DanHenson1/iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — A woman who pleaded guilty to charges related to the death of her fiancé during a 2015 kayaking trip in New York was released from prison Thursday.
Angelika Graswald, a 37-year-old native of Latvia, and her fiancé, 46-year-old Vince Viafore, were kayaking on the Hudson River on April 19, 2015, when his kayak capsized and he disappeared, authorities said. Graswald was arrested and charged a few weeks later. Viafore’s body was recovered on May 23, 2015.
Graswald was originally charged with second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in 2015, and had pleaded not guilty to both charges. Weeks before the case was set to go to trial, Graswald reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to the lesser felony charge of negligent homicide in July, in which she admitted she should have perceived the risks of the dangers out on the water that day.
She has always maintained she never intended to kill Viafore.
A state corrections spokesman said in a statement that Graswald was being conditionally released from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on Thursday. Angelika Graswald had been in custody since her arrest two years ago and it was counted as time served.
During trial, prosecutors claimed Graswald removed a plug from Viafore’s kayak, causing the kayak to take on water and sink.
Graswald’s nearly 12-hour taped interrogation by police 10 days after Viafore disappeared was also brought up at trial. During that interrogation, Graswald repeatedly denied killing her fiancé and said her desperate calls to 911 were real. She also said during that interrogation, in which she practiced various yoga poses, that she was “OK” with Viafore’s death and “wanted him dead.”
Graswald told ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas in a November 2015 jailhouse interview that she was at her “breaking point” during that taped police interrogation.
“They kept me asking me the same questions like a hundred times. I knew that I was innocent,” Graswald told Vargas at the time. “I was at my breaking point … I just gave them what they wanted.”
She denied to ABC News’ 20/20 that she had removed the plug from Viafore’s kayak with the intent to kill him, saying, “No, I did not.”
“I didn’t kill him. … I loved him,” Graswald said at the time. “I’m not a killer. I’m a good person.”
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