder, witnessed it, or knew anything more about it than what he read in the paper. He was always honest with police and witnesses can confirm he was in Pittsburgh the day Sissy was killed, he told us in a statement.

But there's one more bizarre thing about this. It's that in 2004, Tony heard that Robert had received an anonymous letter about the death of Cissy Stewart.

Actually, one of the alibi witnesses told us on background that there were letters, plural. This witness didn't say what was in the letters, but did say they were threatening and he believed they came from investigators themselves.

The witness didn't accuse Tony specifically of.

Sending them, but he said that the letters stopped as soon as a complaint was made to law enforcement.

I called up Nick Sutter to ask him about it. He did recall a higher up asking Tony about anonymous letters. And the chief couldnt understand why anyone would think he did it. He thought the idea was comical. Theres no way Tony wrote those letters. Nick told me he wouldnt have jeopardized the case that way.

But I guess there were times when Tony could be accused of acting rashly and later paying the price.

I think its fair to say Tonys last few years in the police department were fraught. Several officers hit with disciplinary charges claimed Tony was retaliating against them, either for whistleblowing or for complaining about racial discrimination.

There was a wave of resignations, tense public meetings, and a borough councilman even accused Tony of having his own agenda. Years later, the borough would have to pay two officers more than a million dollars after settlements and judgments.

And we talked to some cops who said that Tonys intensity, especially in the Stewart case, seemed to take over at times. Heres Bill Evanina again.

And sometimes that vivaciousness would get in his way and would eliminate facts. Right, because he had a firm belief what happened in there. Sometimes it clouded his judgment.

But even as Tony was getting out over his skis, at times, Bill said theyd step back and look at the facts. And it always brought them back to Tonys theory. Tony had many in law enforcement on.

Board, and part of getting people on board was coming up with a motive.

So he did. And if you guessed it was a shot in the dark, bingo.

It started with an accusation no one had ever heard before.

Heres what Tony wrote in his report. Craigs old roommate told investigators that Craig was selling weed and other drugs back in 1989. But the roommate didn't know where Craig kept the drugs.

So it seems Tony put that together with what Robert reportedly said about how Craig would go running to his grandma's whenever they sat down to play cards.

And that was enough for Tony to arrive at a motive.

I remember Tony telling me this. He believed Craig had stored drugs in some dark shelf of his grandmother's basement. Heres Nick describing it.

And that either she found it and they got in a fight, but, you know, his theory was that it was over drugs or that she surprised him in there. But theres not a whole lot to back that up. There just isnt.

Its not even really a motive. Its just a guess why Craig could have been in the cellar.

I dont want to say it was far fetched, but theres no proof to a motive.

But when Tony talked about this, he was unequivocal. He believed this in his bones.

There is just no evidence this is true. Police were all over that basement after Sissy was killed, and no one found any drugs or cash or anything like that.

And obviously this would require Craig to have some crazy, violent temper, and theres also no evidence of that.

Plus, this statement Tony described that Craig sold drugs is a complete outlier. We have never read or heard it from any other witness.

So this former roommate didn't want to do an interview with us, but said he has no independent memory of what he told the police.

But this motive theory, clearly it didn't tip the scales in Tony's favor with the prosecutor's office. I wonder if maybe it even hurt his credibility.

We were all looking for some kind of hard evidence, actually.

This is Robert de George. He was in charge of the county's major crimes unit at the height of Tony's investigation. He didn't remember a lot about the case, but he remembered Tony was all in, maybe too far all in.

We let Tony run with it for a while and see what he could develop, and I'm not sure what he developed at all. Answer that.

Yeah, it sounded like he was really the driving force behind it.

Yes, very, very committed to the case and to the point where, I mean, he had, he had whoever it was convicted, but there didn't seem to be a whole lot of solid evidence.

Tony had him convicted, but in reality, it never happened. On a Sunday afternoon, June 28, 2009, Tony and Lisa Federico had just arrived at their lake house in Maine for quiet vacation. After the long drive, Tony stepped out onto his deck, relaxing as the sun glinted off the serene lake in front of him.

It seemed like a perfect afternoon. But Tony, just 55 years old, died that day. He choked to death while eating. The remoteness of the place he'd built, one of the reasons he loved it so much meant first responders couldn't get there in time to save him after his wife's 911 call. It's a moment so tragic, I don't have words to convey it.

When we met with little Tony and stood on this very deck, the conversation inevitably made its way around to the loss of his dad, his hero.

They had just gotten up here on vacation. It was a month after we had found out my mom had stage four colon cancer, and they had made the decision that they were just gonna enjoy themselves. You never know what happens. That's why, like, you know, I always say to people, you know, like, give your parents an extra hug. Cause you never know when. Oh, yeah, never know when they're gonna go.

I just could not believe Tony died so suddenly. I had taken a break from journalism at that point. The company had a round of buyouts, so I read it in the paper just like everyone else. It didn't sink in. And I just wanted to get on the phone with my cop sources and get the real story. I mean, Tony was such a powerful guy. It felt like he was invincible.

For little Tony, losing his dad right after his mother had gotten a terminal cancer diagnosis, it was beyond devastating.

Yeah, it was just, I mean, the shock, like, the way my dad died, just, it, the only solace I can take from it is that he loved my mom so much, he wouldn't have been able to take seeing her the way she was in the end. So it was sort of a blessing in a way. I don't think he would have handled it.

Little Tony was really open about how it messed up his life, losing his parents. In his mid twenties, he started drinking and it took him years to get his life back together. But he did.

I'm married. I have one. Three and a half year old little boy. Another little Anthony.

Aw, I love that. Tony Federico III a tribute to the grandfather he never got to know.

And of course, the fact that the sissy Stewart case lost its champion was just a footnote in this much bigger tragedy. But it still bothers little Tony that his dad didn't get to see it through.

He felt like there was more that he could do. He was always trying to work some angle, always trying to, you know, figure out a way. Even up until the end, Tony's friends.

And the department where he worked for nearly 30 years were also reeling.

Thats what we heard from Dan, Federico Tonys cousin, who we met in the beginning of this episode. We talked to him in the break room of the Princeton PD because, yeah, hes a Princeton cop, too. Tony hired him.

He told us about how his father grew up with Tony, the family hunting adventures, and how the grownups would speak Italian if they didnt want the kids to understand. And of course, how Tony made him go through the Stewart case file soon after he got on the job.

Tony took his work and responsibilities really seriously, but off the clock. He was fun and funny. Like one time when they were having lunch with other ranking officers in the.

Break room and somebody was telling a story from, I guess, years when Tony was in patrol and he had a sip of Pepsi in his mouth and he ended up spitting the Pepsi all over me because he started laughing so hard. He goes, oh, I just, it was, it was just one of the funniest things. I have absolutely no idea what it was about, but it was just funny. And that was just kind of him. Like, where just a big laugh. That's what my parents talk about, is just. Well, I'm actually getting choked up. He's just a big person.

He said. When Tony died, it was a really hard time in the department. Everyone was trying to process the loss of such a larger than life guy. But there was also no captain, so no clear successor to take over.

And the department was still in turmoil. There was that ongoing battle with an officer over disciplinary charges, and other cops were resigning.

One comment that Dan made. Stuck with that Tony didn't get to finish his long career on his own terms. We know he didn't get to close the Cissy Stewart case. He didn't get to retire with his wife to their lake house in Maine, and he never got to meet his grandchild. Anything? We didn't ask.

Yeah, I was just gonna say anything. You wanted to talk about Tony that.

I don't think so.

Okay.

Um.

Certain times that he comes up and you just miss him.

This case was Tonys legacy in Princeton, for better or worse. But it never got over that finish line. Maybe didnt even get close.

Right, because remember what Bill Evanina said, that someone from the prosecutors office told them at a party in 2009 that they were close to an indictment. It seems like that was just bluster or wishful thinking on their part.

None of our law enforcement sources knew anything about indictments. They were as surprised to hear it as we were.

The case just got colder after Tony died. Nick was unable to move it forward, but he did try to keep up Tony's tradition.

Every year when I was chief, when a new person came into the detective bureau, I would take some of those files and bring the new detective in, as Tony did with me, and say, get up to speed on it.

People in law enforcement really respected Tony's doggedness on this case.

Little Tony even thought it was possible. Jeb Stewart respected it on some level.

That's a shame that, you know, somebody that's so well loved in the Princeton community dies and she doesn't get the justice that she deserved.

I asked him if he thought his dad would still be working the case.

Today, if he was still alive.

Yeah.

Yeah. And if it wasn't solved by now, yeah, he'd probably still be tinkering on it in retirement. Either that, or he'd be out in the woods somewhere up in Maine.

His dad was planning on working just one more year, then spending the rest of his days with his wife Lisa at their peaceful retreat up north. Little Tony said they would have been so happy there.

And, you know, the day that he died, he actually was sitting on the couch in our house and he said to my mom, he said, you know, this place is heaven to me. He said, I feel like I'm in heaven.

Next time on in the shadow of.

Princeton, what's going on with the case now? Because we heard there's been some developments over the last year.

There has been. Is that Craig?

Wait, I'm not sure. That's him.

In the shadow of Princeton is a production of NJ advanced media reporting is by me and Rebecca Everett. Rebecca wrote and produced the podcast. Christopher Kelly and Jeff Roberts are executive producers.

Our sound engineer and composer is Blake Maples. James Shapiro is our associate audio engineer.

Our website was designed by Allah Salim.

Special thanks to all our sources who agreed to talk to us. You can visit theprinstonmurder.com for more about the story, including photos and other extras, and you can email us@inboxeprinstonmurder.com follow in.

The shadow of Princeton and if you're enjoying it, please rate and review it and help us spread the word.

You.