Detective (11 page)

The computer did not take long to
provide an answer. The New York
prints matched those from 805.

Sylvia Walden sighed. "Not good
news, I'm afraid, Bernie.'' She
explained that the only fingerprints
she had found at the murder scene
proved to be from the dead

88 Arthur Halley

victims, a hotel maid, and now the
room's previous occupant.

Quinn ran his fingers
through~.;-s~ tousled hair and
grunted unhappily. There were days
when he felt his retiren~ent could
nor come soon enough.

- not too surprised about the
prints," Walden said. "I noticed
some smudges in places where there
might have been fingerprints smudges
that latex gloves leave. I'm pretty
sure the killer wore them. I do have
something, though."

Quinn's brows shot up. "What?"

"An unidentified palm print. It's
only a partial, but it doesn't match
palm prints from any of those people
whose fingerprints we've
identified I asked for their palm
prints specially. There's also a
Police Department register of palm
prints, but no match there, either."
Walden, crossing to a desk, leafed
through computer printouts and
passed a single sheet to Quinn: it
bore a black-and-white partial
handprint. 'iThere it is."

"Interesting." He turned the sheet
around, viewing it sideways and
upside down, then handed it back.
"Nobody I recognize,'' he said
laconically. "So what can you do
with it?"

"What I can do is this, Bernie: If
you locate a suspect and get his
palm prints, I'll tell you pretty
close to a certainty if he was at
the murder scene."

"If we ever get that far,'' he
told her, "I'll be here like a
rocket.''

Walking through the fitth-floor
corridors on his way back to
Homicide, Quinn felt slightly
heartened. At least the palm print
was a minor start.

From the outset there had been an
unusual lack of evidence in the
Frost case. The day after the
murders were discovered, Quinn had
returned to the Royal Colonial

DETECTIVE 89

scene armed with a lengthy list of
questions. First he took a fresh
overview of the scene, then he and
Julio Verona, the lead technician,
discussed each item of discovery to
assess its value. One of those
items among others already removed
as evidence was a torn envelope from
the First Union Bank. Later that
day, Quinn visited First Union
branches in the area and learned
that the morning before their
deaths, the Frosts had cashed eight
hundred dollars in traveler's checks
at a Southwest 27th Avenue branch
near the hotel. The bank teller who
had served them remembered the two
older people well and was sure no
one else was with them. Also,
neither he nor the other tellers had
noticed anyone following the Frosts
when they left the bank.

Quinn ordered a further fingerprint
search of room 805, in darkness,
using fluorescent powder and laser
lighting. The process sometimes
revealed prints missed when a normal
fingerprint powder was used. Again,
nothing was found.

He obtained from the Royal Colonial
manager a list of guests at the time
of the murders, plus a second list
of those who had stayed in the hotel
during the preceding month. Each
guest would be contacted by police,
either by phone or in person. If
anyone seemed suspicious or hostile,
a closer follow-up would be made by
an of ficer, or perhaps Quinn
himself.

A sworn statement was taken from
Cobo, the security guard. Quinn
pressed hard with questions, hoping
to jog Orlando Cobo's memory in case
something small but significant had
been overlooked. Other hotel staff
who had known the Frosts also made
sworn statements, but nothing new
emerged.

Phone calls to and from room 805
during the victims' stay were
checked by police. The hotel had a
record of

90 Arthur Halley

outgoing calls; the phone company
was subpoenaed to provide a log of
incoming calls. Again, no leads.

Quinn contacted several known
informers, hoping for street gossip
about the murders. He offered money
for information, but there was none.

He flew to South Bend and inquired
at the police department there if
any police record existed involving
the Frosts; the answer was no. To
the victims' family members Quinn
expressed condolences, followed by
questions about the backgrounds of
Homer and Blanche Frost. In particu-
lar, was there anyone who did not
like the Frosts and might want to
harm them? All responses were
negative.

Aback in Miami, both Ainslie and
Quinn were surprised by the absence
of phoned-in tips following the
extensive media coverage of the
murders. The main facts were re-
leased through Public Information,
though a few were held back, as was
normal with homicides, to ensure
that certain details were known only
to the investigators and the mur-
derer. Those details, if alluded to
by a suspect, either inadvertently
or in a confession, would strengthen
the prosecution's case at trial.

Among the information not released
was the presence of dead cats, and
that Homer Frost's eyes had been set
on fire.

Thus, as time began to slip by one
week, two weeks, three any solution
seemed increasingly remote. In a
homicide investigation the first
twelve hours are most critical. If
by then a strong lead or suspect has
not emerged, the likelihood of
success diminishes with each passing
day.

A trio of essentials with any
homicide are witnesses, physical
evidence, and a confession. Without
the first and second, the third was
unlikely. But in the Frost investi-
gation there continued to be a
glaring absence of all three.

DETECTIVE 91

Inevitably, as other new homicides
occurred, the Frost case lost its
priority.

Months went by as crime in Florida
kept on escalating. Every police
force in the state, including
homicide departments, was
overwhelmed, many of their personnel
exhausted. Part of the pressure was
an unceasing Niagara of
paper external mail, internal mail,
Teletypes, fax messages, local
police reports, protocol reports,
crime reports, lab reports on blood
and drugs, reports and requests from
other jurisdictions, BOLOs . . . the
list seemed endless.

Out of necessity, priorities
emerged. Urgent local matters came
first, and other paper was
supposedly handled in order of
importance; sometimes it wasn't.
Some reports or requests were
glanced at, then put aside, becoming
an evergrowing pile for later
reading. At times it could be three,
six, or even nine months before
certain papers were dealt with, if
at all.

Bernard Quinn had once dubbed those
papers the Tomorrow Pile, and the
name stuck. Typically, he'd quoted
Macbeth:

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day . . . "

All of which was why a Teletype
from the police department of
Clearwater, Florida, dated March 15
and addressed to all police agencies
in the state, received only cursory
attention at Miami Homicide, then
remained in the Tomorrow Pile until
five months after its arrival.

The Teletype was from a Detective
Nelson Abreu, who, stunned by the
brutality of a recent Clearwater
double murder, asked for information
about any similar murders that might
have occurred elsewhere. Included in
the Teletype

92 Arthur Halley

was a note that ''unusual items"
were left at the murder scene, the
victims' home. These were not
described because Clearwater
Homicide was limiting knowledge of
that evidence for the same reason
Miami Homicide had withheld
information about the Frosts' murder
scene.

Clearwater had a large population
of elderly people, and the murder
victims were a husband and wife, Hal
and Mabel Larsen, both in their
seventies. They had been bound and
gagged, then, while facing each
other, had been tortured, finally
dying from loss of blood. The
torture included a savage beating
and mutilation by severe knife
wounds. Inquiries revealed that the
Larsens had cashed a thousand-dollar
check a few days earlier, but no
money was found at the crime scene.
There were no witnesses, no
unaccounted-for fingerprints, no
murder weapon, no suspects.

While Detective Abreu received
several replies to his Teletype,
none proved helpful, and the case
remained unsolved.

Two and a half months later,
another scene:

Fort Lauderdale, May 23.

Again, a married couple, the
Hennenfelds, in their midsixties and
living in an apartment on Ocean
Boulevard near 21 st Street. Again
the victims were found bound and
gagged, and in seated positions,
facing each other. Both had been
beaten and stabbed to death, though
their bodies were not discovered for
an estimated four days.

On the fourth day a neighbor,
aware of a foul odor coming from the
adjoining apartment, called police,
who made a forced entry. Broward
Sheriff-Detective Benito Montes was
sickened at the sight and stench.

At this crime scene no "unusual
items" were left. How

DETECTIVE 93

ever, a two-burner electric space
heater had been lashed by wire to
the feet of Irving Hennenfeld, then
plugged into an electric outlet. The
space heater's red-hot bars had
burned out before the bodies were
found, though not until the man's
feet and lower legs were reduced to
cinders. In this crime, too, any
money the victims may have had was
apparently taken.

Once more, no fingerprints, no
witnesses, no weapon.

But this time Sheriff-Detective
Montes remembered reading about the
Coconut Grove murders of an elderly
couple some three months earlier,
which seemed similar. Following a
phone call to Miami Homicide, Montes
drove to Miami the next day, where
he met with Bernard Quinn.

In contrast to the veteran Quinn,
Montes was young, in his
mid-twenties, with neatly trimmed
hair. Like most Homicide detectives
he dressed well that day in a navy
blue suit with a striped silk tie.
During a two-hour discussion the
detectives compared notes of the
Frosts' and Hennenfelds' murders and
viewed photos of both crime scenes.
They agreed that the manner of the
victims' deaths seemed identical. So
did other factors, including
placement of the bodies, and the
killer's barbaric cruelty.

One small detail: When the bodies
were found, a radio was playing
loudly, presumably having been left
that way by the killer.

''Do you remember what kind of
music?" Quinn asked.

"Sure do. Rock, so goddam loud you
couldn't hear yourself speak."

"Was the same way at the Frost
scene." Quinn made a note.

"It's the same guy," Montes
declared. "Has to be."

Quinn quizzed him. ''You're sure
it's a man one man?"

94 Arthur Halley

"Yep. And the bastard's big,
strong as an ox, and smart. "

"Educated smart?"

"My instinct says no."

Quinn nodded. "Mine, too."

Montes added, "He enjoys it,
wallows in it, slavers over it.
We're looking for a sadist."

"Any thoughts about the dead cats at
our scene?"

Montes shook his head. "Only that
this prick loves killing. Maybe he
did the cats to pass the time, and
brought them along for kicks.''

Quinn said, "I still think it's a
message in some code we haven't
deciphered."

Before Sheriff-Detective Montes
left, Bernard Quinn apologized for
the absence of his sergeant. Quinn
explained that Malcolm Ainslie would
have liked to be present at their
meeting since he, too, was involved.
However, Ainslie was committed to
attend a one-day police management
seminar in another part of town.

Benito Montes said, "That's
okay there's time. I think what
we've seen is only the beginning."

3

During the spring and summer of that
year, the residents of South Florida
wilted in exceptionally high
temperatures and steamy humidity,
sustained by daily thunderstorms and
drenching rain. In Miami itself a
series of electrical outages, caused
by heavy power demand, brought those
who had air conditioning into the
sticky world of those who did not.
Another problem, exacerbated by
heat-induced irritability and
carelessness, was crime. Gang
fights, crimes of passion, and
domestic violence all flourished.
Even among normally peaceful people,
patience ebbed and tempers flared;
in streets or parking lots, trivial
disagreements resulted in total
strangers coming to blows. With more
serious disputes, anger turned to
rage and even murder.

At Homicide headquarters, an
entire wall was occupied by a white
glazed board known to detectives as
the "People-Dying-to-Meet-Us Board."
Divided by neat lines and columns,
it recorded the names of all murder
victims during the current year and
the year preceding, along with key
details of investigations. All
possible suspects were named on the
board. Arrests were recorded in red.

At mid-July of the preceding year,
the board showed seventy murders, of
which twenty-five still remained
un

96 Arthur Halley

solved. By mid-July of the current
year, there had been ninety-six
murders, with the unsolved figure a
highly unsatisfactory seventy-five
cases.

Both upward trends pointed to an
increase in homicides accompanying
otherwise routine robberies,
carjackings, and everyday street
holdups. Everywhere, it seemed,
criminals were shooting and killing
their victims for no apparent
reason.

Because of wide public concern
about the numbers, Homicide's
commander, Lieutenant Leo Newbold,
had been summoned several times to
the office of Major Manolo Yanes,
commander of the Crimes Against
Persons Unit, which combined Robbery
and Homicide.