June 1, 2023 • 34 mins
There’s no statute of limitations on murder. Ana investigates whether the intellectual authors could still be brought to justice.
Available to all on June 1, 2023.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Previously on Silenced.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We don't think this is something that Billie, Alexander and
Hyler Flora are cooked up. Where did this come from?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
If I'm guilty of those crimes that are accusing me
of the Sia is also guilty.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
I would hope the last of these journals will start
to a rage, but apparently it did.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
We're back in Miami, me Anna and I'll produce at Margaret.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
Isn't that the club where Thermatus was supposed to have
his concert.
Speaker 6 (00:50):
What was kind of crazy for me is this story.
It sometimes feels so far in the past, like thirty
years ago at a different time, and then well done.
You're driving past the club which was like at the
center of this conflict. We're here trying to get final
answers to all of our questions about why these crimes
were never solved. Driving around the city, we listened to
(01:11):
the creole radio stations where Jean Claude, Fritz, Donna and
Daniel once broadcast, the same stations where their friends Marlene
and Tony are still on the air, And as we
drive from interview to interview, we keep encountering ghosts. This
(01:31):
was where Louis Thermatus organized a concert where the Haitian
singer called.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Fedrio Le Girl. The clubs, the restaurants, all the old
hangouts we'd heard about in our reporting.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
He said two thousand people were supposed to show up.
It looks like a small building.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Actually.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
We drive along the main thoroughfare of Little Haiti, Northeast
Second Avenue. We pass Haitian restaurants, the Haitian Cultural Center,
and one place that we'd heard a lot about, between
two boarded up storefronts, a grocery store and a botanica.
It just keep you a safe driver, and then underneath
you can see it's like fade it. It's as a
(02:08):
notary the Dixie Express driving school that belonged to Donosant
Pleat and where Fritz helped fellow refugees with their immigration papers.
We come here briefly with Tony.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
This facade here was the same facade that was around
when they were alive.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
It's in a low, one story row of shops on
a busy intersection. They're still a handpainted sign advertising driving lessons,
but the building has long been empty. It was here
in the parking lot behind the driving school that Fritz
were shot dead.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Fritz store went out to his car around the corner.
He was opening the trunk and that's when they shot him.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Being here in the parking lot. I thought about a
moment I found in the court documents when Fritz's grandmother
is giving a deposition. She describes begging her grandson not
to be so outspoken about his politics, but he was committed,
and then after he died, he came to her in
a dream and told her to be strong. Those moments
(03:20):
in the documents are some of the only memorials left
to the broadcasters who died at the driving school. There's
no plaque or acknowledgment on the building about Fritz and
Donna's activism or their murders.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
They didn't own the property, so now it has been
assault padded with a lock and garbage all over, then
is about to be torn down.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
It's like, you know, this is where somebody's why somebody's
dream died.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Yeah, because someone decided that it was time to shut
them down.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
After we visited, we learned that the Dixie Express Driving
School building was actually sold to a real estate developer
for one and a half million dollars. It's only so
long before it will be torn down and permanently erased.
Father Jean just Veeo Center is now a vape shop.
The world of Aeo and Fritz Dau is disappearing.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
But the Haitian community is still here. The Notre Dame
d at the church for father Jehanust used to worship
is still central to the Haitian community and very much thriving.
Speaker 7 (04:43):
It's like the living room of the Haitian community.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
In the Daspar we visited Father Reginald, who was mentored
by Father Johnust.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
He tried to espouse the causes of people to listen
to the choirs of the pool, the software the marginalized.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Father Reginald told us the damage to the community by
the murders was palpable, even though they took place thirty
years ago.
Speaker 7 (05:11):
If he died, it is of justice. While his family
is still suffering, not knowing exactly because of his death
who killed him. It is evident that they carry that
wounds in the soul in the huts, and if we
can shed the light on it, you know, that could
be a healing process for the community.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Fritz, Jean Claude, Donna and Daniel were local heroes. After all,
we learned we had to find out is there still
time to bring those responsible for their deaths to justice.
Speaker 7 (05:41):
The spirit of the Lord guide you, because we believe
in His providence that provides, and you will help you.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
I have to remember my Catholic school. Thank you, Thank
you Father.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
A blessure. That's the pleasure having.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is Silenced, I'm as Voloscian.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
And I'm Ana Arana. This is episode six Federal Hook.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And our first phone call about revisiting this story together
was more than two years ago, and since then, I
can't count how many hours we spend on the phone
together talking about these cases.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Yeah, and I can't forget our first trip when I
had to witness your driving skills. Since then, we've tracked
down hundreds of pages of documents, spoken to dozens of people.
But there were some people who did not want to
talk to us and we couldn't track them down. Members
of the victims' families, people close to the accused trigger men,
(07:19):
and many more.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
But then on our last trip to Miami, it started
to feel like all the pieces were clicking into place.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
We finally understood the divisions in the community and how
those divisions became motives for violence. We had traced the
police investigation back in the nineties and found that the
only people who served any time for the four murders
were kids who had been hired to do someone else's
dirty work.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Right, we're talking about Billie, Alexander and Hitler Florinaud, who
went to jail for the murders of Jean Claude and Fritz.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
We'd continuously been running up against the ceiling that there
is something about Alexander and we couldn't get there.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
That's David Honig, a lawyer for Hitler Florinrud, who confessed
to driving the getaway car. As part of Hitler's defense,
Honig tried to find evidence of who might have hired
the young men, and he had one major lead. Hitler
testified at his deposition that they'd picked up a payment
at the record store owned by Lewis Thermatus. It's important
(08:26):
to note that Hitler didn't see who gave the money
to Billy. He just knew that Billy went in and
came back with money in an envelope. And the police
never charged Thermatis in relation to any of these crimes.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
But for Hoenig, there was a sense that if we
could just get to what mister Thurmodus knew or did,
or was involved in, or the people around him, that
might be the key to unlocked the door that let
us into the room where the information was.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
That never happened. Honig was never able to find solid
evidence that Thermatus knew anything.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Honig ran into the same dead ends that the Miami
PD did back in the nineties, and I think it
was because the four murders were mostly investigated separately.
Speaker 8 (09:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
It's so strange to me, given the similarities between these killings,
that it appears that MIAMIPD never seriously investigated these crimes
as a conspiracy.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
Yes, and that's why when I finished my report for
the Committee to Protect Journalists, I recommended a federal investigation.
It was clear to me that someone else needed to
look at the case with a wider lens, and the
FEDS would have had the resources to do that.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
We know that the FBI was initially included in the
task force, but it seems that they soon dropped out,
and none of the FBI agents who were involved wanted
to speak with us. We did submit a freedom of
information request and the Bureau acknowledged they had a file
on Fritz door they refuse to release it to us,
which is pretty unusual, and it leaves an open question
(10:06):
why why didn't a federal investigation happen exactly?
Speaker 5 (10:12):
So as we wrapped up our reporting, my focus was
to find out what happened to stop investigators from charging
anyone above Hitler and Billy back in the nineteen nineties,
and why the Feds never stepped in. That decision rested
with the state attorneys in Dade County, John Castronacis and
(10:36):
Reed Rubin.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So we drove to the West Palm Beach Courthouse over
an now north of Miami to meet John Castronakis, who'd
since become a judge.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
We're about to go in and interview the person who
I think is one of the most important persons in
the government who looked at the case.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And I think we both kind of excited to be
also nervous because if anyone knows what the decisions were
about going for higher ups and prosecutions and stuff, it's
it's John Castrinakis. We passed through metal detectors and took
an elevator to one of the top floors overlooking Palm
Beach Island. We waited nervously outside the courtroom. Then the
(11:18):
bailiff let us in and we literally stood in the
dock with Judge Casternakis behind the diis pleading our case
for an interview.
Speaker 9 (11:26):
Did I mean I'm not going to be much help
I'm going to read through this.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
The judge told us he didn't remember much about the case,
so we showed him some documents from the trial, specifically
hundreds of pages of deposition that he'd been involved in,
and details of the case started to come back to him.
That definitely gets particularly interesting around page seventy seven.
Speaker 9 (11:50):
Oh my gosh, Glassie Bruce Joseph Right, that's the whole
way if if if you're a prosecutor in a case,
you want to get to the people that have hired
the shooters. So I think that that was the pitch
made to Billie Alexander, that we wanted to know who
had hired him to do these murders. And he never
(12:10):
ended up discussing that, And it was the theory of
the police was that it was this Lewis Thermidis guy.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Ultimately, he said his office did not pursue charges against
Thermatists because they weren't confident they get a conviction.
Speaker 9 (12:25):
If you have a theory, that's not probable cause you
have to have evidence. You've got to have proof, You've
got to have witnesses.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
But according to Kastrinakis, many potential witnesses did not come forward.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
But you always have.
Speaker 9 (12:38):
To remember that who are the witnesses. Who are the
people that are going to come forward. Do they have
an inherent distrust of the government. Do they have an
inherent distrust of law enforcement? Are they fearful if they cooperate,
something's going to happen to them?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Many Haitians in Miami could say yes to all. We
heard about fears that family members of WIS witnesses in
Haiti could be murdered in attribution. In fact, one of
the cops on the Miami Task Force, Eve Fanor, was
later murdered on a trip to Haiti. One of his
colleagues told us that he was found with his police
id stuffed in his mouth. Many knew from that instance
(13:17):
and many others, that it was dangerous to stick your
neck out.
Speaker 9 (13:20):
So because of that experience, and that's a murder that
happens in that community, you're not going to have witnesses
come forward, and you would need something like you would
have to have, hypothetically Billie Alexander cooperate somebody that knew
from speaking to the record store owner that he had
(13:40):
put out a contract on the life of Fritz Stoor,
or you know.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Oliver Castrinak has told us that they didn't go higher,
likely for lack of evidence lack of witnesses willing to
come forward, But he also told us he wouldn't be
surprised if the nexus of cocaine and corruption that had
engulfed Haiti in Miami was ultimately to blame for the
murders of Jean Claude, Fritz, Donna, and Daniel. So what
(14:06):
do you make of that explanation?
Speaker 5 (14:07):
In it, the judge seemed sincere, and his response seemed
to validate our reporting, but it was frustrating to hear
it from the man who could have pushed this case further.
So Castrinacus told us why his office never charged anyone
(14:28):
about Billy, but we were still left with the question
of why there was never a federal investigation If a
prosecutor at the time had accepted that these crimes may
have been intended to silence the victims to trample on
their First Amendment civil rights that would have unlocked federal resources.
(14:51):
I laid this out to Castro Nacis by us as reporters,
but maybe we need to see it.
Speaker 9 (14:57):
So the theory being they're exercising their civil rights by
exercising their First Amendment right to speak freely on topics,
and because they were doing that, they were killed. So
that's your federal hook. See you've identified it for me.
You said, Okay, it's a civil rights case with death resulting,
civil rights death resulting, So yes, that's a good hook.
(15:19):
You know, if someone dies as a result of a
civil rights violation, you can prosecute them for murder. You
have jurisdiction to do that federally.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Do you think Lewis thur would still be like brought
into this case.
Speaker 9 (15:32):
Oh I don't know. Well, there's no statutal limitations on murder,
so there was still.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
A possibility that the FEDS could take up a case
and finally consider the evidence from all four murders together.
I had said this was a First Amendment case thirty
years ago in my report for the CPJ, But Castronac
has made us feel like there was still ammunition to
make another push towards justice. Now, before we finish our interview,
(16:03):
Kastronakas gave us one more.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
Name, Gary Kaufman. He's retired DEA agent. Great guy, he said.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
Kaufman could tell us more about Lewis Thermatos.
Speaker 9 (16:15):
And he would have known Thermidis really well. He would
have been able to provide you a lot of information
on him.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
That's after the break.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
No, I think your story is a dead on. I mean,
that's why I agreed to.
Speaker 7 (16:33):
Do the interview.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
That's Gary Kaufman, the retired DEA agent. We spoke to
him on zoom from his home in central Florida and
it was in August, so it was hot. Gary has
a fan in the background.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
I knew that your original interest was the homicide of
the journalists, and you know, I mean, these guys got
killed for free speech. To kill one, you know, intimidated
one thousand.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
We've been trying to reach Gary for over a year
before he agreed to talk, and when he finally did agree,
it was clear that he'd done his homework. He even
got a report on us from Judge Castronakis due diligence.
After all, is Gary's forte. He was a senior official
in the DA for twenty two years, both in Miami
and as country. Ata Shay input of Prince Gary remembers
(17:20):
the radio murder as well, but there were limits to
how much he could tell us.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
I should point out, so that I don't get in
trouble with my former colleagues, that all of the things
we discussed here today are in the public record, So
none of the commentary that I offer today is based
on desensitive information.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Within the limits of Gary's ongoing confidentiality obligations. We wanted
to ask him about Lewis Thermatus. Was this the first
time you'd heard the name Louis Thermatis when we send
you an email?
Speaker 4 (17:50):
No, No, I'm very familiar with the name. You knew him, Yes,
that's what I'm saying. I knew liked him because of
my association with these other investigators.
Speaker 6 (18:00):
The other thing we learned about mister Thermotus is that
he had a music promotion in business, but also shipping business.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Anybody told me that they were an exporter or a
record promoter.
Speaker 10 (18:10):
Back in the day when I was working cases, it
was surely.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Raised my eyebrow.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Remember, Lewis Thermatis told police at the time. He had
nothing to do with the murders. He said emphatically that
he was not pro military or a Tonton maccout. In
his police interview, which he gave voluntarily, he said he
was in New York at the time of Jean Claud
Olivier's murder. But Gary told us that Thermatis was well
known to law enforcement at the time, and police told
(18:38):
us they suspected he was a middleman, a distributor of drugs.
The Miami PD did look for evidence against him, but
a series of mistakes appears to have undermined any possibility
of building a case. We found records of these mistakes
in the court documents. One failed operation sticks out, an
(18:58):
attempt to get Thermatis to incriminate himself on a wire.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
These guests was always the biggest nightmare in my life.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
This is from Marjorie Moyes's deposition. We got an actor
to read her words. She was the informant the police
wired up for the operation. In her deposition, Marjorie says
she knew Thermatus. One of his associates was her drug supplier.
She also dated Billie Alexander, the trigger man in both
Jean Claude and Fritz's killings. In her deposition, Marjorie describes
(19:32):
being coerced by a police officer.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
One day, I went early to take my daughter to school.
He picked me. He take me to the police department.
Of day I had to cause someone to pick up
my daughter from school here telling me I'm going to
go to jail for forty years. My daughter going to HLS.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
That's the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services foster care.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Then he told me you will never see your no more.
Do you want to go through this again? And I
said no, so I had to agree.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Marjorie knew the potential consequences of snitching, but she says
she did what the police demanded. She put on a
wire and tried to talk to Lewis about the murders.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
They sent me too and told me what to say.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Marjorie testifies that almost immediately Lewis figured out what was
going on.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The man see the wire thing.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
He was furious and quickly disappeared into the back of
the shop.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
He went back in the back to get his gun
to kill me.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Marjorie describes running out of the store in a panic.
In the days after she says she started noticing Lewis
following her in his car. Terrified, she went to the police.
She says they paid her one thousand dollars in cash
to find a new place to live, and that was that.
The police had a very different version of the story,
(20:56):
saying that Marjorie was not coerced and that everything she
did was to try to protect her boyfriend Billy's interests.
Either way, Gary criticized the police wire for being far
too obvious. Could Marjorie somehow have tipped off thermatis that
they were being recorded?
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't have done that. I mean, I
don't want to second guess because maybe that's all I
had available at the time.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
After that failed operation. In the midst of the investigation,
thermatis disappeared to Haiti.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Mistakes happened. I would venture to guess that he heard footsteps,
you know, he heard law enforcement may be closing an I,
but I would speculate that it's because somebody's cousin at
a birthday party heard something loose lips and somehow I
got back to him and the discreet thing to do
with bail go back to Haiti where they can't touch it.
(21:48):
You know, that's my that's my speculation.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
According to our sources, it wasn't unusual for Haitians accused
of crimes in the US to go back to Haiti
to avoid around. We don't know if that was the
reason that Thermitas left. Gary was explicit that he did
not have any evidence to link Thermatas to these murders,
but he did tell us that he had a clear
profile of the person who paid for the hits.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
I don't doubt for a second that those murders were,
you know, ordered by people in the drug trade.
Speaker 10 (22:24):
Or peripherally of property from it.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
I just don't have any specific elements.
Speaker 10 (22:29):
If I did, I'd be the first to tell you.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Again the problem of evidence, and with this story, facts
were always much harder to come by than rumors. One
of the biggest rumors that kept reappearing was that someone
in the military had ordered the VEO killings from Haiti.
It was a tantalizing thread. The implications of an international
extra judicial killing on US soil were huge, but Kaufman
(22:56):
had his doubts.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Nobody would have to order the execution of someone who
was a political adversary. Hypothetically speaking, it could be done
just because the doer knows in advance that you know,
he's going to derive political and economic capital for having
done it, you know, and throw two local kids under
(23:18):
the bus for pulling the trigar. You know, it would
be nice and neat and easy if you could work
this like on the coast and most case where you know,
the Godfather said, you know, Leo's gonna die.
Speaker 10 (23:31):
You know, But that's not how it works in real
life in these communities.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Gary doesn't buy that this was an international conspiracy. He
says the most likely reason the intellectual authors were never
arrested is because of something less mysterious. The police made
errors at important points during the investigation and allowed a
person of interest to leave the country. I still have
my questions about whether there was some other pressure, perhaps
(23:59):
coming from you US intelligence, that meant the intellectual authors
whenever prosecuted. But those are questions we're unlikely to get answers.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
To Castrnakas had told us there is no statue of
limitations on murder, meaning it wasn't too late to get
justice for the radio murders. I wanted to ask Gary
if we might be able to get someone from Miami
law enforcement interested in pursuing the case today.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
You know, the problem is all the people like myself
and Kashnakas from that time frame who who would have
an enthusiastic interest in it are either too old, a
fighter or dead. And god a city in Miami homicide
some of the best in the country.
Speaker 10 (24:44):
But how do you get them interested in help me
with the math thirty year old crime.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
At this point, we've tried almost everything. We've talked to police, prosecutors,
community members, DA agents. We've taken our investigation about as
far as it can go. But we do see a
potential path for justice, the First Amendment path, Kastrinakis said,
it's possible, but that's a path for lawyers. It's about
(25:13):
time for us to turn over the reins.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
So I reached back to one organization that I know
has the clout to bring this case back to the
attention of the courts, the Committee to Protect Journalists. The
goal of our original report was to encourage a more
thorough investigation, but that didn't happen, and that meant the
wider world stop paying attention and the wheels of justice
(25:40):
stopped turning. This time around, I wonder if the CPJA
would pursue a legal remedy. They immediately agreed to help
us investigate whether a federal case was possible. Today, I
call us after my first conversation with them.
Speaker 8 (25:56):
All the stuff that we cover on story, I think,
in the name of justice for those people, but deserves
another crack added by someone.
Speaker 11 (26:07):
How incredible if I mean, you know, you were joking
around with me about not doing another conspiracy podcast, But
how incredible if we managed to actually reopen these cases
and potentially get justice. I mean, that's the work of journalism,
I guess, and I you know, I.
Speaker 8 (26:25):
Mean, I know, we're very proud of this almost two
year effort. I thought, what's going to be done in
a month.
Speaker 11 (26:32):
Yeah, yeah, we have so much work to do.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
But there's just one more thing to do, one last
stone that we haven't turned over yet. We have to
go talk to Lewis Thermatus himself, because while we were reporting,
we found out that he's living back in Miami, and
Anna the idea of going to knock on his door
was frankly a little scary to me, even though he's
(26:58):
now in his seventies.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
Yes, I was scared too, but it was something we
had to do. I'm fine with taking risks so long
as they're calculated. So I suggested we bring a security
professional with us, and that's easy. In Miami. Many of
the private security firms that operate throughout Latin America are
based here.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Carlos provides security for journalists and NGOs and has worked
extensively in Haiti. Do you have a military background.
Speaker 12 (27:30):
You're recording this, I'm a contractor. I'm a contractor. I
work for one of the one of the government agency.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
We picked up Carlos at his home and drove to
the address we'd found the Thermatis. We talked about how
to approach the conversation if we actually met Thermatis.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
The name of the guy that went to jail, who
was the shooter and the case, and say we spoke
with we we were here to talk to you about
this guy rather than the victims's that.
Speaker 12 (28:01):
Oh yeah, that's a good approach.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We pull up to a white, single story home with
a terra cotta roof in Miami Gardens. We knock on
the front door.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
Well, we're standing here waiting in front of the house,
punging on the door.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
It seems like no one's home. There are bars on
the windows, and the front pane has a hole in
it that looks like it could be from a bullet.
The small pool around the back is empty, and on
the front lawn is a gray head of Toussaint Lovature,
the Haitian general who led the slave revolt. It's been
(28:44):
separated from the rest of the statue. We began to
think Thermitas maybe in Haiti after all, but then a
neighbor pulled up and we asked if Thermitas still lived here.
The neighbor told us he did, so we loaded back
into the car and parked a parking lot across the
street but within view of the house, and we waited,
(29:05):
and just as we were about to give up and leave,
a shiny hummer pulled into the driveway. We immediately pulled
out of the parking lot and raced back to the
front of Thermatis's house. We got out of the car
and he waited in his minutes went by. Then finally
he emerged, bald, tall and skinny, a little stooped, but
(29:30):
looking younger than it's seventy years.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
Hello, Hi, Hi, where are we going?
Speaker 3 (29:38):
We're journalists.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
We were standing on Thermatus's lawn As he walked from
his car to his house. He was wide eyed seeing
a bunch of strangers ambushing him with questions, but he
paused to hear what we had to say.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
We wanted to see if we could talk about Billy Alexander.
He's a man who was a friend of yours a
few years ago.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Me, yeah, never, I never.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
No. What's my name, Louis Servitus. Billy Alexander was a
friend of yours from Little Haiti.
Speaker 12 (30:19):
No, thirty years ago or.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
Thirty two years ago? No, no, that's a long time.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
Probably, No, No, I never have a friend.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
I didn't know. He used to own a record store
in Little Haiti. You don't do that anymore. Well so
you don't remember anything, You don't recall anything at all.
Speaker 6 (30:41):
No, no, I don't have no, never have a friend
like that.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
What about John Claude Olivier, He was like a music promoter.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
As we were asking these questions, Vemaitis continued walking to
his front door. He evidently had no intention whatsoever of
engaging with us.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
What about Fritz Store?
Speaker 13 (30:59):
No?
Speaker 5 (31:00):
No, okay, all right, thank you, thank you for your time.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
And within the blink of an eye he was inside
his home and we were standing outside. We got back
into our car.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
We went through all the names. He said, no, no, no, he.
Speaker 12 (31:23):
Said, denying everybody that you know.
Speaker 6 (31:27):
He looked a little shocked.
Speaker 12 (31:29):
I don't think he was shocked.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
No, I think I think he it's when when you
have something like this on your back and your past.
I think you always think I'll come back, but you're
ready to sort of deny it.
Speaker 12 (31:44):
I agree with you. He denied everything. Your total You
ask him three simple questions. There were not threatening questions.
You ask him about people.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
So what did you make of that interaction we have
with thermat Semma, You were so cool under pressure asking
all those questions. I was just tongue tied standing next
to you.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Well, that's why I practiced what I was going to
say before we went in. But I have been in
far disier situations. I knew it was going to be
a long shot that he would talk to us, let
alone help us with our case. That said, we know
very well he knew all the names we brought up,
but his instinct was to deny everything.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
We did try calling thermatists to follow up, but no response.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Your call had been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
Our ability to move the investigation forward, as journalists had
come to an end, but the story of the pro
democracy movement did not end with these killings. We looked
now into the murder of another journalist, this time on
the street support a prince, and his death would mark
(32:57):
the end of an era.
Speaker 13 (33:01):
Seeing by lies of you, probably not knowing the street.
It's scary, yes, but that is so very different from
seeing your own husband on the ground.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
That's next time. Silenced is a Kaleidoscope content original produced
by Margaret Catcher, Jen Kinney and Padmini Rigunov. Research assistants
from Sybilla Phipps, Jeremy Bigwood and Kira Sinis. Edited by
(33:35):
Lacy Roberts. Executive produced by Kate Osborne, Reported and hosted
by Anna Arana and me Osvoloshin. Fact checking by Nicole Pasuka.
Music by Oliver Rodigan aka k Denzer, A mix and
sound design by Kyle Murdoch.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
Ty position actor was Sunny Mack.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Thanks to Mangosha, Tikta Costaslinas and Vinny shory Our executive
producers at iHeart, ar Qatria Novelle and Nikki Etoor. If
you like what you hear, please rate review share, and
subscribe to our channel. Thank you,
Previously on Silenced.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
We don't think this is something that Billie, Alexander and
Hyler Flora are cooked up. Where did this come from?
Speaker 3 (00:20):
If I'm guilty of those crimes that are accusing me
of the Sia is also guilty.
Speaker 4 (00:26):
I would hope the last of these journals will start
to a rage, but apparently it did.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
We're back in Miami, me Anna and I'll produce at Margaret.
Speaker 5 (00:46):
Isn't that the club where Thermatus was supposed to have
his concert.
Speaker 6 (00:50):
What was kind of crazy for me is this story.
It sometimes feels so far in the past, like thirty
years ago at a different time, and then well done.
You're driving past the club which was like at the
center of this conflict. We're here trying to get final
answers to all of our questions about why these crimes
were never solved. Driving around the city, we listened to
(01:11):
the creole radio stations where Jean Claude, Fritz, Donna and
Daniel once broadcast, the same stations where their friends Marlene
and Tony are still on the air, And as we
drive from interview to interview, we keep encountering ghosts. This
(01:31):
was where Louis Thermatus organized a concert where the Haitian
singer called.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Fedrio Le Girl. The clubs, the restaurants, all the old
hangouts we'd heard about in our reporting.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
He said two thousand people were supposed to show up.
It looks like a small building.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Actually.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
We drive along the main thoroughfare of Little Haiti, Northeast
Second Avenue. We pass Haitian restaurants, the Haitian Cultural Center,
and one place that we'd heard a lot about, between
two boarded up storefronts, a grocery store and a botanica.
It just keep you a safe driver, and then underneath
you can see it's like fade it. It's as a
(02:08):
notary the Dixie Express driving school that belonged to Donosant
Pleat and where Fritz helped fellow refugees with their immigration papers.
We come here briefly with Tony.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
This facade here was the same facade that was around
when they were alive.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
It's in a low, one story row of shops on
a busy intersection. They're still a handpainted sign advertising driving lessons,
but the building has long been empty. It was here
in the parking lot behind the driving school that Fritz
were shot dead.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
Fritz store went out to his car around the corner.
He was opening the trunk and that's when they shot him.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Being here in the parking lot. I thought about a
moment I found in the court documents when Fritz's grandmother
is giving a deposition. She describes begging her grandson not
to be so outspoken about his politics, but he was committed,
and then after he died, he came to her in
a dream and told her to be strong. Those moments
(03:20):
in the documents are some of the only memorials left
to the broadcasters who died at the driving school. There's
no plaque or acknowledgment on the building about Fritz and
Donna's activism or their murders.
Speaker 5 (03:32):
They didn't own the property, so now it has been
assault padded with a lock and garbage all over, then
is about to be torn down.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
It's like, you know, this is where somebody's why somebody's
dream died.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
Yeah, because someone decided that it was time to shut
them down.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
After we visited, we learned that the Dixie Express Driving
School building was actually sold to a real estate developer
for one and a half million dollars. It's only so
long before it will be torn down and permanently erased.
Father Jean just Veeo Center is now a vape shop.
The world of Aeo and Fritz Dau is disappearing.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
But the Haitian community is still here. The Notre Dame
d at the church for father Jehanust used to worship
is still central to the Haitian community and very much thriving.
Speaker 7 (04:43):
It's like the living room of the Haitian community.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
In the Daspar we visited Father Reginald, who was mentored
by Father Johnust.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
He tried to espouse the causes of people to listen
to the choirs of the pool, the software the marginalized.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Father Reginald told us the damage to the community by
the murders was palpable, even though they took place thirty
years ago.
Speaker 7 (05:11):
If he died, it is of justice. While his family
is still suffering, not knowing exactly because of his death
who killed him. It is evident that they carry that
wounds in the soul in the huts, and if we
can shed the light on it, you know, that could
be a healing process for the community.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Fritz, Jean Claude, Donna and Daniel were local heroes. After all,
we learned we had to find out is there still
time to bring those responsible for their deaths to justice.
Speaker 7 (05:41):
The spirit of the Lord guide you, because we believe
in His providence that provides, and you will help you.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
I have to remember my Catholic school. Thank you, Thank
you Father.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
A blessure. That's the pleasure having.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is Silenced, I'm as Voloscian.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
And I'm Ana Arana. This is episode six Federal Hook.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And our first phone call about revisiting this story together
was more than two years ago, and since then, I
can't count how many hours we spend on the phone
together talking about these cases.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Yeah, and I can't forget our first trip when I
had to witness your driving skills. Since then, we've tracked
down hundreds of pages of documents, spoken to dozens of people.
But there were some people who did not want to
talk to us and we couldn't track them down. Members
of the victims' families, people close to the accused trigger men,
(07:19):
and many more.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
But then on our last trip to Miami, it started
to feel like all the pieces were clicking into place.
Speaker 5 (07:27):
We finally understood the divisions in the community and how
those divisions became motives for violence. We had traced the
police investigation back in the nineties and found that the
only people who served any time for the four murders
were kids who had been hired to do someone else's
dirty work.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Right, we're talking about Billie, Alexander and Hitler Florinaud, who
went to jail for the murders of Jean Claude and Fritz.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
We'd continuously been running up against the ceiling that there
is something about Alexander and we couldn't get there.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
That's David Honig, a lawyer for Hitler Florinrud, who confessed
to driving the getaway car. As part of Hitler's defense,
Honig tried to find evidence of who might have hired
the young men, and he had one major lead. Hitler
testified at his deposition that they'd picked up a payment
at the record store owned by Lewis Thermatus. It's important
(08:26):
to note that Hitler didn't see who gave the money
to Billy. He just knew that Billy went in and
came back with money in an envelope. And the police
never charged Thermatis in relation to any of these crimes.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
But for Hoenig, there was a sense that if we
could just get to what mister Thurmodus knew or did,
or was involved in, or the people around him, that
might be the key to unlocked the door that let
us into the room where the information was.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
That never happened. Honig was never able to find solid
evidence that Thermatus knew anything.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Honig ran into the same dead ends that the Miami
PD did back in the nineties, and I think it
was because the four murders were mostly investigated separately.
Speaker 8 (09:14):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
It's so strange to me, given the similarities between these killings,
that it appears that MIAMIPD never seriously investigated these crimes
as a conspiracy.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
Yes, and that's why when I finished my report for
the Committee to Protect Journalists, I recommended a federal investigation.
It was clear to me that someone else needed to
look at the case with a wider lens, and the
FEDS would have had the resources to do that.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
We know that the FBI was initially included in the
task force, but it seems that they soon dropped out,
and none of the FBI agents who were involved wanted
to speak with us. We did submit a freedom of
information request and the Bureau acknowledged they had a file
on Fritz door they refuse to release it to us,
which is pretty unusual, and it leaves an open question
(10:06):
why why didn't a federal investigation happen exactly?
Speaker 5 (10:12):
So as we wrapped up our reporting, my focus was
to find out what happened to stop investigators from charging
anyone above Hitler and Billy back in the nineteen nineties,
and why the Feds never stepped in. That decision rested
with the state attorneys in Dade County, John Castronacis and
(10:36):
Reed Rubin.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
So we drove to the West Palm Beach Courthouse over
an now north of Miami to meet John Castronakis, who'd
since become a judge.
Speaker 5 (10:49):
We're about to go in and interview the person who
I think is one of the most important persons in
the government who looked at the case.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
And I think we both kind of excited to be
also nervous because if anyone knows what the decisions were
about going for higher ups and prosecutions and stuff, it's
it's John Castrinakis. We passed through metal detectors and took
an elevator to one of the top floors overlooking Palm
Beach Island. We waited nervously outside the courtroom. Then the
(11:18):
bailiff let us in and we literally stood in the
dock with Judge Casternakis behind the diis pleading our case
for an interview.
Speaker 9 (11:26):
Did I mean I'm not going to be much help
I'm going to read through this.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
The judge told us he didn't remember much about the case,
so we showed him some documents from the trial, specifically
hundreds of pages of deposition that he'd been involved in,
and details of the case started to come back to him.
That definitely gets particularly interesting around page seventy seven.
Speaker 9 (11:50):
Oh my gosh, Glassie Bruce Joseph Right, that's the whole
way if if if you're a prosecutor in a case,
you want to get to the people that have hired
the shooters. So I think that that was the pitch
made to Billie Alexander, that we wanted to know who
had hired him to do these murders. And he never
(12:10):
ended up discussing that, And it was the theory of
the police was that it was this Lewis Thermidis guy.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Ultimately, he said his office did not pursue charges against
Thermatists because they weren't confident they get a conviction.
Speaker 9 (12:25):
If you have a theory, that's not probable cause you
have to have evidence. You've got to have proof, You've
got to have witnesses.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
But according to Kastrinakis, many potential witnesses did not come forward.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
But you always have.
Speaker 9 (12:38):
To remember that who are the witnesses. Who are the
people that are going to come forward. Do they have
an inherent distrust of the government. Do they have an
inherent distrust of law enforcement? Are they fearful if they cooperate,
something's going to happen to them?
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Many Haitians in Miami could say yes to all. We
heard about fears that family members of WIS witnesses in
Haiti could be murdered in attribution. In fact, one of
the cops on the Miami Task Force, Eve Fanor, was
later murdered on a trip to Haiti. One of his
colleagues told us that he was found with his police
id stuffed in his mouth. Many knew from that instance
(13:17):
and many others, that it was dangerous to stick your
neck out.
Speaker 9 (13:20):
So because of that experience, and that's a murder that
happens in that community, you're not going to have witnesses
come forward, and you would need something like you would
have to have, hypothetically Billie Alexander cooperate somebody that knew
from speaking to the record store owner that he had
(13:40):
put out a contract on the life of Fritz Stoor,
or you know.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Oliver Castrinak has told us that they didn't go higher,
likely for lack of evidence lack of witnesses willing to
come forward, But he also told us he wouldn't be
surprised if the nexus of cocaine and corruption that had
engulfed Haiti in Miami was ultimately to blame for the
murders of Jean Claude, Fritz, Donna, and Daniel. So what
(14:06):
do you make of that explanation?
Speaker 5 (14:07):
In it, the judge seemed sincere, and his response seemed
to validate our reporting, but it was frustrating to hear
it from the man who could have pushed this case further.
So Castrinacus told us why his office never charged anyone
(14:28):
about Billy, but we were still left with the question
of why there was never a federal investigation If a
prosecutor at the time had accepted that these crimes may
have been intended to silence the victims to trample on
their First Amendment civil rights that would have unlocked federal resources.
(14:51):
I laid this out to Castro Nacis by us as reporters,
but maybe we need to see it.
Speaker 9 (14:57):
So the theory being they're exercising their civil rights by
exercising their First Amendment right to speak freely on topics,
and because they were doing that, they were killed. So
that's your federal hook. See you've identified it for me.
You said, Okay, it's a civil rights case with death resulting,
civil rights death resulting, So yes, that's a good hook.
(15:19):
You know, if someone dies as a result of a
civil rights violation, you can prosecute them for murder. You
have jurisdiction to do that federally.
Speaker 5 (15:27):
Do you think Lewis thur would still be like brought
into this case.
Speaker 9 (15:32):
Oh I don't know. Well, there's no statutal limitations on murder,
so there was still.
Speaker 5 (15:37):
A possibility that the FEDS could take up a case
and finally consider the evidence from all four murders together.
I had said this was a First Amendment case thirty
years ago in my report for the CPJ, But Castronac
has made us feel like there was still ammunition to
make another push towards justice. Now, before we finish our interview,
(16:03):
Kastronakas gave us one more.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
Name, Gary Kaufman. He's retired DEA agent. Great guy, he said.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
Kaufman could tell us more about Lewis Thermatos.
Speaker 9 (16:15):
And he would have known Thermidis really well. He would
have been able to provide you a lot of information
on him.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
That's after the break.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
No, I think your story is a dead on. I mean,
that's why I agreed to.
Speaker 7 (16:33):
Do the interview.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
That's Gary Kaufman, the retired DEA agent. We spoke to
him on zoom from his home in central Florida and
it was in August, so it was hot. Gary has
a fan in the background.
Speaker 4 (16:45):
I knew that your original interest was the homicide of
the journalists, and you know, I mean, these guys got
killed for free speech. To kill one, you know, intimidated
one thousand.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
We've been trying to reach Gary for over a year
before he agreed to talk, and when he finally did agree,
it was clear that he'd done his homework. He even
got a report on us from Judge Castronakis due diligence.
After all, is Gary's forte. He was a senior official
in the DA for twenty two years, both in Miami
and as country. Ata Shay input of Prince Gary remembers
(17:20):
the radio murder as well, but there were limits to
how much he could tell us.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
I should point out, so that I don't get in
trouble with my former colleagues, that all of the things
we discussed here today are in the public record, So
none of the commentary that I offer today is based
on desensitive information.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Within the limits of Gary's ongoing confidentiality obligations. We wanted
to ask him about Lewis Thermatus. Was this the first
time you'd heard the name Louis Thermatis when we send
you an email?
Speaker 4 (17:50):
No, No, I'm very familiar with the name. You knew him, Yes,
that's what I'm saying. I knew liked him because of
my association with these other investigators.
Speaker 6 (18:00):
The other thing we learned about mister Thermotus is that
he had a music promotion in business, but also shipping business.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Anybody told me that they were an exporter or a
record promoter.
Speaker 10 (18:10):
Back in the day when I was working cases, it
was surely.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
Raised my eyebrow.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Remember, Lewis Thermatis told police at the time. He had
nothing to do with the murders. He said emphatically that
he was not pro military or a Tonton maccout. In
his police interview, which he gave voluntarily, he said he
was in New York at the time of Jean Claud
Olivier's murder. But Gary told us that Thermatis was well
known to law enforcement at the time, and police told
(18:38):
us they suspected he was a middleman, a distributor of drugs.
The Miami PD did look for evidence against him, but
a series of mistakes appears to have undermined any possibility
of building a case. We found records of these mistakes
in the court documents. One failed operation sticks out, an
(18:58):
attempt to get Thermatis to incriminate himself on a wire.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
These guests was always the biggest nightmare in my life.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
This is from Marjorie Moyes's deposition. We got an actor
to read her words. She was the informant the police
wired up for the operation. In her deposition, Marjorie says
she knew Thermatus. One of his associates was her drug supplier.
She also dated Billie Alexander, the trigger man in both
Jean Claude and Fritz's killings. In her deposition, Marjorie describes
(19:32):
being coerced by a police officer.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
One day, I went early to take my daughter to school.
He picked me. He take me to the police department.
Of day I had to cause someone to pick up
my daughter from school here telling me I'm going to
go to jail for forty years. My daughter going to HLS.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
That's the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services foster care.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Then he told me you will never see your no more.
Do you want to go through this again? And I
said no, so I had to agree.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Marjorie knew the potential consequences of snitching, but she says
she did what the police demanded. She put on a
wire and tried to talk to Lewis about the murders.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
They sent me too and told me what to say.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Marjorie testifies that almost immediately Lewis figured out what was
going on.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
The man see the wire thing.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
He was furious and quickly disappeared into the back of
the shop.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
He went back in the back to get his gun
to kill me.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Marjorie describes running out of the store in a panic.
In the days after she says she started noticing Lewis
following her in his car. Terrified, she went to the police.
She says they paid her one thousand dollars in cash
to find a new place to live, and that was that.
The police had a very different version of the story,
(20:56):
saying that Marjorie was not coerced and that everything she
did was to try to protect her boyfriend Billy's interests.
Either way, Gary criticized the police wire for being far
too obvious. Could Marjorie somehow have tipped off thermatis that
they were being recorded?
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't have done that. I mean, I
don't want to second guess because maybe that's all I
had available at the time.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
After that failed operation. In the midst of the investigation,
thermatis disappeared to Haiti.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
Mistakes happened. I would venture to guess that he heard footsteps,
you know, he heard law enforcement may be closing an I,
but I would speculate that it's because somebody's cousin at
a birthday party heard something loose lips and somehow I
got back to him and the discreet thing to do
with bail go back to Haiti where they can't touch it.
(21:48):
You know, that's my that's my speculation.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
According to our sources, it wasn't unusual for Haitians accused
of crimes in the US to go back to Haiti
to avoid around. We don't know if that was the
reason that Thermitas left. Gary was explicit that he did
not have any evidence to link Thermatas to these murders,
but he did tell us that he had a clear
profile of the person who paid for the hits.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
I don't doubt for a second that those murders were,
you know, ordered by people in the drug trade.
Speaker 10 (22:24):
Or peripherally of property from it.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
I just don't have any specific elements.
Speaker 10 (22:29):
If I did, I'd be the first to tell you.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Again the problem of evidence, and with this story, facts
were always much harder to come by than rumors. One
of the biggest rumors that kept reappearing was that someone
in the military had ordered the VEO killings from Haiti.
It was a tantalizing thread. The implications of an international
extra judicial killing on US soil were huge, but Kaufman
(22:56):
had his doubts.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Nobody would have to order the execution of someone who
was a political adversary. Hypothetically speaking, it could be done
just because the doer knows in advance that you know,
he's going to derive political and economic capital for having
done it, you know, and throw two local kids under
(23:18):
the bus for pulling the trigar. You know, it would
be nice and neat and easy if you could work
this like on the coast and most case where you know,
the Godfather said, you know, Leo's gonna die.
Speaker 10 (23:31):
You know, But that's not how it works in real
life in these communities.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Gary doesn't buy that this was an international conspiracy. He
says the most likely reason the intellectual authors were never
arrested is because of something less mysterious. The police made
errors at important points during the investigation and allowed a
person of interest to leave the country. I still have
my questions about whether there was some other pressure, perhaps
(23:59):
coming from you US intelligence, that meant the intellectual authors
whenever prosecuted. But those are questions we're unlikely to get answers.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
To Castrnakas had told us there is no statue of
limitations on murder, meaning it wasn't too late to get
justice for the radio murders. I wanted to ask Gary
if we might be able to get someone from Miami
law enforcement interested in pursuing the case today.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
You know, the problem is all the people like myself
and Kashnakas from that time frame who who would have
an enthusiastic interest in it are either too old, a
fighter or dead. And god a city in Miami homicide
some of the best in the country.
Speaker 10 (24:44):
But how do you get them interested in help me
with the math thirty year old crime.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
At this point, we've tried almost everything. We've talked to police, prosecutors,
community members, DA agents. We've taken our investigation about as
far as it can go. But we do see a
potential path for justice, the First Amendment path, Kastrinakis said,
it's possible, but that's a path for lawyers. It's about
(25:13):
time for us to turn over the reins.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
So I reached back to one organization that I know
has the clout to bring this case back to the
attention of the courts, the Committee to Protect Journalists. The
goal of our original report was to encourage a more
thorough investigation, but that didn't happen, and that meant the
wider world stop paying attention and the wheels of justice
(25:40):
stopped turning. This time around, I wonder if the CPJA
would pursue a legal remedy. They immediately agreed to help
us investigate whether a federal case was possible. Today, I
call us after my first conversation with them.
Speaker 8 (25:56):
All the stuff that we cover on story, I think,
in the name of justice for those people, but deserves
another crack added by someone.
Speaker 11 (26:07):
How incredible if I mean, you know, you were joking
around with me about not doing another conspiracy podcast, But
how incredible if we managed to actually reopen these cases
and potentially get justice. I mean, that's the work of journalism,
I guess, and I you know, I.
Speaker 8 (26:25):
Mean, I know, we're very proud of this almost two
year effort. I thought, what's going to be done in
a month.
Speaker 11 (26:32):
Yeah, yeah, we have so much work to do.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
But there's just one more thing to do, one last
stone that we haven't turned over yet. We have to
go talk to Lewis Thermatus himself, because while we were reporting,
we found out that he's living back in Miami, and
Anna the idea of going to knock on his door
was frankly a little scary to me, even though he's
(26:58):
now in his seventies.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
Yes, I was scared too, but it was something we
had to do. I'm fine with taking risks so long
as they're calculated. So I suggested we bring a security
professional with us, and that's easy. In Miami. Many of
the private security firms that operate throughout Latin America are
based here.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Carlos provides security for journalists and NGOs and has worked
extensively in Haiti. Do you have a military background.
Speaker 12 (27:30):
You're recording this, I'm a contractor. I'm a contractor. I
work for one of the one of the government agency.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
We picked up Carlos at his home and drove to
the address we'd found the Thermatis. We talked about how
to approach the conversation if we actually met Thermatis.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
The name of the guy that went to jail, who
was the shooter and the case, and say we spoke
with we we were here to talk to you about
this guy rather than the victims's that.
Speaker 12 (28:01):
Oh yeah, that's a good approach.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
We pull up to a white, single story home with
a terra cotta roof in Miami Gardens. We knock on
the front door.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
Well, we're standing here waiting in front of the house,
punging on the door.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
It seems like no one's home. There are bars on
the windows, and the front pane has a hole in
it that looks like it could be from a bullet.
The small pool around the back is empty, and on
the front lawn is a gray head of Toussaint Lovature,
the Haitian general who led the slave revolt. It's been
(28:44):
separated from the rest of the statue. We began to
think Thermitas maybe in Haiti after all, but then a
neighbor pulled up and we asked if Thermitas still lived here.
The neighbor told us he did, so we loaded back
into the car and parked a parking lot across the
street but within view of the house, and we waited,
(29:05):
and just as we were about to give up and leave,
a shiny hummer pulled into the driveway. We immediately pulled
out of the parking lot and raced back to the
front of Thermatis's house. We got out of the car
and he waited in his minutes went by. Then finally
he emerged, bald, tall and skinny, a little stooped, but
(29:30):
looking younger than it's seventy years.
Speaker 5 (29:32):
Hello, Hi, Hi, where are we going?
Speaker 3 (29:38):
We're journalists.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
We were standing on Thermatus's lawn As he walked from
his car to his house. He was wide eyed seeing
a bunch of strangers ambushing him with questions, but he
paused to hear what we had to say.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
We wanted to see if we could talk about Billy Alexander.
He's a man who was a friend of yours a
few years ago.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Me, yeah, never, I never.
Speaker 5 (30:09):
No. What's my name, Louis Servitus. Billy Alexander was a
friend of yours from Little Haiti.
Speaker 12 (30:19):
No, thirty years ago or.
Speaker 5 (30:21):
Thirty two years ago? No, no, that's a long time.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
Probably, No, No, I never have a friend.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
I didn't know. He used to own a record store
in Little Haiti. You don't do that anymore. Well so
you don't remember anything, You don't recall anything at all.
Speaker 6 (30:41):
No, no, I don't have no, never have a friend
like that.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
What about John Claude Olivier, He was like a music promoter.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
As we were asking these questions, Vemaitis continued walking to
his front door. He evidently had no intention whatsoever of
engaging with us.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
What about Fritz Store?
Speaker 13 (30:59):
No?
Speaker 5 (31:00):
No, okay, all right, thank you, thank you for your time.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
And within the blink of an eye he was inside
his home and we were standing outside. We got back
into our car.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
We went through all the names. He said, no, no, no, he.
Speaker 12 (31:23):
Said, denying everybody that you know.
Speaker 6 (31:27):
He looked a little shocked.
Speaker 12 (31:29):
I don't think he was shocked.
Speaker 5 (31:30):
No, I think I think he it's when when you
have something like this on your back and your past.
I think you always think I'll come back, but you're
ready to sort of deny it.
Speaker 12 (31:44):
I agree with you. He denied everything. Your total You
ask him three simple questions. There were not threatening questions.
You ask him about people.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
So what did you make of that interaction we have
with thermat Semma, You were so cool under pressure asking
all those questions. I was just tongue tied standing next
to you.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Well, that's why I practiced what I was going to
say before we went in. But I have been in
far disier situations. I knew it was going to be
a long shot that he would talk to us, let
alone help us with our case. That said, we know
very well he knew all the names we brought up,
but his instinct was to deny everything.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
We did try calling thermatists to follow up, but no response.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Your call had been forwarded to an automatic voice message system.
Speaker 5 (32:34):
Our ability to move the investigation forward, as journalists had
come to an end, but the story of the pro
democracy movement did not end with these killings. We looked
now into the murder of another journalist, this time on
the street support a prince, and his death would mark
(32:57):
the end of an era.
Speaker 13 (33:01):
Seeing by lies of you, probably not knowing the street.
It's scary, yes, but that is so very different from
seeing your own husband on the ground.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
That's next time. Silenced is a Kaleidoscope content original produced
by Margaret Catcher, Jen Kinney and Padmini Rigunov. Research assistants
from Sybilla Phipps, Jeremy Bigwood and Kira Sinis. Edited by
(33:35):
Lacy Roberts. Executive produced by Kate Osborne, Reported and hosted
by Anna Arana and me Osvoloshin. Fact checking by Nicole Pasuka.
Music by Oliver Rodigan aka k Denzer, A mix and
sound design by Kyle Murdoch.
Speaker 5 (33:52):
Ty position actor was Sunny Mack.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Thanks to Mangosha, Tikta Costaslinas and Vinny shory Our executive
producers at iHeart, ar Qatria Novelle and Nikki Etoor. If
you like what you hear, please rate review share, and
subscribe to our channel. Thank you,
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