Cold BloodedIn a dramatic twist in this murder investigation, Danny stumbles upon a surprising connection to the case as Scott investigates why a crucial piece of evidence mysteriously vanishes. Was this merely an oversight, or does it hint at deeper corruption? Also, the forensic lab working hand in hand with Danny provides real-time updates on the unfolding evidence, intensifying the quest for truth in this growing mystery.
Probably about a month ago. I was looking for one particular piece of information, so I started digging through. There were actually the physical notepads from the investigators from way back when in the eighties.
Cold case Detective Danny Smith has been investigating the nineteen eighty six murder of Billy Halburn and has left no stone unturned.
And I started looking through and there was one handwritten note and it was small. It was two sentences, and it said Officer Ellis advised that there was a suspicious car and this is the description of the car. He got the information from the tipster and Keith Ellis the ls is my dad's.
Name, Danny's father. He was a cop too, right here in Miramar, Florid. What are the odds father and son working the same case nearly forty years apart.
And he was in one of the notes of one of the investigators. It blew my mind. And then as the days went on, I just kept thinking about it, and I was amazed that here I am working a case thirty seven years later, that I'm going to see my dad's name in some of the notes that he theoretically had some information on the case.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff, and this is cold blooded.
The Apollogym murders.
Detective Danny Smith moved to South Florida when he was a kid. But back then, it wasn't murder that was on his mind. It was baseball.
So that was essentially my life. I would wake up and I would think about baseball and making it to the big leagues, and go to go to school, my work, and then I'd be at the ballfield until nine ten o'clock at night, and then I just do it over again the next day.
By college, it was clear that Danny not only had the talent to make it to the pros, he had to drive that unrelenting desire to defy what can seem like insurmountable odds.
It is a grind. You just have to keep going and going and going, and whenever you feel like you've lost or it's not gonna happen for you, you just gotta find something else.
But Danny's dad was a cop, first right here at Miramar and then at the Miami Dade Police Department, so the poll to a career in law enforcement was always there, tugging at his sleeve.
Nice first second third year of college, I started to really give it some serious thought, and I figured, you know what, let me give it a shot, and if the big leagues don't work out for me, then I got to have a fallback.
So during his senior year in college, while staring down pitchers and batting over four hundred, Danny put in a few applications for a job in law enforcement.
And then I got picked up after my senior year of college to go play pro ball in upstate New York. So while I was up there, I ended up getting a call from Nearmore Police saying that they were going to hire me, and they wanted me to come down. The academy starts in two weeks, and at the time, we were in our playoffs up there, so we finished up our playoffs, I had to get released from my contract to come straight down to South Florida, get fitted for my academy uniforms, and I went straight to the police adademy.
In law enforcement, Danny saw the same kind of brotherhood he did in baseball, the team work and the necessity of knowing that you have someone else's back and they have yours.
Growing up, I always saw my dad around his police officer friends, and it seemed like a family. It would bring out a side of him that we didn't really see in the house. I didn't quite understand it, especially being so young. I didn't understand how he would tell me that he's willing to get his life for somebody else. It's life or death. And they beat that into you in the academy, that this is the real deal and you can go to work and not come home. And I was happy to see everyone really take that seriously.
When Danny decided to reopen the nearly forty year old unsolved murder of Billy Halpern, he knew it would be a long shot, but he loved the grind and he wasn't afraid to swing for the fences.
I was, and still am, very competitive, and I hate to lose. I will do anything that I can to not lose.
The fact that his own father had worked the same case was not just a bit of cosmic kismet. It was a personal connection to a crime that had cast a dark cloud over this community for decades.
It struck me that I wish that he was around, that I could talk to him about it and get his idea of how impactful the case was to the community and everything that was done for the investigation, that he would be able to actually give me some inside information.
Danny's father died in two thousand and five after three decades in law enforcement. Watching Danny scribble notes in his notepad, I thought about how some cases can create a bond between cops that spans.
Not just years, but generations.
How sweet it would be to knock this one out of the park and to win one for his old man.
There's the wife and there's him.
He's there with the wife.
Just hey, hello, Hey, Danny Smith, how are you.
There were a lot of names in Billy's case file. Some were people that Miramar or Brad Sheriff's thought might have knowledge of Billy's murder.
Some were just friends of Billy's.
Or guys that hung around the beach or at the Apollo Gym. As part of this investigation, Danny and I both knew but have to track down as as many of these names as possible, But getting them to talk that was another story.
So the reason that I'm reaching out to actually a bunch of people. I'll probably give you a bunch of names that are going to kind of come back to you.
Danny was talking with someone that had grown up in Hollywood Beach and knew both Billy and Laurie Halpern. His hesitancy to talk made it clear to us that the fear of reprisal from whoever killed Billy was still palpable, even forty years after his murder.
Okay, we actually got a chance to speak to Laurie and a couple other people, but as you can imagine.
It's been a long time.
We need to talk to as many people as possible. There's really no expiration on an investigation for homicide if it's not solved.
But he may also have had other reasons why he was still hesitant to talk to police. According to the case file, this guy sold his share of dope back in the day and did some time in prison as a result. But he also used to run with the Apollo Jim crowd, so we had reasons to believe he may have heard some things, maybe even seen some things. Just to give you an idea of how small this world was, even now.
Forty years later.
The guy who opened the door was someone I have known since I was a teenager. How his name ended up in a homicide investigation. I had no idea. It's something I had discussed with Danny before our visit.
But let's be clear, the person on this list, according to what you were telling me, is not just someone who potentially is a witness, but somebody who potentially is a suspecting bill it happens murder.
Yeah, this person is mentioned in more reports overall in the entire case file than any other person, with the exception of our victim. He appears to have a lot of relationship and inner workings and hanging out with almost everyone else in this case file.
After inviting Danny inside, the old friend of Billy's volunteered what he remembered about his friend and some of the players swirling around the scene back in the day, Starting with Gil Fernandez, Well.
Plain and simple, he said Gil was a nut. He essentially just kept calling him the tuffis strongest guy in the world, and no one would mess with Gil. And that was pretty much his impression of Gil is that nobody wanted to mess with.
He went on to recount the details of how he had heard Billy was killed.
He was the first of many rumored statements that I got where he said that he heard that Billy was taped to a chair and had his throat cut, and he was given a Columbian necktie that he had his tongue pulled through his neck.
According to him, Billy's killers were sending a statement across the boss and you're going to pay.
Yeah. He was adamant that Billy was killed because whoever killed him was trying to send a message to everyone else in law. So the idea, I think was to kill Billy but then make a spectacle of it to ensure that the additional people that are in this group wouldn't open their mouths because they would see the damage that was done to Billy.
For the record, Billy was not tied to a chair, and while his throat was cut, his tongue was not removed. These embellishments were strong evidence that this witness may be working from more rumor than inside knowledge. But our goal in interviewing witnesses thirty seven years after a crime was not just to collect facts or illicit a spontaneous confession. Mostly we were fishing for names with three unknown DNA profiles pulled from Billy's crime scene and more potential suspects to try to match the better. The first name to come up Jimmy Heina.
We're early on. Jimmy Hina was on the radar. We know that Jimmy and Billy knew each other. And he said he knew Jimmy, he knew him really well. He said he was called him a redneck from out west. He said he was a nice guy. They hung out, the families hung out, they had lots to get togethers. But he said that Jimmy Heino was not someone who was afraid of anything.
I Note was a known member of Gil's crew who was found shot to death six months after Billy's murder.
I asked him specifically if you thought that Jimmy Hina was involved, and the answer I got was one.
So far, what he was telling us tracked with what we already knew. That Billy knew Gill and High Note well enough to invite them both inside, no forced entry required, and that Billy was too big to be taken down by just one person.
He had mentioned over and over that Billy was just essentially bigger than life. He said, he was bigger than anyone around. No one could have pushed him around by themselves, and it would have taken multiple people to hold him down.
It's important to remember here that this witness's name was listed in Billy's case file more than any other.
He seemed to be the type of guy.
Everyone knew, a central cog in the six Degrees of Separation within the South Florida drug scene, but despite his connections and his criminal history, he was never named as a potential suspect Billy's murder.
I think he's aware that he was in the report, and he was mentioned a lot, and I know that he was spoken two years ago, but he couldn't tell me why. He doesn't understand what his involvement is. He liked to say that he's not a fighter. He's not someone that would want to fight with any of these guys.
However, according to the case file, there was a tip from an anonymous caller in the aftermath of Billy's murder that seemed to suggest otherwise.
Now, one of the reasons that he was really high on my suspect lists or people that I wanted to talk to, is because there was mentioned that he had a cut on his hand just days after Billy's murder, and I really wanted to talk to him about that cut because as we all know any violence done with a sharp edged instrument, oftentimes the perpetrator or perpetrators are going to have some kind of a cut.
Unsurprisingly, he denied any memory of an inn injury to his hand during the time of Billy's murder. And I don't think Danny or I thought he was someone who either had the motive or the temperament to be Billy's killer. But sometimes a little bit of pressure can trigger a person's sense of self preservation. Darring loose new facts, rumors, and most importantly names.
His first mention was Mike Carbone. He knew him, they were friends, they hung out of the beach, but he said he was a crazy guy. He was one of those guys that nobody really, I don't think, wanted to mess with, just because you just didn't know what he would do.
Michael Carbone was an associate of Gills from the Apollo Jim. He was also who turned state's witness against Gil Fernandez and berg Christi in the Danger Road triple murders. From what we had gathered, Carbone had exchanged his testimony for immunity at a spot in the witness relocation program. What we had not heard was that he had any role in Billy's murder.
He feels that not only could he be involved, he actually felt that he was involved. He didn't have any information to back that up, but he feels pretty strongly that Mike Carbone was in that count home with Billy.
It's a pretty big accusation, one that we only include here with the caveat that this is all speculation, not the conclusion of law enforcement. So was this witness just repeating more rumors, maybe even deflecting suspicion away from himself, or was there any truth behind it. Mike Carbone had admitted to state and federal prosecutors that he was present at Gill's execution of three men in nineteen eighty three. Wasn't it possible that he could have been also part of a crew that ambushed Billy Halpern two years later? Was it possible that it was his DNA on the electrical tape found tied around Billy's wrists. If so, we might be out of luck, because if Michael Carbone was still in witness.
Protection, he was a ghost.
But what if Detective Danny Smith could find him. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility. After all, some ghosts just can't resist a trip home to their old haunts.
All right, it's right there, yep, just walking ahead, Yep, where the four by four is?
That's hey? How you doing man? Hey, Poppy? Yeah, I'm not worried about it.
Here's the thing about witnesses, they don't always agree, which is why when you think you're onto one theory, it's best not to hold on too tight.
My name is Danny Smith. I'm a detective memory police spartman. This is Scott Weinberger. It's gonna sound weird. No one's in trouble. We're actually reopening an old case and your name came up.
The man with the dog again, we're protecting his identity here is not only familiar with Billy Halpern's murder, but he ran in the same Apollo crowd and he was just as skittish about talking to Danny. Danny decided to float the name Michael Carbone and get his take on the theory that he might have been involved in Billy's murder.
He was adamant that Carbone is not a killer. He said that he knew Carbone. He grew up with the guy and he's known him for many, many years, and he just flat out said he's not a killer. He wouldn't kill he hurt someone like that. Now I had to look at that, and with the understanding that he was involved in that nineteen eighty three triple murder, So I can't say that he wouldn't hurt anyone because he was there. He was complicit in that.
Asked what he thought about Carbone's role in Gill's crew, he described someone entirely different than the enforcer portrayed by our previous witness.
So he had said that Carbone was he was a big guy, and being in big guy, I got the impression, at least from his body language, that Carbone's size may have turned people from wanting to give a toe to toe with him. But he really said Carbone was just, to use a different word, he was just a win.
In other words, he thought Carbone was nothing more than show muscled, although his participation in the Danger Road murders belies that description. As for why so many members of the Apollo wound up dead, his take was similar to what many people had told us. Drugs, shakedowns and eliminating potential informants. In his words, when you mess around with the wrong people, shit happens. It was the kind of South Florida fatalism that Danny and I had grown accustomed. Without physical evidence, the information shared by these witnesses was still just conjecture, and the case no more solved than it was thirty seven years ago. But Danny Smith had something those investigators didn't have, DNA, and with three viable but unknown male DNA profiles retrieved from the tape around Billy's wrists, Danny knew it was high time to start using that DNA to separate rumor from fact.
DNA. You know, we're at the point in time where it's almost expected jurors when we go into court, they expect DNA evidence to be on a case.
Christina Sovito is the daughter of scientist parents, so she always thought she would be destined for a lab quote.
But I'll say it shows like bones and CSI and things like that. You know, they call it kind of like the CSI effect. I always thought this was something I kind of wanted to do.
Christina started her career in the Army before joining DNA Labs International, a private laboratory in Deerfield Beach and.
The primary focus of the Armed Forces, identification is to identify fallen soldiers, So my section primarily dealed with remains from World War I, World War Two, the Korean and the Vietnam wars.
Her mission was not just to identify unknown soldiers, but to bring them home, and she brings that same dedication to criminal forensics and over the last few months she has become a full fledged member of the investigative team.
The cold cases are very difficult because the DNA degrades over time. We know it does because of exposure to heat and time if it was exposed to emmy chemicals. And by degrade, what I mean is break it down into little pieces that keeps us from being able to get a DNA profile.
But at state of the art labs like hers, sometimes partial samples can be combined to make a whole, which was what Detective Danny Smith decided to do with the samples recovered from Billy Halpern's crime scene.
So we decided to combine the sample from that electrical tape on the right wrist with the rubber glove sample because of that amount of DNA on both samples, and we combined that together and the resulting DNA profile was a mixture of at least three individuals.
Identifying the owner of that DNA would require a one to one match with a person who left it behind.
So was halper and one of the contributors to those three male profiles.
No, He ended up being excluded from this DNA.
Profile, leaving our leading contenders to be High Note, Harry Collier, Michael Crobone, and gil Fernandez. Carbone hadn't been seen in nearly thirty five years, likely living under an assumed name in the witness relocation program, and our chances of getting a voluntary DNA sample from gil Fernandez slim to none, but we were optimistic that DNA profiles or standards of both Collier and High Note could be developed from blood samples that were taken by the coroner at the time of their autopsies on what cops call spot cards. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. As often happens with evidence this old, the spot cards were likely improperly stored and the samples were too degraded to detect DNA. Same goes for any DNA that might have been under Billy Halpern's fingernails, which were also swabbed and tested.
There may have been more DNA, you know, thirty years ago, but that DNA may have degraded to the point where we can't detect it now.
Then there was the evidence that Danny Smith had always believed would be the case closer the coup de gras. In the original crime scene report, it had been recorded that several strands of hair had been found still clenched in one of Billy's fists. It was reasonable to assume that if there had been a struggle as Billy was being bound, tortured, and ultimately killed, he may have grabbed hold of one of his attacker's hair and come away with what could be crucial DNA evidence. But in nineteen eighty six, long before testing hair for DNA was possible, that hair had been collected and sealed in an envelope and stored in an evidence locker at the Briar Sheriff's office.
Hello, Hi, good, how are you?
I am here from Nearmore police down, Andy Broward.
I'm here off hand, careful not to corrupt the chain of evidence.
Danny had requested that sealed envelope and hand delivered it to Christina to have it tested.
So if you rip out a piece of your hair. You're going to see this white bulb on the end of it. That's where the majority of the DNA in hair is. So you know, many laboratories, if they don't see that bulb in a piece of hair, they won't test it at all.
But according to the evidence report, the bulbs were still intact in this case.
It was extremely disappointing because we opened the evidence item and we were hoping to look at these hairs and assess them and to see if there were bulbs there, and there was no sample. There was no hair sample present in the packaging. Like we've had multiple people confirm it's not in the envelope.
The hair inside the sealed evidence envelope was gone. This evidence that had the potential to idea killer.
Where did it go?
In Working with hair samples, we found that they're very susceptible to static. So when we actually collect hairs at our laboratory, we'll use almost like a post it type thing to make sure the hair sticks on that so that they don't get lost. Because if you put a hair into an envelope, if static comes along, it might shoot out of the envelope or it might you know, go over on your benchtop instead, so that's something too where they might have collected it at the time. But if it didn't go fully in that envelope, or if it lashed onto something else, it may have been empty, you know, this whole time.
The way it's described in the crime scene is a clump of hair. Yes, so it seems like he grabbed a bunch of it, So it's not like it's a three or four small strands of hair. It seemed like it was a fistful hair.
It might have been something where someone opened it at one point to look at it and repackaged it in you know, a different evidence packaging and it sealed somewhere and no one knows where that is. Especially cold case evidence, it gets moved to a different part of the evidence fault to make way for new evidence coming in. It could be that situation where maybe that it is out there, maybe that clump of hair isn't a different packaging somewhere else.
Or could it be the case that someone didn't want it ever to be found.
It is disappointing, you know, obviously we want to get a DNA profile, especially something like a cold case where you're on the final straw, you're on the final piece of evidence.
What was going on?
Was the missing hair just a result of bad luck carelessness or was it evidence of a potential cover up? Could someone in law enforcement have deliberately destroyed or disappeared this crucial evidence to protect the identity of Billy Halpern's killer. Whether it was coincidence or corruption, it was time to raise the stakes in Danny Smith's investigation. It was time to shake the tree and see who else among the crooks, cops and wise guys operating out of the Apollo gym might fall out.
Good morning, We'll get started to Shorty just to gibe a little bit of a rundown chief dollars months to opening up. He'll be followed by technic Dan Smith, the fifteen's sister Lori Taubert, JASUS president as well. We'll allow the questions at the end for the detective, and then I'll follow a spash sound thank you.
On a Sunday morning in January of twenty twenty four, Detective Danny Smith, with the support of the Miramar Police Chief del Rich Moss, held a press conference to publicly announce the reopening of the Billy helper and murder investigation. And to make a public appeal for witnesses who may have information that could help solve this case.
Obviously, there are a few minor details in the investigation that we want to keep to ourselves, but for the most part, I wanted to get as much information out there as possible and do anything that we can to solve it. And if that's through the press, through a podcast, through print, whatever it is, if it's going to help us solve this case, then then why not why not give a shot?
Good morning?
I want on behalf of the Miramar Police Department and the helper and family. We want to thank all of you for coming out and giving us this opportunity to get this case back out. As the chief said. October twenty first, nineteen eighty six, Billy Helpern was killed in his mire More Town home. Billy was a Hollandale fireman. He was loved by his family. He loved his family, he was an avid bodybuilder, loved the beach, and the course of the last sixteen months of this investigation, I have not been able to find anyone that can speak badly about Billy. Billy's murder has been tied to numerous other murders throughout the Daydenbarer area back in the nineteen eighties. Central to those murders was a former Miami Day police officer, Gil Fernandez, and his partner Burt Christie, who both worked and owned or ran Apollo Gym out of Hollywood.
Publicly naming Gil Fernandez and Burt Christie as suspects in the investigation was a strategic risk. A they were widely known, their faces being plastered across newspapers during their high profile trial b they were either dead, as in the case with Burt Christie, or they were incarcerated in Gill's case, for life.
In other words, it idn'pose a.
Threat to anyone who might feel inclined to cooperate with police, or so Danny hoped.
Over the last sixteen months, we have been able to interview multiple people, countless individuals that have come forward that we're unwilling to come forward back in the eighties and early nineties out of fear of either Gil or Burt Christi, or whoever it was.
They were now able to come forward.
More importantly, we were able to locate and test dozens of pieces of evidence and obtain multiple DNA profiles from suspects. From that evidence and through DNA labs, we were able to find DNA profiles of unknown suspects. The reason that we are bringing this out now is we need suspects to compare them to. We need names. We need somebody to come forward and give us information that will allow us to identify these unknown suspect DNA profiles.
Our interviews with the myriad of people listed in the case file. While Colorful had not really introduced new suspects into this investigation, what we needed was tips, rumors, and new leads to run down. What we needed were names.
Now we have a working theory on this case. We know that Billy was safety conscious. We know that he would not have opened the door to anyone he either didn't know or didn't like.
There was no forced.
Entry at this house. So our working theory is we had multiple people in broad daylight, went to Billy's townhome, knocked on the door. Billy allowed them into the house because he probably knew one or more of the people that were in this group. They pushed their way in. Once inside, Billy was bound, beaten, and ultimately killed.
This was done in broad daylight.
So we're asking the public to come forward and even give us a name of someone who they believe was there that we can potentially get their DNA and compare that to what we have.
Sitting with other reporters.
I thought the one question still not being asked was why now opposed to ten years ago or twenty I just couldn't resist. So it's nineteen eighty eighty seven when it occurs, and now we're in twenty twenty four, Why now? Why is it a good idea to do this today opposed to any on time?
Time and technology? I think time and technology is what made this the right time. DNA technology is at an all time high. We have complete faith in the lab, the technology that they use, and I believe that enough time has passed where we can have people that are no longer afraid to come forward.
Laurie Halpern was also there, standing by Danny's side. Her cooperation and support was an integral part of the investigation and Danny's appeal to the public.
There's a possibility that someone out there knows something, knows who may be responsible for this.
If there was a message that it had for them.
What would be come forward, Call Danny, call them, call me mirramr and thank you for coming and being brave. Don't be afraid, come and tell them what you know. I'd be grateful, My family would be grateful.
Are you moving away from Bernando.
And his partner?
No, Nope, Fernandez is still a He's still a suspect in the case. He has been a suspect from the beginning. He continues to be a suspect, and he at this point is a suspect. My working theory is that people were killed systematically to keep him quiet, So anyone that was killed after Billy Halpern is potentially a suspect.
Also, Danny also had one more message to anyone that might be involved in the murder or even a possible cover up. Anyone wondering if, after thirty years, gil Fernandez was finally willing to talk.
And ted talking to gil Fernandez.
I have Liz. He was.
He was very cooperative.
He spoke to myself and another investigator for a great deal of time.
The following morning, the Miami Herald ran a front page story on the reopening of.
The help and cold case.
The press conference was widely covered and instantly the tip lines lit up. The question, now would this appeal bring this nearly forty year investigation any closer to being solved, or take it in a completely new direction. The joke wars and it turned out, I mean, it's really not a joke. Half the people there were police, the other half were drug dealers, and there was like a neutral zone where they would be friends with one another, spot each other, and then when they left the gym, they were out shooting each.
Other cold blooded.
The Apollo Jim Murders is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Authentic Wave Media. Scott Weinberger, Kevin Bennett, and Walker Lemon are executive producers. Sabrina Siree is our line producer, scoring sound design and mixing by Mark Lamar jay Z. For iHeart Podcasts, Christina Everett is executive producer, and David Wasserman is brand marketing manager. And with special thanks to the Miramar Police Department, Chief Delrich Moss, p Io Tanya Ardaz, and Detective Susie Smith,
