May 11, 2023 • 28 mins
An explosion of cocaine trafficking through Haiti is fuelling gangs in Miami. The radio broadcasters are calling out the drug trade on air. A fateful concert lights a fuse.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Previously on Silenced, Joseph said that he was to be
paid five thousand dollars to watch the driving school for
Fitzdor when he leaves work.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
They can't kill us, any one of us at any time.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
He was at this end, so full of life. I
couldn't believe that he died.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
Word started to circulate that it was it was more
than just a that had bits of blood, but typical homicide.
It was, you know, clilty or motivated, and we got
it for the stuff to it as who knows whose.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Names from Kaleioscope and iHeart podcasts, This is Silenced, I'm
as Velocian and.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
I'm Anna Arana. This is episode three Cocaine Kernels.
Speaker 6 (01:29):
I basically grew up in Miami. I came as very
early Asians. I always involved with the Haitian community.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
In the early nineteen eighties, A Bells of Fear was
living in Little Haiti in a small duplex with a
few quiet neighbors. He was one of the first in
a wave of Haitian refugees that began to arrive in
Miami by boat in the decade before, and he was
a key member of AO, the pro democracy organization. He
worked side by side with Fritz dahor.
Speaker 6 (01:57):
Not only with when we im we worked together, joke
mashed together everywhere we were together.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
A Bell's day job was for the city of Miami.
He spent most days at a local immigration detention center
where Haitian refugees were often held after they arrived by boat.
A Bell translated for recent arrivals. There, he'd get on
the radio with Marlene Bastienne and read the names in
the hopes that a listener would recognize them. One afternoon,
(02:29):
a neighbor knocked on his door. A Bell knew the
man from VEEO. He was also a member.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
He said, I have a problem. He said, my wife
send both of my treeling to Miami, and I don't
know where they are.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
This neighbor had heard that two boats of Haitian refugees
had recently left the Bahamas for Miami. One was intercepted
by the coastguard and passengers had jumped overboard to try
to escape.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
And there were a couple of people die like that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
The neighbor was terrified that his children were among the dead.
So A Bell drove down to Chrome detention center hoping
to find them.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
There were a lot of people there, and then I
was watching and I see a happy young girl. We
pleaded with another young woman and they were laughing.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
She's one of.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
Those kids come from Bahamas. And I said, what is
your name? And she said me most where's your boy?
They said, he's over there, And that's the way I
met them, and I took the information. And when I
get home and I said, I fire your daughter and son.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
A Bell filed all the paperwork for his neighbor and
the family was reunited.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
I used to see the kid all the time. I
leave in the back and didn't even be fun.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
He heard over the years that the young girl was
settling well into Miami, and he'd asked about her younger brother.
He remembered the boy in part because he had an
unusual name.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
He got funny name Hitler Hitler.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
His father later said that he didn't know the meaning
of the name when he gave it to his son.
A Bell heard that the boy had fallen in with
the wrong crowd. It was a problem that a lot
of Haitian American parents were worried about because there was
a flood of cocaine moving through little Haiti.
Speaker 7 (04:18):
The one thing the Haitians had they controlled that dopes
for a period of time because it was coming out
of the Haiti.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Senior officer Irvin's Ford, whose Haitian American himself, told us
the drug trade became a source of power for refugee kids.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
So the vander gang who went up as the Boobie Boys,
ran the north side of the city. They had to
be respectful towards the Asians, so that's where the dope
were coming from.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
Cocaine isn't cultivated our process in Haiti, but under the
Duvalier dictatorship, Haiti became an important stopover for the drug trade.
The dictatorship collapsed in nineteen eighty six when Baby Doc
was forced into exile. The military stepped into the power vacuum.
Speaker 7 (05:00):
The generals and the colonels that made their money off
of narcotics of their contacts with Columbia.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
The amount of cocaine being trafficked through Haiti exploded, and
the military officers who were now running the island figure
out how to turn power into profit.
Speaker 7 (05:17):
I recall that traveling to Haiti, there was this little
small town in the northwest part of Haiti. You walk on.
It was Colombians everywhere. It was a pit stop. And
then you started having these boats, these raggedy little boats
that started being used for shipment, and it affected the
(05:38):
South Florida area because this was the next stop.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
The military figure out that they could disguise shipments of
cocaine in and amongst the refugee boats. With all that
money to be made, military officers were competing for control.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
And for the next couple of years there were literally
housett takeovers by the military every other month.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Violence in Haiti rippled back across the water into the
streets of Little Haiti because the military officers who lost
out often ended up in Miami. So, according to Irvins,
gangs led by former military guys started monitoring the drugs
as they reached Little Haiti's stash houses, and then they
(06:21):
went in and stole the dope.
Speaker 7 (06:23):
We would get a lot of home invasion. What they
would do They break in I suspect that this was
a stash house. There were hundreds of kilos in the
closet somewhere.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
But they couldn't always find what they were looking for.
And that's when the Miami police started seeing horrible violence
torture techniques that the Haitian military had used, and they
were now showing up on the streets of Miami. Irvins
remembers one technique.
Speaker 7 (06:48):
If you didn't tell them where the dope was, they
would find the youngest person in the house. It'd be
four five years old. They would find a child, tie
up the child, plugged the iron, and start burning them
with the iron for their family to tell them whether
the door.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Haitian kids who were struggling to find their place became
the soldiers in the war among rival traffickers, and.
Speaker 7 (07:08):
These Asian kids were easily recruited because the majority of
nations coming in was holding onto a two three jobs
just to send money back home. So these kids were
raising themselves. So it's not an excuse or justification, but
they were easily recruited by these guys. We'll look out
(07:28):
for you, we'll care for you, we'll make sure you're good.
Everybody looking for that hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
I want to linger on this for a moment because
I know from my reporting that gangs can be very
effective at separating kids from their parents. These young people
find themselves in a new country, often without a lot
of guidance. Irvensford himself came to the US as a
child and remembers what it was like.
Speaker 7 (07:56):
I was chastised for being Haitian. I was not accepted.
The kids attacked US African American kids. They were told
these Asians, I had to take your jobs, and they
were very adamantly opposed to us being there.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
As the ACE crisis raged, patients were single out as
a public health risk.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
I recall being a young child going to win Dixie
on fifty fourth and second Avenue, my parents being Haitian,
they sprayed them at the door. I watched this as
an eleven year old. My parents were literally sprayed before
they were allowed him the store.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
So we've been looking at these crimes through the lens
of a straight battle between the radio broadcasters and the military.
But now Irvans introduced this new consideration, the drug trade,
which was evidently drawing patient immigrant kids into the world
of organized crime.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
I think it's important to talk about what so many
Haitian kids were experiencing because many of the broadcasters had
children themselves, and gang recruitment became part of their campaign.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Say more about that.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Well, gangs were recruiting the young Haitians to help move
drugs and then sending some of the proceeds back to
Haiti to fund the military regime there. In other words,
the cocaine trade was directly funding the violence and oppressive regime,
and Haiti and VERYO was fighting against that. This phenomenon
was not obvious to anyone outside of the Haitian community,
(09:31):
but Fritz and some of the other VEYEO broadcasters got
it and they spoke about it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
And so thinking back to Glossie Bruce Joseph, the guy
who confessed to be involved with Fritz's murder, supposedly over
nine kilos of cocaine that Fritz had stolen. I mean,
that story just feels so weird now, right.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Remember Classi first said he was a paid lookout when
Fritz was shot, and then he recounted his confession. He
was locked up for his involvement, but ultimately, years later,
Quassi was clear of the crime.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
We don't know why Lossi Bruce gave this false confession,
but what we do know is what you've been saying
since day one, which is the police under pressure, enormous
pressure to solve these crimes and find a motive that
didn't relate to politics in Haiti, so it seems like
Lossi Bruce became a very convenient scapegoat until a year later,
(10:32):
the police received a tip from another young Haitian American,
sixteen year old Ashley Severe, who was in jail on
charges of manslaughter and armed robbery of a drugs dash
house that led to a man getting killed. Ashley told
police that he wanted to do the right thing, and
he also knew that talking could get his charges on
that crime reduced, so he started trading information. He confessed
(10:57):
to stealing the car used in Fritz DAW's murder, and
he started giving up names the names of other young
Haitians involving gangs and drugs and said they were also
involved in killing both Fritz and John Claude. One of
them had a funny name, Hitler.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
Nothing could prepare Abel Saphir for the shock of learning
the name of one of the young men accused of
assassinating his dear friend, Fritz Hitler.
Speaker 6 (11:35):
When we hear the news and I said this by
his father was with us. We didn't anticipate somebody that
close to us will kill one of us.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
The news devastated the members of the pro Democracy group
in Miami Vieyo, especially Hitler's father. He had been totally
aware that his own son was involved. A Bell told
us they had cried together over Fritz's death.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
This was a shock.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
That's that is a big mess. How could yourself? I
studied with him, we eat together, we worked together. The
criminal the father is my neighbor, come to me crying.
My kids is in jail. I'm going to live with
it with the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
For the Miami PD, the focus became building a case
against Hitler and the rest of the group that actually
Severe had named. Ashley told the police that nineteen year
old Hitler florinaud was the getaway driver and next to
him in the front seat with the gun was a
twenty one year old named Billy Alexander, the trigger man.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
The whole focus is to get to the top whoever
is the leader.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
All we were trying to do is to get back
to Billy outs other.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
That's Raymond Carville, a member of the Miami PD task
force investigating John C. Lord and Fritz's murders. To catch
Billy Alexander, Carville said, the police developed a plan of
attack get Hitler to flip to implicate Billy in exchange
for a lighter sentence, But Carville says Hitler was a
tough nut to crack.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Hitler was basically Billy right here man when he don't
right here man to Billy, you're not going just that,
saying like canary.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
For a long time, Hitler kept his mouth shut. It
could have been out of loyalty or fear, but Hitler
was facing a potential death penalty. Ultimately, he flipped on Billy.
He testified that on two occasions he'd been in the
driver's seat when Billy rolled down the window, picked up
(13:54):
his revolver and pulled the trigger, firing the shots that
killed both Chanclord Olivier and its door.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Billy.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Alexander was convicted of both murders and is imprisoned to
this day, but he never admitted guilt. In fact, he
still maintains he had nothing to do with these murders.
So we reached out to him at South Bay Correctional Facility,
hoping he would be willing to talk to us. He
declined on interview, but he did right back. He wrote,
(14:25):
my heart goes out to the surviving family members of
the people who were murdered. My family has also endured
more than their share of suffering and humiliation as a
result of the publicity surrounding those high profile cases. I
do not want to relive the traumatic ordeal again, but
God knows my desire for true justice to prevail.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Anna.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I was a little surprised that thirty years after the fact,
Billy would still assert his innocence so strongly.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
Well, we don't know if Billy is innocent. It could
be that, yeah, he really didn't do it, or he
did do it and he's protecting somebody higher up. It
could also just be that he had no real incentive
to admit that he was guilty.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Right, Billy's in prison not just for the murders of
Fritz and John Claude. He was also convicted of a
separate murder in Broward County. For it's worth, in all
of our reporting, no one except for Billy has questioned
whether he pulled the trigger. Hitler was ultimately convicted of
the murder and sentenced nineteen years. He's out of prison now,
and we did try to reach out to him with
(15:33):
no success.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
And ultimately we're left wondering, why would Billy and Hitler
murder Fritz and John Cloud. There doesn't seem to be
a motive unless they were paid to do it.
Speaker 8 (15:45):
We don't think this is something that Billy, Alexander and
Hitler flora Or cooked up.
Speaker 9 (15:49):
Where did this come from?
Speaker 5 (15:50):
That was David Hornig, one of Hitler's lawyers. David says
that his client didn't know anything about the masterminds or
the motives behind the murder.
Speaker 9 (16:00):
As strange as it sounds for somebody who was accused
of participating in two murders, my recollection of mister florinord
was that he was innocent. I don't mean I don't
mean legally innocent. He was an innocent person.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
David thought Hitler was caught up in something he didn't
quite understand.
Speaker 8 (16:18):
I remember, we collected as many names as we possibly
could and tried to chase those threads as far as
we possibly could. We really didn't have the resources or
the ability, but we were looking for any clues we
might be able to find that would lead us beyond Alexander.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
What he heard over and over again was that this
was bigger than a small gang. Hitler and Billy were
ponds in a much larger game.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The best lead David ever gone was from something Hitler
mentioned about the day after Fritz's murder. Hitler said in
a deposition that Billy drove them to a record store.
Billy got out of the car, went into the shop,
and came back with an envelope of cash. Billy also
corroborated this account in court testimony, saying he met with
(17:11):
a man named Bernard Adolph who gave him an envelope
of money and told him to give it to Hitler.
Billy had been to that store before. It was owned
by someone who he'd known since he was a kid,
by a guy who was well known in the community.
Speaker 8 (17:28):
He was a music producer, he was a concert promotor.
And what I remember about that is just it this
remarkable sense of frustration because and I don't know that
he did anything wrong, but there was a feeling that
he was just out of reach.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
There was one name that kept coming up again and
again in our reporting.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Lewis Derminus, Lewis Demotis.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Louis Thermitus. By all accounts, the guy wore many hats.
He promoted concerts. He also owned a shipping business, and
that record store, Louis Records. It blasted music into the
streets and it's a spot where kids like Billy Alexander
hung out. Thermatis was successful, moneyed, powerful, and well known
(18:24):
in the community. In January nineteen ninety one, just a
few weeks after Aristeed's historic election victory, Thermatis was organizing
a concert in Little Haiti with Vedi la Guaire, an
up and coming Haitian singer who was known for her
pro democracy anthems. She sang about Aristide's election in one
of her songs.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
She stood to sing gospel songs and he starts singing
songs about the movement. She makes so much heat for
that movement.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Marcellus Fritz's best friend, the one who came to Miami
with Fritz on the same boat. He said, everyone at
Vio loved Verdi la Guare's music, so when they heard
that she was coming to play a concert in Little Haiti,
they should have been excited, except the concert was being
thrown by Louis Thermatus.
Speaker 10 (19:27):
If he come and sing for well, Louis Thermatus is
going to undermine our credibility what we stand for.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Tony Fritz's co host on the radio.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
Louis Demotis.
Speaker 10 (19:40):
He is connected with the Haitian consulate and they are
they present the government.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
There were rumors that Thermatus was a supporter of the
former regime, perhaps even a Tonto mccoot, though Thermatus has
denied that. Tony and others in Vio explain their concerns
about Thermatis by citing his connections. One was his supposed
connection to the Haitian consulate in Miami, which was staffed
(20:08):
by military appointees at the time. The other is that
Thermatus was reportedly connected to a specific Haitian military leader.
Speaker 10 (20:16):
He wasn't would connection with William Wegala WILLIAMS.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Regala. His very name stoked fear. He had been one
of the military leaders of Haiti before Aristeid was elected.
He was also a major cocaine trafficker. Many in the
Haitian community, including Tony, believed that Thermatus was connected to Regala.
I asked Tony, why a lot of people say to us, Oh,
(20:39):
it was a time everyone spread rumors about each other.
If you didn't like someone, you said they were a
mccoude or you said they were a trafficker. So we're
just trying to understand, like, how can we contritely know
that this guy was actually involved.
Speaker 10 (20:51):
He was open with Williams Gala. If you're connected with him,
you know that's that's it. You connected to William segalapst
mean you can do bad things because Uila Migala was
a dangerous man leading the country after the Vali left.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
A police report from the time indicated that several locals
had described Thermatus as quote an agent of Williams Regala
and said he should be considered armed and dangerous. Police
also suspected Thermatis are being involved in the drug trade
and considered him a quote middleman distributor. At this time,
it was well known that the drug trade and the
(21:29):
Haitian music industry were connected. Drug dealers would often throw
concerts to launder money. Again, we must note that Thermatus
has denied his connection to the military. According to one
police report, he told officers quote, he is not involved
in politics and he's not a member of the Tante Maccouts,
nor has he ever been. But veryo saw Thermatis differently,
(21:51):
and they didn't want someone who seemed to have direct
connections to the Old Guard to co op fedia, one
of the most important symbols of their cause.
Speaker 10 (22:00):
That's why when damagers hired Fadia to do a concert
for him, we said, oh no, no, that should not
happen because Fredja was part of us, so we don't
want Aquad to go and support loose damages.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
As usual, Fritz took the lead.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Fritz called Fidia. We say, Vidia, you cannot come here
in Miami play for Ruis.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
They told her about Thermitus's reputation, but Feddia said she
needed the money.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
My son is is sick. I need the money to
take care of my son.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Fritz offer to throw a concert himself, a free public
concert where they gathered donations for her son.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
We collect the money for you. We believe you will
get more money then if you get for this man.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
But Fadjia felt her hands were tied, and so Fritz
told her they'd have to go with Plan B, a
boycott of her concert. Fritz knew that blasting this message
on radio vo was the best way to get their
men to the community.
Speaker 10 (23:01):
We asked, you want to stay away from me, don't
want it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
John tord Olivier, the other broadcast and murdered just a
couple of weeks before. Fritz had also used his radio
show to boycott the concert. In the days leading up
to the concert, Fritz talked NonStop about the boycott. Fritz's
brother Jeans and Lot, testified to this during the murder trial.
(23:27):
He recounted how the broadcasters levied serious claims about Thermatus,
including that he'd been corrupting kids of other Haitian refugees,
kids like Hitler and Billy and turning them into gang members.
And so the concert came to define which side controlled
little Haiti.
Speaker 10 (23:44):
They just say he was losing his script. If his
concent turned out with a few people to show up,
he's going to lose too much. And we trying to
get to get the world out of his feet.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
And that move pulling the rug out from under Thermatus,
it seemed to work.
Speaker 10 (24:05):
I think the concert went on and they got very
fuqo shot, very few, very very pupile show.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
The concert was a failure. Upwards of two thousand people
were expected, only about a third of which showed up.
Louis Thermatus was losing faith and influence. After Fritz and
John Claude ended up dead, the streets started saying the
two things were linked, that Thermatus had a motive, he
(24:34):
must have been angry people in the community whispered he
must have lost a lot of money. Maybe he had
Fritz and John claud killed to get revenge. These rumors
got around. They even showed up on the Miami PDS
craile language tip line. Louis Thermatus heard the rumors too,
and he decided the best thing to do was to
go and talk to the police voluntarily. So less than
(24:57):
a month after Fritz's death, he walked into police station
to say that he had nothing to do with either
of the murders. They had nothing to do with politics,
and was not and never had been a tantamaccoot. Yes,
he said his concert was impacted by these broadcasters boycott,
but he didn't have them killed for it. He also
(25:17):
noted that while he had been in Miami the night
that Fritz was killed, he hadn't even been in town
when John Claude was shot. He'd been in New York.
The interview concluded, and Thermatus walked out. To our knowledge,
he was never officially questioned by Miami police about this
case again, and there's no hard evidence that we know
of linking him to the murders. So he remained part
(25:40):
of the community. Something Tony experienced viscerally as he went
about his own business in little Haiti after Fritz's murder.
Speaker 10 (25:47):
I went one day to quite my hair, and the
barber pushed and tell me go wait, don't blugget in.
Go wait wait, don't get lugget in because you are
in danger. He says, Luis d it's looking for you.
But he didn't recognize my face, you know my voice.
I did call the police. I did call the police
(26:09):
that day, and the police came in. They took me
to my house, and that was it. They didn't do anything.
Time didn't do anything him.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
Tony still doesn't understand why the case stopped with Billie Alexander.
Why didn't the authorities look further.
Speaker 10 (26:28):
We heard about Billiaxner got arrested. They said he was
the hitman, and that was it.
Speaker 6 (26:34):
That was it.
Speaker 10 (26:35):
It think we kind of tor ust the government though
justice system to move forward with that case. But in
fact he realizes that's not true, that's not true.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Soon it would become clear that the military and its
supporters weren't just on the rise in Miami, they were
getting ready to make major moves in Haiti.
Speaker 7 (26:57):
It just happened.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
It just happened.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
We started seeing thanks out in the streets.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
There they are holding up handmade signs saying, we will
make this another mogadishu. We will make this another mogadishu.
Eh boy. All hell broke thus at that point.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And before long, another friend of Fritz and Tony is
gunned down on the streets of Miami, just hours after
a controversial broadcast on his radio show That's Next Time
I'm Silenced. We reached out to Fadia La Guere and
(27:43):
hit the Flora Nord's sister and father for comment, but
they didn't respond. Williams Regala died in twenty eighteen. Silenced
is a Kaleidoscope Content original produce by Margaret Katscher, Jenkinni
and Padmini Rugunov, research assistance from Sybylla Phipps, Jeremy big
(28:08):
Wood and Kira Sinnis, edited by Lacy Roberts, executive produced
by Kate Osborne, reported and hosted by Anna Arana and
me Oz Valoshin. Fact checking by Nicole Pasuka, music by
Oliver Rodigan aka Kydenzer, Mix and sound design by Kyle Murdoch.
(28:30):
Thanks to Mangosha, Tikta Costaslinas and Viney Shori. Our executive
producers at iHeart are Katrina Novel and Nikki Etour. If
you like what you hear, please rate, review, share, and
subscribe to our channel. Thank you,
Previously on Silenced, Joseph said that he was to be
paid five thousand dollars to watch the driving school for
Fitzdor when he leaves work.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
They can't kill us, any one of us at any time.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
He was at this end, so full of life. I
couldn't believe that he died.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
Word started to circulate that it was it was more
than just a that had bits of blood, but typical homicide.
It was, you know, clilty or motivated, and we got
it for the stuff to it as who knows whose.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Names from Kaleioscope and iHeart podcasts, This is Silenced, I'm
as Velocian and.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
I'm Anna Arana. This is episode three Cocaine Kernels.
Speaker 6 (01:29):
I basically grew up in Miami. I came as very
early Asians. I always involved with the Haitian community.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
In the early nineteen eighties, A Bells of Fear was
living in Little Haiti in a small duplex with a
few quiet neighbors. He was one of the first in
a wave of Haitian refugees that began to arrive in
Miami by boat in the decade before, and he was
a key member of AO, the pro democracy organization. He
worked side by side with Fritz dahor.
Speaker 6 (01:57):
Not only with when we im we worked together, joke
mashed together everywhere we were together.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
A Bell's day job was for the city of Miami.
He spent most days at a local immigration detention center
where Haitian refugees were often held after they arrived by boat.
A Bell translated for recent arrivals. There, he'd get on
the radio with Marlene Bastienne and read the names in
the hopes that a listener would recognize them. One afternoon,
(02:29):
a neighbor knocked on his door. A Bell knew the
man from VEEO. He was also a member.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
He said, I have a problem. He said, my wife
send both of my treeling to Miami, and I don't
know where they are.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
This neighbor had heard that two boats of Haitian refugees
had recently left the Bahamas for Miami. One was intercepted
by the coastguard and passengers had jumped overboard to try
to escape.
Speaker 6 (02:57):
And there were a couple of people die like that.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
The neighbor was terrified that his children were among the dead.
So A Bell drove down to Chrome detention center hoping
to find them.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
There were a lot of people there, and then I
was watching and I see a happy young girl. We
pleaded with another young woman and they were laughing.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
She's one of.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
Those kids come from Bahamas. And I said, what is
your name? And she said me most where's your boy?
They said, he's over there, And that's the way I
met them, and I took the information. And when I
get home and I said, I fire your daughter and son.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
A Bell filed all the paperwork for his neighbor and
the family was reunited.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
I used to see the kid all the time. I
leave in the back and didn't even be fun.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
He heard over the years that the young girl was
settling well into Miami, and he'd asked about her younger brother.
He remembered the boy in part because he had an
unusual name.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
He got funny name Hitler Hitler.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
His father later said that he didn't know the meaning
of the name when he gave it to his son.
A Bell heard that the boy had fallen in with
the wrong crowd. It was a problem that a lot
of Haitian American parents were worried about because there was
a flood of cocaine moving through little Haiti.
Speaker 7 (04:18):
The one thing the Haitians had they controlled that dopes
for a period of time because it was coming out
of the Haiti.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Senior officer Irvin's Ford, whose Haitian American himself, told us
the drug trade became a source of power for refugee kids.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
So the vander gang who went up as the Boobie Boys,
ran the north side of the city. They had to
be respectful towards the Asians, so that's where the dope
were coming from.
Speaker 5 (04:42):
Cocaine isn't cultivated our process in Haiti, but under the
Duvalier dictatorship, Haiti became an important stopover for the drug trade.
The dictatorship collapsed in nineteen eighty six when Baby Doc
was forced into exile. The military stepped into the power vacuum.
Speaker 7 (05:00):
The generals and the colonels that made their money off
of narcotics of their contacts with Columbia.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
The amount of cocaine being trafficked through Haiti exploded, and
the military officers who were now running the island figure
out how to turn power into profit.
Speaker 7 (05:17):
I recall that traveling to Haiti, there was this little
small town in the northwest part of Haiti. You walk on.
It was Colombians everywhere. It was a pit stop. And
then you started having these boats, these raggedy little boats
that started being used for shipment, and it affected the
(05:38):
South Florida area because this was the next stop.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
The military figure out that they could disguise shipments of
cocaine in and amongst the refugee boats. With all that
money to be made, military officers were competing for control.
Speaker 7 (05:53):
And for the next couple of years there were literally
housett takeovers by the military every other month.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Violence in Haiti rippled back across the water into the
streets of Little Haiti because the military officers who lost
out often ended up in Miami. So, according to Irvins,
gangs led by former military guys started monitoring the drugs
as they reached Little Haiti's stash houses, and then they
(06:21):
went in and stole the dope.
Speaker 7 (06:23):
We would get a lot of home invasion. What they
would do They break in I suspect that this was
a stash house. There were hundreds of kilos in the
closet somewhere.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
But they couldn't always find what they were looking for.
And that's when the Miami police started seeing horrible violence
torture techniques that the Haitian military had used, and they
were now showing up on the streets of Miami. Irvins
remembers one technique.
Speaker 7 (06:48):
If you didn't tell them where the dope was, they
would find the youngest person in the house. It'd be
four five years old. They would find a child, tie
up the child, plugged the iron, and start burning them
with the iron for their family to tell them whether
the door.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Haitian kids who were struggling to find their place became
the soldiers in the war among rival traffickers, and.
Speaker 7 (07:08):
These Asian kids were easily recruited because the majority of
nations coming in was holding onto a two three jobs
just to send money back home. So these kids were
raising themselves. So it's not an excuse or justification, but
they were easily recruited by these guys. We'll look out
(07:28):
for you, we'll care for you, we'll make sure you're good.
Everybody looking for that hierarchy of needs.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
I want to linger on this for a moment because
I know from my reporting that gangs can be very
effective at separating kids from their parents. These young people
find themselves in a new country, often without a lot
of guidance. Irvensford himself came to the US as a
child and remembers what it was like.
Speaker 7 (07:56):
I was chastised for being Haitian. I was not accepted.
The kids attacked US African American kids. They were told
these Asians, I had to take your jobs, and they
were very adamantly opposed to us being there.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
As the ACE crisis raged, patients were single out as
a public health risk.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
I recall being a young child going to win Dixie
on fifty fourth and second Avenue, my parents being Haitian,
they sprayed them at the door. I watched this as
an eleven year old. My parents were literally sprayed before
they were allowed him the store.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
So we've been looking at these crimes through the lens
of a straight battle between the radio broadcasters and the military.
But now Irvans introduced this new consideration, the drug trade,
which was evidently drawing patient immigrant kids into the world
of organized crime.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
I think it's important to talk about what so many
Haitian kids were experiencing because many of the broadcasters had
children themselves, and gang recruitment became part of their campaign.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Say more about that.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Well, gangs were recruiting the young Haitians to help move
drugs and then sending some of the proceeds back to
Haiti to fund the military regime there. In other words,
the cocaine trade was directly funding the violence and oppressive regime,
and Haiti and VERYO was fighting against that. This phenomenon
was not obvious to anyone outside of the Haitian community,
(09:31):
but Fritz and some of the other VEYEO broadcasters got
it and they spoke about it.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
And so thinking back to Glossie Bruce Joseph, the guy
who confessed to be involved with Fritz's murder, supposedly over
nine kilos of cocaine that Fritz had stolen. I mean,
that story just feels so weird now, right.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
Remember Classi first said he was a paid lookout when
Fritz was shot, and then he recounted his confession. He
was locked up for his involvement, but ultimately, years later,
Quassi was clear of the crime.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
We don't know why Lossi Bruce gave this false confession,
but what we do know is what you've been saying
since day one, which is the police under pressure, enormous
pressure to solve these crimes and find a motive that
didn't relate to politics in Haiti, so it seems like
Lossi Bruce became a very convenient scapegoat until a year later,
(10:32):
the police received a tip from another young Haitian American,
sixteen year old Ashley Severe, who was in jail on
charges of manslaughter and armed robbery of a drugs dash
house that led to a man getting killed. Ashley told
police that he wanted to do the right thing, and
he also knew that talking could get his charges on
that crime reduced, so he started trading information. He confessed
(10:57):
to stealing the car used in Fritz DAW's murder, and
he started giving up names the names of other young
Haitians involving gangs and drugs and said they were also
involved in killing both Fritz and John Claude. One of
them had a funny name, Hitler.
Speaker 5 (11:24):
Nothing could prepare Abel Saphir for the shock of learning
the name of one of the young men accused of
assassinating his dear friend, Fritz Hitler.
Speaker 6 (11:35):
When we hear the news and I said this by
his father was with us. We didn't anticipate somebody that
close to us will kill one of us.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
The news devastated the members of the pro Democracy group
in Miami Vieyo, especially Hitler's father. He had been totally
aware that his own son was involved. A Bell told
us they had cried together over Fritz's death.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
This was a shock.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
That's that is a big mess. How could yourself? I
studied with him, we eat together, we worked together. The
criminal the father is my neighbor, come to me crying.
My kids is in jail. I'm going to live with
it with the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
For the Miami PD, the focus became building a case
against Hitler and the rest of the group that actually
Severe had named. Ashley told the police that nineteen year
old Hitler florinaud was the getaway driver and next to
him in the front seat with the gun was a
twenty one year old named Billy Alexander, the trigger man.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
The whole focus is to get to the top whoever
is the leader.
Speaker 6 (12:59):
All we were trying to do is to get back
to Billy outs other.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
That's Raymond Carville, a member of the Miami PD task
force investigating John C. Lord and Fritz's murders. To catch
Billy Alexander, Carville said, the police developed a plan of
attack get Hitler to flip to implicate Billy in exchange
for a lighter sentence, But Carville says Hitler was a
tough nut to crack.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Hitler was basically Billy right here man when he don't
right here man to Billy, you're not going just that,
saying like canary.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
For a long time, Hitler kept his mouth shut. It
could have been out of loyalty or fear, but Hitler
was facing a potential death penalty. Ultimately, he flipped on Billy.
He testified that on two occasions he'd been in the
driver's seat when Billy rolled down the window, picked up
(13:54):
his revolver and pulled the trigger, firing the shots that
killed both Chanclord Olivier and its door.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Billy.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
Alexander was convicted of both murders and is imprisoned to
this day, but he never admitted guilt. In fact, he
still maintains he had nothing to do with these murders.
So we reached out to him at South Bay Correctional Facility,
hoping he would be willing to talk to us. He
declined on interview, but he did right back. He wrote,
(14:25):
my heart goes out to the surviving family members of
the people who were murdered. My family has also endured
more than their share of suffering and humiliation as a
result of the publicity surrounding those high profile cases. I
do not want to relive the traumatic ordeal again, but
God knows my desire for true justice to prevail.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Anna.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I was a little surprised that thirty years after the fact,
Billy would still assert his innocence so strongly.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
Well, we don't know if Billy is innocent. It could
be that, yeah, he really didn't do it, or he
did do it and he's protecting somebody higher up. It
could also just be that he had no real incentive
to admit that he was guilty.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Right, Billy's in prison not just for the murders of
Fritz and John Claude. He was also convicted of a
separate murder in Broward County. For it's worth, in all
of our reporting, no one except for Billy has questioned
whether he pulled the trigger. Hitler was ultimately convicted of
the murder and sentenced nineteen years. He's out of prison now,
and we did try to reach out to him with
(15:33):
no success.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
And ultimately we're left wondering, why would Billy and Hitler
murder Fritz and John Cloud. There doesn't seem to be
a motive unless they were paid to do it.
Speaker 8 (15:45):
We don't think this is something that Billy, Alexander and
Hitler flora Or cooked up.
Speaker 9 (15:49):
Where did this come from?
Speaker 5 (15:50):
That was David Hornig, one of Hitler's lawyers. David says
that his client didn't know anything about the masterminds or
the motives behind the murder.
Speaker 9 (16:00):
As strange as it sounds for somebody who was accused
of participating in two murders, my recollection of mister florinord
was that he was innocent. I don't mean I don't
mean legally innocent. He was an innocent person.
Speaker 5 (16:13):
David thought Hitler was caught up in something he didn't
quite understand.
Speaker 8 (16:18):
I remember, we collected as many names as we possibly
could and tried to chase those threads as far as
we possibly could. We really didn't have the resources or
the ability, but we were looking for any clues we
might be able to find that would lead us beyond Alexander.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
What he heard over and over again was that this
was bigger than a small gang. Hitler and Billy were
ponds in a much larger game.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The best lead David ever gone was from something Hitler
mentioned about the day after Fritz's murder. Hitler said in
a deposition that Billy drove them to a record store.
Billy got out of the car, went into the shop,
and came back with an envelope of cash. Billy also
corroborated this account in court testimony, saying he met with
(17:11):
a man named Bernard Adolph who gave him an envelope
of money and told him to give it to Hitler.
Billy had been to that store before. It was owned
by someone who he'd known since he was a kid,
by a guy who was well known in the community.
Speaker 8 (17:28):
He was a music producer, he was a concert promotor.
And what I remember about that is just it this
remarkable sense of frustration because and I don't know that
he did anything wrong, but there was a feeling that
he was just out of reach.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
There was one name that kept coming up again and
again in our reporting.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Lewis Derminus, Lewis Demotis.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Louis Thermitus. By all accounts, the guy wore many hats.
He promoted concerts. He also owned a shipping business, and
that record store, Louis Records. It blasted music into the
streets and it's a spot where kids like Billy Alexander
hung out. Thermatis was successful, moneyed, powerful, and well known
(18:24):
in the community. In January nineteen ninety one, just a
few weeks after Aristeed's historic election victory, Thermatis was organizing
a concert in Little Haiti with Vedi la Guaire, an
up and coming Haitian singer who was known for her
pro democracy anthems. She sang about Aristide's election in one
of her songs.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
She stood to sing gospel songs and he starts singing
songs about the movement. She makes so much heat for
that movement.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Marcellus Fritz's best friend, the one who came to Miami
with Fritz on the same boat. He said, everyone at
Vio loved Verdi la Guare's music, so when they heard
that she was coming to play a concert in Little Haiti,
they should have been excited, except the concert was being
thrown by Louis Thermatus.
Speaker 10 (19:27):
If he come and sing for well, Louis Thermatus is
going to undermine our credibility what we stand for.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Tony Fritz's co host on the radio.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
Louis Demotis.
Speaker 10 (19:40):
He is connected with the Haitian consulate and they are
they present the government.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
There were rumors that Thermatus was a supporter of the
former regime, perhaps even a Tonto mccoot, though Thermatus has
denied that. Tony and others in Vio explain their concerns
about Thermatis by citing his connections. One was his supposed
connection to the Haitian consulate in Miami, which was staffed
(20:08):
by military appointees at the time. The other is that
Thermatus was reportedly connected to a specific Haitian military leader.
Speaker 10 (20:16):
He wasn't would connection with William Wegala WILLIAMS.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Regala. His very name stoked fear. He had been one
of the military leaders of Haiti before Aristeid was elected.
He was also a major cocaine trafficker. Many in the
Haitian community, including Tony, believed that Thermatus was connected to Regala.
I asked Tony, why a lot of people say to us, Oh,
(20:39):
it was a time everyone spread rumors about each other.
If you didn't like someone, you said they were a
mccoude or you said they were a trafficker. So we're
just trying to understand, like, how can we contritely know
that this guy was actually involved.
Speaker 10 (20:51):
He was open with Williams Gala. If you're connected with him,
you know that's that's it. You connected to William segalapst
mean you can do bad things because Uila Migala was
a dangerous man leading the country after the Vali left.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
A police report from the time indicated that several locals
had described Thermatus as quote an agent of Williams Regala
and said he should be considered armed and dangerous. Police
also suspected Thermatis are being involved in the drug trade
and considered him a quote middleman distributor. At this time,
it was well known that the drug trade and the
(21:29):
Haitian music industry were connected. Drug dealers would often throw
concerts to launder money. Again, we must note that Thermatus
has denied his connection to the military. According to one
police report, he told officers quote, he is not involved
in politics and he's not a member of the Tante Maccouts,
nor has he ever been. But veryo saw Thermatis differently,
(21:51):
and they didn't want someone who seemed to have direct
connections to the Old Guard to co op fedia, one
of the most important symbols of their cause.
Speaker 10 (22:00):
That's why when damagers hired Fadia to do a concert
for him, we said, oh no, no, that should not
happen because Fredja was part of us, so we don't
want Aquad to go and support loose damages.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
As usual, Fritz took the lead.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Fritz called Fidia. We say, Vidia, you cannot come here
in Miami play for Ruis.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
They told her about Thermitus's reputation, but Feddia said she
needed the money.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
My son is is sick. I need the money to
take care of my son.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Fritz offer to throw a concert himself, a free public
concert where they gathered donations for her son.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
We collect the money for you. We believe you will
get more money then if you get for this man.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
But Fadjia felt her hands were tied, and so Fritz
told her they'd have to go with Plan B, a
boycott of her concert. Fritz knew that blasting this message
on radio vo was the best way to get their
men to the community.
Speaker 10 (23:01):
We asked, you want to stay away from me, don't
want it.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
John tord Olivier, the other broadcast and murdered just a
couple of weeks before. Fritz had also used his radio
show to boycott the concert. In the days leading up
to the concert, Fritz talked NonStop about the boycott. Fritz's
brother Jeans and Lot, testified to this during the murder trial.
(23:27):
He recounted how the broadcasters levied serious claims about Thermatus,
including that he'd been corrupting kids of other Haitian refugees,
kids like Hitler and Billy and turning them into gang members.
And so the concert came to define which side controlled
little Haiti.
Speaker 10 (23:44):
They just say he was losing his script. If his
concent turned out with a few people to show up,
he's going to lose too much. And we trying to
get to get the world out of his feet.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
And that move pulling the rug out from under Thermatus,
it seemed to work.
Speaker 10 (24:05):
I think the concert went on and they got very
fuqo shot, very few, very very pupile show.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
The concert was a failure. Upwards of two thousand people
were expected, only about a third of which showed up.
Louis Thermatus was losing faith and influence. After Fritz and
John Claude ended up dead, the streets started saying the
two things were linked, that Thermatus had a motive, he
(24:34):
must have been angry people in the community whispered he
must have lost a lot of money. Maybe he had
Fritz and John claud killed to get revenge. These rumors
got around. They even showed up on the Miami PDS
craile language tip line. Louis Thermatus heard the rumors too,
and he decided the best thing to do was to
go and talk to the police voluntarily. So less than
(24:57):
a month after Fritz's death, he walked into police station
to say that he had nothing to do with either
of the murders. They had nothing to do with politics,
and was not and never had been a tantamaccoot. Yes,
he said his concert was impacted by these broadcasters boycott,
but he didn't have them killed for it. He also
(25:17):
noted that while he had been in Miami the night
that Fritz was killed, he hadn't even been in town
when John Claude was shot. He'd been in New York.
The interview concluded, and Thermatus walked out. To our knowledge,
he was never officially questioned by Miami police about this
case again, and there's no hard evidence that we know
of linking him to the murders. So he remained part
(25:40):
of the community. Something Tony experienced viscerally as he went
about his own business in little Haiti after Fritz's murder.
Speaker 10 (25:47):
I went one day to quite my hair, and the
barber pushed and tell me go wait, don't blugget in.
Go wait wait, don't get lugget in because you are
in danger. He says, Luis d it's looking for you.
But he didn't recognize my face, you know my voice.
I did call the police. I did call the police
(26:09):
that day, and the police came in. They took me
to my house, and that was it. They didn't do anything.
Time didn't do anything him.
Speaker 5 (26:20):
Tony still doesn't understand why the case stopped with Billie Alexander.
Why didn't the authorities look further.
Speaker 10 (26:28):
We heard about Billiaxner got arrested. They said he was
the hitman, and that was it.
Speaker 6 (26:34):
That was it.
Speaker 10 (26:35):
It think we kind of tor ust the government though
justice system to move forward with that case. But in
fact he realizes that's not true, that's not true.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Soon it would become clear that the military and its
supporters weren't just on the rise in Miami, they were
getting ready to make major moves in Haiti.
Speaker 7 (26:57):
It just happened.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
It just happened.
Speaker 7 (27:00):
We started seeing thanks out in the streets.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
There they are holding up handmade signs saying, we will
make this another mogadishu. We will make this another mogadishu.
Eh boy. All hell broke thus at that point.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And before long, another friend of Fritz and Tony is
gunned down on the streets of Miami, just hours after
a controversial broadcast on his radio show That's Next Time
I'm Silenced. We reached out to Fadia La Guere and
(27:43):
hit the Flora Nord's sister and father for comment, but
they didn't respond. Williams Regala died in twenty eighteen. Silenced
is a Kaleidoscope Content original produce by Margaret Katscher, Jenkinni
and Padmini Rugunov, research assistance from Sybylla Phipps, Jeremy big
(28:08):
Wood and Kira Sinnis, edited by Lacy Roberts, executive produced
by Kate Osborne, reported and hosted by Anna Arana and
me Oz Valoshin. Fact checking by Nicole Pasuka, music by
Oliver Rodigan aka Kydenzer, Mix and sound design by Kyle Murdoch.
(28:30):
Thanks to Mangosha, Tikta Costaslinas and Viney Shori. Our executive
producers at iHeart are Katrina Novel and Nikki Etour. If
you like what you hear, please rate, review, share, and
subscribe to our channel. Thank you,
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