May 4, 2023 • 27 mins
The investigation into Olivier’s killing begins, and another young radio journalist is shot. It can’t be a coincidence.
Available to all on May 4, 2023.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Last time on silenced.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Whenever you speak your MANI, you're never safe.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
They would come to see who's demonstrating against the Juvalier,
so that our names could be placed on the black
book like Luis Noir.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
It went from being here's the murder that no one
has solved yet, too, this is a campaign of murder
targeting Creole language broadcasters. So it really sort of raised
the question of how much farther is this going to go?
Speaker 5 (00:50):
From nineteen seventy four to nineteen ninety one when it
passed will Always Together.
Speaker 6 (00:56):
That's John Rodrigue Marcella's, a former city councilman of North Maya,
talking about his best friend Fritz Dahr. Growing up in Haiti.
They were more like brothers. Marcellus lived with Fritz's family
when his own moved out of the city.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
They become mystle good parents. Me and Fritz. We never fight.
Fwitz was so wise.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Marcellus looked up to Fritz from an early age, and
despite his short stature, Fritz was clearly a leader with
deep convictions and growing up during the Devalier regime that
got him into trouble. In the late seventies, he was
an ambitious twenty one year old who'd been selected for
a program to identify the next generation of Haitian educators.
(01:40):
At the end of the program, the students gathered to
find out whether they'd got in a job. There was
excitement and tension in the room. Then Fritz got incredible news.
He'd achieved the highest honor. He was going to be
a school principal. They told Fritz there'd be a national
event to honor him. Even the President of Haiti would
be there. But when Fritz heard that news, his demeanor
(02:03):
changed immediately, and.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Fwitz said, he said, I'm not going to be on
that on that celebration with baby dog Duvalier. A man
like me cannot be with that man.
Speaker 6 (02:16):
The room fell silent, right there in front of hundreds
of people. Fritz had stepped over an uncrossable line. He
criticized the Duvalier. He and Marcellus left in a hurry.
It wasn't even fifteen minutes later that the whispers started.
Marcella says an enforcer, a Tonton maccout, had been at
(02:38):
the event and heard Fritz's declaration against du Valier. Now
the mccout was out for revenge.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
When that man went after him. We know exactly what
time was it time for them to kill us.
Speaker 6 (02:52):
Fritz's parents acted fast. They hid Fritz away and pulled
together all the money they could for two seats on
a boat heading from Haiti to Miami, one for Fritz
and one for Marcellus.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
And he's not an easy from Haiti to hear the
ocean was warf.
Speaker 6 (03:11):
The two men joined the surge of tens of thousands
of refugees who fled the Duvalier regime in small boats.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
It was very scary. One hundred and fifty one people
was in that boat. There was an hurricane one of
the night. We thought they boat will crash little piece
by a little because it was so hard.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
But Marcello's and Fritz made it. After fourteen days at sea,
they arrived as refugees in Florida just after Christmas Day
on December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
We came here on a Friday night and Saturday night
while wey at the meeting with Fada Juice. When we
met with Fadai Jia Janice was like a dream come true.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
Fritz quickly became a leader in father Jeanju's movement, the
AO and on the radio in Florida. He'd become an
outspoken critic of the Duvaliers. But soon after their perilous journey,
he and Marcellus would learn that Miami was not as safe.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
As they thought. Any one of us at any tank.
Speaker 6 (04:26):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts, This is Silenced, I'm os
Valoscian and.
Speaker 7 (04:33):
I'm Anna Arana.
Speaker 8 (04:35):
This is episode two, Truth and Bullets.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Chris was so involved in the community. I believe Fred
You just give him a setting where he can practice
what he loved the most.
Speaker 7 (05:22):
Fritz became one of Father John Juw's most trusted followers
and an inspiration to other young exiles.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Fritzdal was like a real organizer.
Speaker 7 (05:31):
People like Marlon Bastien.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I liked it because when I first give you, I
saw people on the street and then speaking about against
the dictatorship. How I said, Oh I found my nest,
Oh my lord. I was like in the right place.
Speaker 7 (05:49):
Fritz's stage job was helping community members with immigration paperwork,
but he spent his free time devoted to activism.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
But THEO, he was very active in the organizing to
topple the diver dictatorship and also to advocate for the
busic rights of due process of the Hitsian refugees were
coming on mass at the time. But he was very
outspoken and he was on all the radios. He was
a young, brash, seuless, young leader.
Speaker 7 (06:21):
For all his courage. Fritz was described as a gentle
and unimposing person. He always wore a tie. He lived
in a small house, taking care of his four children
and a brother who was paralyzed, and he hosted a
show called Radio AO Ask.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Black abdomin.
Speaker 9 (06:43):
Wl QY twighteen twenty am. This is the most well
listening radio and the Asian Committee.
Speaker 7 (06:50):
This is Tony John Deanor. He was Fritz's co host.
Father John Jus had asked both of them to start
the show because he wanted a media platform where they
could fully control the message.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
Tony, go back there.
Speaker 9 (07:10):
Our first poll cup started for if I remember it's
nineteen eighty eight or nineteen a nine, I was pretty
young back then.
Speaker 7 (07:17):
Tony was in charge of fundraising. They needed money for
the airtime. They paid the station a couple of hundred
dollars per hour.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
He liked to fight for cause, or it was fighting
for a cause.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
What does his voice.
Speaker 10 (07:31):
Sound like.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
Loud.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 9 (07:35):
Maybe if you're short, you like to talk loud to
get attention. It was a great It was a great moment.
It was a great time because there was a lot
of hope in the air for us here and and Haiti.
Speaker 6 (07:53):
When John Berton Aristide emerged as a candidate in the
presidential election, Tony and Fritz became vocal support on the
Miami airwaves.
Speaker 9 (08:02):
We're going to put somebody we know from us, from
our whoop to become president of the country.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
After Aristeid's landslide victory, it seemed in that brief moment
like via Yo's allies had won in Haiti. Refugees like
Tony and Fritz, imagine the Haiti that Aristide had promised
actually becoming real. He'd said he'd make radical change. Maybe
they could even move back home. Tony and Fritz celebrated
(08:30):
Aristide's victory at a huge street party in Miami, alongside
one of the movement's other broadcasters, Jean Cordo Olivier, also
known as Division Star. But Aristide's enemies hadn't gone away,
and they weren't just going to lie down. A few
short weeks after the election, there was a coup attempt
to unseat the new president.
Speaker 11 (08:51):
In Haiti today another coup attempt by a former supporter
of the dictator, baby doctor Valier, but loyal West troops
managed to storm the presidential palace and arrested Offontaine and
as followers. At least thirty seven people were killed, however,
seven were launched.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
It failed, but it stoked the ongoing battles on the
radio in little Haiti. On one side, Tony and Fritz
and other pro Aristide broadcasters speaking for change for democracy.
On the other side, pro military voices, often representing Haiti's
moneyed interests, fighting for the status quo.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
They had no radios. Look they got money, they got money.
Speaker 9 (09:32):
This show what the good life for the bourgeois. And
here is the message was, don't talk about change too much.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
And then less than two weeks after Aristide's inauguration in
February nineteen ninety one, the battle on the airwaves moved
to the streets. Via Yo broadcaster jeentlaur Olivier was gunned
down outside the Chateau Club in his white suit, roses
in hand. Tony says he and Fritz had heard whispers
(10:06):
about a hit list of enemies of the military regime,
what Marlene had called the Black Book, and word was
that Fritz's name was on the list, but it wasn't
clear if it was just a rumor. Then Fritz started
getting anonymous death threats, threats.
Speaker 10 (10:24):
Like I'm going to destroy you.
Speaker 9 (10:26):
I'm going to destroy you.
Speaker 10 (10:27):
You talk too much, too much.
Speaker 9 (10:29):
Garbage on the radio, and we don't want to change.
Speaker 10 (10:32):
You got to pay for it.
Speaker 6 (10:33):
Tony remembers these threats ratcheting up, called him with increasing
ferocity to the radio show. Someone even came to the
station with a gun.
Speaker 9 (10:43):
Continued to talk.
Speaker 6 (10:45):
To their family and friends pleaded with them to be careful,
but the threats didn't face them.
Speaker 9 (10:51):
Lilydies, Oh, nothing would happen to us.
Speaker 6 (10:56):
At around eight pm on March fifteenth, Tony drove to
the Dixie Express driving School, right across the street from
the Caribbean Market in the heart of Little Haiti. Fritz
ran his immigration business out of the driving school, and
that night he happened to be working on Tony's brother's case.
Speaker 9 (11:19):
My little border was with him, My little border was
with him.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
Tony was at the driving school to pick up Fritz
for of AO meeting He took us to the location.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
Right there, and I opened the door.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
And Tony expected Fritz to jump in his car.
Speaker 9 (11:37):
I come there to get him because it was in
the air that were going to be attack and then
we may get killed.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
But that night Fritz told Tony to go on without him,
so Tony went to the meeting, thinking Fritz would soon
walk through the door to join him.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
It was inside the old building.
Speaker 9 (11:57):
If it was, it was full of people close to
one hundred.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Not long after the meeting started, the door banged open
and someone burst into the room. He said, first, got chat, First,
got chat.
Speaker 9 (12:09):
Theo went cold, the woman went cold. And then people
start running the street and go back to fifty to
fifty nine street. When we get to fifty Night Street,
the embullace was right there.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
Tony sail Fritz was still conscious. He rushed over.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
Are you all right? He said, yeah, Oh, I'm fine.
I'm fine. I'm fine, I'm fine. You get to the
hospital live. You get to the hospital.
Speaker 9 (12:33):
That then all the doctors I remember that day, all
the doctors, many three or four doctors rushed into the Jackson.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
The doctor come out.
Speaker 9 (12:42):
When I saw the doctor's face and the doctor saying
they start shaking their head like this and they say
fris is gone.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
They say Fritz is gone.
Speaker 9 (12:58):
It was that Monday night when you go to the
radio show that think that was a tough one for
all of us.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
At the first radio VIAO broadcast without Fritz, there was
a void next to the microphone where Fritz usually stood.
Speaker 9 (13:15):
That the toughest day for all of us when we
get to go do that show without him.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
It was at this center was even I was in shock.
Speaker 8 (13:33):
I was.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
It was surreal. It's so powerful, so strong, so energetic, so.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Full of life.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
I couldn't believe that he died.
Speaker 6 (13:43):
Fritz have been cut down in his prime. Less than
a month after Jean Lord, Olivier, Tony and the others
from Vero were haunted by the murders.
Speaker 9 (13:52):
Somebody, someone else is going to get killed. This says
someone else is going to get killed.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
The question was who's next.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
It really not only struck a blow against these broadcasters
and the causes they were advocating, but the community itself.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
This is Harold mass Again, the Miami Herald reporter who
was following the crimes on Craile Radio. He was struck
in particular by the symbolic location of Fritz's murder right
in the heart of little Haiti.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
It chipped away at whatever remaining doubts there were that
Jacques Clouda Olivier's killing had been political, because it was
just too much of a coincidence that they both expressed
support of jehn bachand Aristid.
Speaker 6 (14:48):
The Haitian community knew how dangerous it could be to
speak out against the dictatorship or the military back home.
That's why Fritz and Marlene and so many others had
left Haiti in the first place. But with these killings,
the fear was growing that even in exile on American soil,
on the streets of Miami, they were not safe to
(15:09):
speak freely, that their enemies were still close at hand.
Back in Haiti, other journalists were following the cases intently.
Actuality Michelle Montasse and her husband around the country's best
(15:34):
known independent radio station, Radio Haiti. It was the place
where Morlene had come to complain about not being allowed
to study under street lamps, the interview that forced her
into exile. Michelle's husband, the iconic journalist Jean Dominique, had
a catchphrase.
Speaker 12 (15:51):
You can kill the truth with the bullet.
Speaker 6 (15:54):
Fritz had been inspired by Jean Dominique and would listen
to broadcasts to Radio Haiti from across the water. Now
the same journalist he looked up to were covering his murder.
When we interviewed Michelle, she played us the segment.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
That's you that's what you say.
Speaker 12 (16:16):
I was announcing the clips saying that March fifteen, the
Fritz Door is killed. Okay, So in that that the
recording must have been on March sixteen or seventeen.
Speaker 7 (16:28):
On that broadcast, Father John Jus raised the community's theory
about the murders. They had angered their political enemies and
that's why they were killed. What if the murder for
the murder came from Haiti. What if the murderer himself
had crossed the ocean.
Speaker 12 (16:46):
Talking about the fact that this assassins could have left
Haiti to go to Miami. Hypothesis mamvel at, we know
that this will not this will not go unpunished because
we were, Ao say, we were in the Haitian community already.
(17:07):
The people around Fitzdor have given a lot of information.
If the Miami Police decides to do its work, the
assassin will be in prison very.
Speaker 7 (17:15):
Soon if the Miami Police decides to do its work.
It was a big.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
If, a big if, But why the if?
Speaker 7 (17:28):
It all Father Johns and the rest of Ao. We're
not really fully trusting what the Miami Police Department was doing.
I think back in Haiti, you see anyone in a uniform,
and they were allies of the dictatorship and enemies of
the democratic movement that they were pushing forward in Miami.
(17:48):
The white officers and superiors could not make sense of
the feuds that immigrants actually harbored in their communities.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
But there were also a number of Haitian Americans.
Speaker 7 (18:01):
Wearing the uniform. Gives pause to a community that has
been so bruce, like the patient community at that time,
and maybe even now. Communities know each other, they know
where they come from, they know their last names, they
know their families. And then later we find that there
were some connections that maybe led some of the members
(18:23):
of the community to think, well, should we trust them?
Speaker 6 (18:28):
Connections in other words, between the Haitian American cops in
Miami and military families back home. Yes, despite the community's distrust,
the police did put together a task force to investigate
both killings, and they assigned all the Craole speaking offices
they could find to the case.
Speaker 10 (18:49):
My creoll suckslave. You know, Mamstein is great speak, it
is poor. But the whole focus is can you relate? Yes?
One hundred and nine half percent.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
That's Officer Raymond Carville. He came from a Haitian family
but grew up in the Bahamas. He was assigned to
the task force and told us they work practically twenty
four to seven to solve these cases.
Speaker 10 (19:18):
The way we get involved. Words start to circulate that
it was it was more than just a had to
be so blood but typical homicide. It was, you know,
a politically motivated and we got to put a stop
to it because who knows who's next. But those two
individual were high profile speakers and the Haitian community people
(19:40):
listen to them.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
The Miami PD also set up a Crayole language hotline.
Leeds started pouring in. Most of the callers believed that
the murders were politically motivated, but the theories about who
was involved varied. Was the hit order from Haiti or
from Miami? Did the hit man come from or a prince?
Or was he already in Florida.
Speaker 10 (20:03):
We were a little haiti, and I mean it was
there almost Other than a few hours of sleep, we
were there.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
NonStop, day in and day out. Raymond says. They fielded
calls and chase leads. Some tips were stranger than others.
A witness claimed she saw a man in a long
wig fleeing the scene of Fritz's murder. We were told that,
though odd, it struck some as a clue. Dressing as
women had been a classic disguise of the Tonton macouts.
(20:33):
Another claimed the getaway car had a new Jersey license plate.
Had the killers come from out of state? According to
an officer's deposition. Cops also noticed a post it note
found on the scene on Fritz's briefcase. It had the
name of a Miami Herald reporter scribbled on It was
Fritz about to share something that someone wanted to keep secret.
(20:55):
None of these details led anywhere. Then, three weeks after
Fritz was shot, a breakthrough.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
At ten hundred hours, Detective Watkins and I went to
Metro Date headquarters.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
This is an actor reading from a copy of the
incident report from the Miami PD. We got our hands
on it after a Freedom of information request. It's marked
for internal use only, not suitable for public release, and
it's all marked up with blacked out redactions, but it
reveals a major clue. The bullets recovered from the bodies
(21:30):
of Fritz dor and Jean Claude Olivier matched. Both men
were killed with the same gun. The bullets were thirty
eight millimeter projectiles, and the reports said they could have
come from a Lama, Ruger, Smith and Wesson, sport Arms
or Taurus, a revolver, a gun with a spinning barrel
(21:52):
that allowed multiple, large and deadly bullets to be fired fast,
the kind of gun you'd see in a gangster movie.
When police canvassed the neighborhood, they found this type of
bullet embedded in a tree that appeared to have been
used for target practice. This information seemed to confirm what
many in the community had been saying all along. The
(22:15):
killings were connected, but distrust of the police was becoming
a major obstacle to investigation. Leeds quickly dried up, people
just didn't want to talk.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Redacted could offer no further information. Redacted denied any involvement
in the homicide of Fritz Door or John Claude Olivier.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
The hunt for the killer seemed to be going nowhere.
Speaker 7 (22:37):
There were those in Little Haiti who did not believe
that the police would ever truly get to the bottom
of it all. So about a month after fritz Is killing,
Little Haiti took to the streets and anger. A thousand
people marched with candles to protest the way the investigation
was being handled. They carried signs. One sign read police
(23:00):
FBI stop protecting Tantum mccoud.
Speaker 6 (23:05):
A few weeks later, a major break in the case
appeared in the form of a guy named Glossy Bruce Joseph.
Joseph was in a Miami day jail cell for a
totally unrelated crime when officers from the Task Force showed
up to interview him. This is what they learned. According
to the police report.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Joseph said that he was to be paid five thousand
dollars to watch the driving school for Fritzdor when he
leaves work.
Speaker 6 (23:30):
Glossi had a bunch of knowledge about the case, including
knowing where fritz was that night, and he gave the
police a tidy motive.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Joseph states that fritz Dor was killed over a nineteen
kilogram cocaine deal where nine kilograms were stolen.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
A drug deal gone bad. This was territory the police
were familiar with. In fact, at the time, in Miami,
if a police officer interacted with someone little Haiti, it
often has signs to do with drugs. The picture all
started to fit, at least to the investigators. Just like
with John tord Olivier, the specter of drugs showed up.
(24:07):
After the interview, Joseph was immediately brought into the homicide division,
and that's when he had a change of heart.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
While at the homicide office, Joseph told us that he
had been lying, that he had not been truthful on
what he had said, and that he had made the
whole story up.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
The police report is a head spinner of a document. First,
Lossy Bruce confesses to knowledge of the murder, then he
says he's lying. Then detectives questioned him for a few
more hours and give him an inconclusive polygraph test, and
Lossy Bruce goes back to his original story. Over the
next few days, he changed his story back and forth
(24:45):
several more times before the report concluded on May twenty third,
nineteen ninety one, pretty inconclusively. It says the case should
be cleared by the arrest of Lossy Bruce Joseph, but
also that it will remain under current investigation and that
several leads are being followed. So out of this is
(25:07):
where the two month investigation landed with the arrest of
Glossy Bruce Joseph, who was already in jail and who
didn't even confess to pulling the trigger, just to being
a lookout when Fritz was shot over some stolen cocaine.
Speaker 7 (25:20):
When I heard and read about Glossy Bruce, I just thought,
this is weird. It doesn't really make sense to me.
My feeling was there was pressure on the police department
to close the investigation. It was expensive, it was two months,
it was creating a lot of hassholds within the community,
(25:41):
and they wanted to save face. It also seemed to
be easier for the investigators to follow this confession rather
than keep digging. The issue of drugs was big, and
it was big in the community, so they figured they
would put it all together and then that way the
case may go away.
Speaker 13 (25:58):
I never bought this idea that these killings were about drugs.
Speaker 7 (26:05):
It makes me wonder why did it happen. What did
they think that it was just going to go away?
Speaker 13 (26:11):
The idea that Fritz dr would be mixed up in
the drug trade just seemed preposterous to me.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
In fact, it began to emerge that it was Fritz's
enemies who were involved in the drug trade. That's next
time I Silenced. We should note that we tried to
(26:41):
get comment from Glossie, Bruce Joseph, but we couldn't locate him.
Silenced is a Kaleidoscope content original produced by Margaret Katscher,
Jen Kinney and Padmini Ragunov, research assistance from Sybylla Phipps,
Jeremy big Wood and Kira Sinnis, edited by Lacy Roberts.
(27:06):
Executive producers by Kate Osborne, reported and hosted by Anna
Arana and me Oz Valoshin. Music by Oliver Rodigan aka
k Denzer, Mix and sound design.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
By Kyle Murdoch.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
Deposition actor was Brian mcaulay Johnson thanks to mangosh Ha,
Tikta Costaslinas and Vainy Shuri.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Our executive producers at.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
iHeart are Katrina Novel and Nikki Etour Special thanks to
Carl Juist Jacqueline Charles Edouard du Val, Carrier and Diana
Richards and and iHeart. Thanks to Conin.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Byrne and Bob Pittman.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
If you like what you hear, please rate reviews, share
and subscribe to our channel. Thank you,
Last time on silenced.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Whenever you speak your MANI, you're never safe.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
They would come to see who's demonstrating against the Juvalier,
so that our names could be placed on the black
book like Luis Noir.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
It went from being here's the murder that no one
has solved yet, too, this is a campaign of murder
targeting Creole language broadcasters. So it really sort of raised
the question of how much farther is this going to go?
Speaker 5 (00:50):
From nineteen seventy four to nineteen ninety one when it
passed will Always Together.
Speaker 6 (00:56):
That's John Rodrigue Marcella's, a former city councilman of North Maya,
talking about his best friend Fritz Dahr. Growing up in Haiti.
They were more like brothers. Marcellus lived with Fritz's family
when his own moved out of the city.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
They become mystle good parents. Me and Fritz. We never fight.
Fwitz was so wise.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Marcellus looked up to Fritz from an early age, and
despite his short stature, Fritz was clearly a leader with
deep convictions and growing up during the Devalier regime that
got him into trouble. In the late seventies, he was
an ambitious twenty one year old who'd been selected for
a program to identify the next generation of Haitian educators.
(01:40):
At the end of the program, the students gathered to
find out whether they'd got in a job. There was
excitement and tension in the room. Then Fritz got incredible news.
He'd achieved the highest honor. He was going to be
a school principal. They told Fritz there'd be a national
event to honor him. Even the President of Haiti would
be there. But when Fritz heard that news, his demeanor
(02:03):
changed immediately, and.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Fwitz said, he said, I'm not going to be on
that on that celebration with baby dog Duvalier. A man
like me cannot be with that man.
Speaker 6 (02:16):
The room fell silent, right there in front of hundreds
of people. Fritz had stepped over an uncrossable line. He
criticized the Duvalier. He and Marcellus left in a hurry.
It wasn't even fifteen minutes later that the whispers started.
Marcella says an enforcer, a Tonton maccout, had been at
(02:38):
the event and heard Fritz's declaration against du Valier. Now
the mccout was out for revenge.
Speaker 5 (02:45):
When that man went after him. We know exactly what
time was it time for them to kill us.
Speaker 6 (02:52):
Fritz's parents acted fast. They hid Fritz away and pulled
together all the money they could for two seats on
a boat heading from Haiti to Miami, one for Fritz
and one for Marcellus.
Speaker 5 (03:04):
And he's not an easy from Haiti to hear the
ocean was warf.
Speaker 6 (03:11):
The two men joined the surge of tens of thousands
of refugees who fled the Duvalier regime in small boats.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
It was very scary. One hundred and fifty one people
was in that boat. There was an hurricane one of
the night. We thought they boat will crash little piece
by a little because it was so hard.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
But Marcello's and Fritz made it. After fourteen days at sea,
they arrived as refugees in Florida just after Christmas Day
on December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 5 (03:47):
We came here on a Friday night and Saturday night
while wey at the meeting with Fada Juice. When we
met with Fadai Jia Janice was like a dream come true.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
Fritz quickly became a leader in father Jeanju's movement, the
AO and on the radio in Florida. He'd become an
outspoken critic of the Duvaliers. But soon after their perilous journey,
he and Marcellus would learn that Miami was not as safe.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
As they thought. Any one of us at any tank.
Speaker 6 (04:26):
From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts, This is Silenced, I'm os
Valoscian and.
Speaker 7 (04:33):
I'm Anna Arana.
Speaker 8 (04:35):
This is episode two, Truth and Bullets.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Chris was so involved in the community. I believe Fred
You just give him a setting where he can practice
what he loved the most.
Speaker 7 (05:22):
Fritz became one of Father John Juw's most trusted followers
and an inspiration to other young exiles.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Fritzdal was like a real organizer.
Speaker 7 (05:31):
People like Marlon Bastien.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I liked it because when I first give you, I
saw people on the street and then speaking about against
the dictatorship. How I said, Oh I found my nest,
Oh my lord. I was like in the right place.
Speaker 7 (05:49):
Fritz's stage job was helping community members with immigration paperwork,
but he spent his free time devoted to activism.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
But THEO, he was very active in the organizing to
topple the diver dictatorship and also to advocate for the
busic rights of due process of the Hitsian refugees were
coming on mass at the time. But he was very
outspoken and he was on all the radios. He was
a young, brash, seuless, young leader.
Speaker 7 (06:21):
For all his courage. Fritz was described as a gentle
and unimposing person. He always wore a tie. He lived
in a small house, taking care of his four children
and a brother who was paralyzed, and he hosted a
show called Radio AO Ask.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Black abdomin.
Speaker 9 (06:43):
Wl QY twighteen twenty am. This is the most well
listening radio and the Asian Committee.
Speaker 7 (06:50):
This is Tony John Deanor. He was Fritz's co host.
Father John Jus had asked both of them to start
the show because he wanted a media platform where they
could fully control the message.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
Tony, go back there.
Speaker 9 (07:10):
Our first poll cup started for if I remember it's
nineteen eighty eight or nineteen a nine, I was pretty
young back then.
Speaker 7 (07:17):
Tony was in charge of fundraising. They needed money for
the airtime. They paid the station a couple of hundred
dollars per hour.
Speaker 5 (07:25):
He liked to fight for cause, or it was fighting
for a cause.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
What does his voice.
Speaker 10 (07:31):
Sound like.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
Loud.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
I don't know.
Speaker 9 (07:35):
Maybe if you're short, you like to talk loud to
get attention. It was a great It was a great moment.
It was a great time because there was a lot
of hope in the air for us here and and Haiti.
Speaker 6 (07:53):
When John Berton Aristide emerged as a candidate in the
presidential election, Tony and Fritz became vocal support on the
Miami airwaves.
Speaker 9 (08:02):
We're going to put somebody we know from us, from
our whoop to become president of the country.
Speaker 6 (08:09):
After Aristeid's landslide victory, it seemed in that brief moment
like via Yo's allies had won in Haiti. Refugees like
Tony and Fritz, imagine the Haiti that Aristide had promised
actually becoming real. He'd said he'd make radical change. Maybe
they could even move back home. Tony and Fritz celebrated
(08:30):
Aristide's victory at a huge street party in Miami, alongside
one of the movement's other broadcasters, Jean Cordo Olivier, also
known as Division Star. But Aristide's enemies hadn't gone away,
and they weren't just going to lie down. A few
short weeks after the election, there was a coup attempt
to unseat the new president.
Speaker 11 (08:51):
In Haiti today another coup attempt by a former supporter
of the dictator, baby doctor Valier, but loyal West troops
managed to storm the presidential palace and arrested Offontaine and
as followers. At least thirty seven people were killed, however,
seven were launched.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
It failed, but it stoked the ongoing battles on the
radio in little Haiti. On one side, Tony and Fritz
and other pro Aristide broadcasters speaking for change for democracy.
On the other side, pro military voices, often representing Haiti's
moneyed interests, fighting for the status quo.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
They had no radios. Look they got money, they got money.
Speaker 9 (09:32):
This show what the good life for the bourgeois. And
here is the message was, don't talk about change too much.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
And then less than two weeks after Aristide's inauguration in
February nineteen ninety one, the battle on the airwaves moved
to the streets. Via Yo broadcaster jeentlaur Olivier was gunned
down outside the Chateau Club in his white suit, roses
in hand. Tony says he and Fritz had heard whispers
(10:06):
about a hit list of enemies of the military regime,
what Marlene had called the Black Book, and word was
that Fritz's name was on the list, but it wasn't
clear if it was just a rumor. Then Fritz started
getting anonymous death threats, threats.
Speaker 10 (10:24):
Like I'm going to destroy you.
Speaker 9 (10:26):
I'm going to destroy you.
Speaker 10 (10:27):
You talk too much, too much.
Speaker 9 (10:29):
Garbage on the radio, and we don't want to change.
Speaker 10 (10:32):
You got to pay for it.
Speaker 6 (10:33):
Tony remembers these threats ratcheting up, called him with increasing
ferocity to the radio show. Someone even came to the
station with a gun.
Speaker 9 (10:43):
Continued to talk.
Speaker 6 (10:45):
To their family and friends pleaded with them to be careful,
but the threats didn't face them.
Speaker 9 (10:51):
Lilydies, Oh, nothing would happen to us.
Speaker 6 (10:56):
At around eight pm on March fifteenth, Tony drove to
the Dixie Express driving School, right across the street from
the Caribbean Market in the heart of Little Haiti. Fritz
ran his immigration business out of the driving school, and
that night he happened to be working on Tony's brother's case.
Speaker 9 (11:19):
My little border was with him, My little border was
with him.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
Tony was at the driving school to pick up Fritz
for of AO meeting He took us to the location.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
Right there, and I opened the door.
Speaker 6 (11:33):
And Tony expected Fritz to jump in his car.
Speaker 9 (11:37):
I come there to get him because it was in
the air that were going to be attack and then
we may get killed.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
But that night Fritz told Tony to go on without him,
so Tony went to the meeting, thinking Fritz would soon
walk through the door to join him.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
It was inside the old building.
Speaker 9 (11:57):
If it was, it was full of people close to
one hundred.
Speaker 6 (12:01):
Not long after the meeting started, the door banged open
and someone burst into the room. He said, first, got chat, First,
got chat.
Speaker 9 (12:09):
Theo went cold, the woman went cold. And then people
start running the street and go back to fifty to
fifty nine street. When we get to fifty Night Street,
the embullace was right there.
Speaker 6 (12:22):
Tony sail Fritz was still conscious. He rushed over.
Speaker 5 (12:26):
Are you all right? He said, yeah, Oh, I'm fine.
I'm fine. I'm fine, I'm fine. You get to the
hospital live. You get to the hospital.
Speaker 9 (12:33):
That then all the doctors I remember that day, all
the doctors, many three or four doctors rushed into the Jackson.
Speaker 5 (12:41):
The doctor come out.
Speaker 9 (12:42):
When I saw the doctor's face and the doctor saying
they start shaking their head like this and they say
fris is gone.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
They say Fritz is gone.
Speaker 9 (12:58):
It was that Monday night when you go to the
radio show that think that was a tough one for
all of us.
Speaker 6 (13:06):
At the first radio VIAO broadcast without Fritz, there was
a void next to the microphone where Fritz usually stood.
Speaker 9 (13:15):
That the toughest day for all of us when we
get to go do that show without him.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 5 (13:30):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
It was at this center was even I was in shock.
Speaker 8 (13:33):
I was.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
It was surreal. It's so powerful, so strong, so energetic, so.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Full of life.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
I couldn't believe that he died.
Speaker 6 (13:43):
Fritz have been cut down in his prime. Less than
a month after Jean Lord, Olivier, Tony and the others
from Vero were haunted by the murders.
Speaker 9 (13:52):
Somebody, someone else is going to get killed. This says
someone else is going to get killed.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
The question was who's next.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
It really not only struck a blow against these broadcasters
and the causes they were advocating, but the community itself.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
This is Harold mass Again, the Miami Herald reporter who
was following the crimes on Craile Radio. He was struck
in particular by the symbolic location of Fritz's murder right
in the heart of little Haiti.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
It chipped away at whatever remaining doubts there were that
Jacques Clouda Olivier's killing had been political, because it was
just too much of a coincidence that they both expressed
support of jehn bachand Aristid.
Speaker 6 (14:48):
The Haitian community knew how dangerous it could be to
speak out against the dictatorship or the military back home.
That's why Fritz and Marlene and so many others had
left Haiti in the first place. But with these killings,
the fear was growing that even in exile on American soil,
on the streets of Miami, they were not safe to
(15:09):
speak freely, that their enemies were still close at hand.
Back in Haiti, other journalists were following the cases intently.
Actuality Michelle Montasse and her husband around the country's best
(15:34):
known independent radio station, Radio Haiti. It was the place
where Morlene had come to complain about not being allowed
to study under street lamps, the interview that forced her
into exile. Michelle's husband, the iconic journalist Jean Dominique, had
a catchphrase.
Speaker 12 (15:51):
You can kill the truth with the bullet.
Speaker 6 (15:54):
Fritz had been inspired by Jean Dominique and would listen
to broadcasts to Radio Haiti from across the water. Now
the same journalist he looked up to were covering his murder.
When we interviewed Michelle, she played us the segment.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
That's you that's what you say.
Speaker 12 (16:16):
I was announcing the clips saying that March fifteen, the
Fritz Door is killed. Okay, So in that that the
recording must have been on March sixteen or seventeen.
Speaker 7 (16:28):
On that broadcast, Father John Jus raised the community's theory
about the murders. They had angered their political enemies and
that's why they were killed. What if the murder for
the murder came from Haiti. What if the murderer himself
had crossed the ocean.
Speaker 12 (16:46):
Talking about the fact that this assassins could have left
Haiti to go to Miami. Hypothesis mamvel at, we know
that this will not this will not go unpunished because
we were, Ao say, we were in the Haitian community already.
(17:07):
The people around Fitzdor have given a lot of information.
If the Miami Police decides to do its work, the
assassin will be in prison very.
Speaker 7 (17:15):
Soon if the Miami Police decides to do its work.
It was a big.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
If, a big if, But why the if?
Speaker 7 (17:28):
It all Father Johns and the rest of Ao. We're
not really fully trusting what the Miami Police Department was doing.
I think back in Haiti, you see anyone in a uniform,
and they were allies of the dictatorship and enemies of
the democratic movement that they were pushing forward in Miami.
(17:48):
The white officers and superiors could not make sense of
the feuds that immigrants actually harbored in their communities.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
But there were also a number of Haitian Americans.
Speaker 7 (18:01):
Wearing the uniform. Gives pause to a community that has
been so bruce, like the patient community at that time,
and maybe even now. Communities know each other, they know
where they come from, they know their last names, they
know their families. And then later we find that there
were some connections that maybe led some of the members
(18:23):
of the community to think, well, should we trust them?
Speaker 6 (18:28):
Connections in other words, between the Haitian American cops in
Miami and military families back home. Yes, despite the community's distrust,
the police did put together a task force to investigate
both killings, and they assigned all the Craole speaking offices
they could find to the case.
Speaker 10 (18:49):
My creoll suckslave. You know, Mamstein is great speak, it
is poor. But the whole focus is can you relate? Yes?
One hundred and nine half percent.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
That's Officer Raymond Carville. He came from a Haitian family
but grew up in the Bahamas. He was assigned to
the task force and told us they work practically twenty
four to seven to solve these cases.
Speaker 10 (19:18):
The way we get involved. Words start to circulate that
it was it was more than just a had to
be so blood but typical homicide. It was, you know,
a politically motivated and we got to put a stop
to it because who knows who's next. But those two
individual were high profile speakers and the Haitian community people
(19:40):
listen to them.
Speaker 6 (19:41):
The Miami PD also set up a Crayole language hotline.
Leeds started pouring in. Most of the callers believed that
the murders were politically motivated, but the theories about who
was involved varied. Was the hit order from Haiti or
from Miami? Did the hit man come from or a prince?
Or was he already in Florida.
Speaker 10 (20:03):
We were a little haiti, and I mean it was
there almost Other than a few hours of sleep, we
were there.
Speaker 6 (20:10):
NonStop, day in and day out. Raymond says. They fielded
calls and chase leads. Some tips were stranger than others.
A witness claimed she saw a man in a long
wig fleeing the scene of Fritz's murder. We were told that,
though odd, it struck some as a clue. Dressing as
women had been a classic disguise of the Tonton macouts.
(20:33):
Another claimed the getaway car had a new Jersey license plate.
Had the killers come from out of state? According to
an officer's deposition. Cops also noticed a post it note
found on the scene on Fritz's briefcase. It had the
name of a Miami Herald reporter scribbled on It was
Fritz about to share something that someone wanted to keep secret.
(20:55):
None of these details led anywhere. Then, three weeks after
Fritz was shot, a breakthrough.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
At ten hundred hours, Detective Watkins and I went to
Metro Date headquarters.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
This is an actor reading from a copy of the
incident report from the Miami PD. We got our hands
on it after a Freedom of information request. It's marked
for internal use only, not suitable for public release, and
it's all marked up with blacked out redactions, but it
reveals a major clue. The bullets recovered from the bodies
(21:30):
of Fritz dor and Jean Claude Olivier matched. Both men
were killed with the same gun. The bullets were thirty
eight millimeter projectiles, and the reports said they could have
come from a Lama, Ruger, Smith and Wesson, sport Arms
or Taurus, a revolver, a gun with a spinning barrel
(21:52):
that allowed multiple, large and deadly bullets to be fired fast,
the kind of gun you'd see in a gangster movie.
When police canvassed the neighborhood, they found this type of
bullet embedded in a tree that appeared to have been
used for target practice. This information seemed to confirm what
many in the community had been saying all along. The
(22:15):
killings were connected, but distrust of the police was becoming
a major obstacle to investigation. Leeds quickly dried up, people
just didn't want to talk.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Redacted could offer no further information. Redacted denied any involvement
in the homicide of Fritz Door or John Claude Olivier.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
The hunt for the killer seemed to be going nowhere.
Speaker 7 (22:37):
There were those in Little Haiti who did not believe
that the police would ever truly get to the bottom
of it all. So about a month after fritz Is killing,
Little Haiti took to the streets and anger. A thousand
people marched with candles to protest the way the investigation
was being handled. They carried signs. One sign read police
(23:00):
FBI stop protecting Tantum mccoud.
Speaker 6 (23:05):
A few weeks later, a major break in the case
appeared in the form of a guy named Glossy Bruce Joseph.
Joseph was in a Miami day jail cell for a
totally unrelated crime when officers from the Task Force showed
up to interview him. This is what they learned. According
to the police report.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Joseph said that he was to be paid five thousand
dollars to watch the driving school for Fritzdor when he
leaves work.
Speaker 6 (23:30):
Glossi had a bunch of knowledge about the case, including
knowing where fritz was that night, and he gave the
police a tidy motive.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Joseph states that fritz Dor was killed over a nineteen
kilogram cocaine deal where nine kilograms were stolen.
Speaker 6 (23:45):
A drug deal gone bad. This was territory the police
were familiar with. In fact, at the time, in Miami,
if a police officer interacted with someone little Haiti, it
often has signs to do with drugs. The picture all
started to fit, at least to the investigators. Just like
with John tord Olivier, the specter of drugs showed up.
(24:07):
After the interview, Joseph was immediately brought into the homicide division,
and that's when he had a change of heart.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
While at the homicide office, Joseph told us that he
had been lying, that he had not been truthful on
what he had said, and that he had made the
whole story up.
Speaker 6 (24:22):
The police report is a head spinner of a document. First,
Lossy Bruce confesses to knowledge of the murder, then he
says he's lying. Then detectives questioned him for a few
more hours and give him an inconclusive polygraph test, and
Lossy Bruce goes back to his original story. Over the
next few days, he changed his story back and forth
(24:45):
several more times before the report concluded on May twenty third,
nineteen ninety one, pretty inconclusively. It says the case should
be cleared by the arrest of Lossy Bruce Joseph, but
also that it will remain under current investigation and that
several leads are being followed. So out of this is
(25:07):
where the two month investigation landed with the arrest of
Glossy Bruce Joseph, who was already in jail and who
didn't even confess to pulling the trigger, just to being
a lookout when Fritz was shot over some stolen cocaine.
Speaker 7 (25:20):
When I heard and read about Glossy Bruce, I just thought,
this is weird. It doesn't really make sense to me.
My feeling was there was pressure on the police department
to close the investigation. It was expensive, it was two months,
it was creating a lot of hassholds within the community,
(25:41):
and they wanted to save face. It also seemed to
be easier for the investigators to follow this confession rather
than keep digging. The issue of drugs was big, and
it was big in the community, so they figured they
would put it all together and then that way the
case may go away.
Speaker 13 (25:58):
I never bought this idea that these killings were about drugs.
Speaker 7 (26:05):
It makes me wonder why did it happen. What did
they think that it was just going to go away?
Speaker 13 (26:11):
The idea that Fritz dr would be mixed up in
the drug trade just seemed preposterous to me.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
In fact, it began to emerge that it was Fritz's
enemies who were involved in the drug trade. That's next
time I Silenced. We should note that we tried to
(26:41):
get comment from Glossie, Bruce Joseph, but we couldn't locate him.
Silenced is a Kaleidoscope content original produced by Margaret Katscher,
Jen Kinney and Padmini Ragunov, research assistance from Sybylla Phipps,
Jeremy big Wood and Kira Sinnis, edited by Lacy Roberts.
(27:06):
Executive producers by Kate Osborne, reported and hosted by Anna
Arana and me Oz Valoshin. Music by Oliver Rodigan aka
k Denzer, Mix and sound design.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
By Kyle Murdoch.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
Deposition actor was Brian mcaulay Johnson thanks to mangosh Ha,
Tikta Costaslinas and Vainy Shuri.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Our executive producers at.
Speaker 6 (27:30):
iHeart are Katrina Novel and Nikki Etour Special thanks to
Carl Juist Jacqueline Charles Edouard du Val, Carrier and Diana
Richards and and iHeart. Thanks to Conin.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Byrne and Bob Pittman.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
If you like what you hear, please rate reviews, share
and subscribe to our channel. Thank you,
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