Speaker 1: Murder in Miami is a production of iHeartRadio. Here're some
Speaker 1: additional interviews that provides some interesting context into the violent
Speaker 1: and bizarre world of early eighties Miami, with some surprising overlap.
Speaker 1: Starting with a story from retired Miami Dade detective Jeff Lewis,
Speaker 1: and you said, when you finally got into that house,
Speaker 1: they had two cougars in the.
Speaker 2: Back In the backyard, they had two live cougars.
Speaker 3: It scared the hell out of us.
Speaker 2: We didn't know what to do with them. A couple
Speaker 2: of days later, we learned that cougar's had escaped the
Speaker 2: backyard and that residence and the police had to be called.
Speaker 2: I guess they were legal to have. I'm not real
Speaker 2: sure how that worked out, but they did end up
Speaker 2: escaping and got caught.
Speaker 3: But yes, they were live cougars.
Speaker 2: It was the whole case.
Speaker 3: I could write a book about that case alone.
Speaker 4: Speechless. I mean, you're watchdog, but to think of two
Speaker 4: live cougars patrolling the backyard, that's horrifying.
Speaker 3: Well, and the detectives that went, you know, because you
Speaker 3: surround the house before you enter it, and that's you know,
Speaker 3: they were they went back there and they were it
Speaker 3: was funny because the one of the detectives got you know,
Speaker 3: we got onto the radio to advise and listen, I'm
Speaker 3: I'm advising everyone that we have our cougar in the backyard.
Speaker 3: And the dispatcher heard that and she got on the
Speaker 3: radio and she says, QSK with the VEN number. She
Speaker 3: thought he saw about a car, a cougar car, and
Speaker 3: was going to get the VEN number to run it
Speaker 3: see if it was stolen. And then we had a clarific.
Speaker 3: I know it's a cougar, a cat lion, and.
Speaker 4: That cougartail actually ties in with a childhood story from
Speaker 4: current Miami Dade Police cold case Detective David Denmark.
Speaker 5: And I can attest to that because I would believe
Speaker 5: I was in middle school and during those days you
Speaker 5: had to pick up your report card when it was
Speaker 5: the end of the year before summer started. You actually
Speaker 5: had to appear and sign for it and accept it.
Speaker 5: And when we were growing up, when I say we
Speaker 5: as friends of mine, we would all bicycle to school
Speaker 5: and we would notice the area changing and actually we
Speaker 5: called it Cocaine Alley, which was between is off one
Speaker 5: hundred and twenty seventh Avenue and southwest to sixth Street
Speaker 5: and Bird Road, which is four two street. So that
Speaker 5: area grew really quickly with huge homes, gated windows, and
Speaker 5: driveways that we never saw in our neighborhoods, which was
Speaker 5: only a quarter mile away. So it was just something
Speaker 5: different and really affected us as kids because we weren't
Speaker 5: afraid to drive through there. It was kind of entertaining
Speaker 5: because one of those houses had two pumas in front
Speaker 5: and cages, and we were just in all about that. So,
Speaker 5: you know, we didn't have a problem driving it down
Speaker 5: those neighborhoods, but we definitely saw a change, a huge
Speaker 5: change go up rather quickly. We figured it was all
Speaker 5: you know, that's why we call it Cocaine Alley because
Speaker 5: we figured it was drug money that was purchasing and
Speaker 5: building those homes.
Speaker 4: I was going to say, I've mentioned this to you,
Speaker 4: but Jeff told me a story about responding to a
Speaker 4: house that had to pumas in the same house.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, especially if it was in that area that
Speaker 5: was known for a lot of the narcotics investigations and stuff.
Speaker 5: Was that whole area there. But another little story is
Speaker 5: during the time that we went to go pick up
Speaker 5: our report cards, the evergrade started right around one hundred
Speaker 5: and twenty seventh Avenue and went west and our church,
Speaker 5: our local church was on the corner of Bird Road
Speaker 5: and one hundred and twenty seventh Avenue, and they a
Speaker 5: lot that was next to the church, and there would
Speaker 5: always be cars parked there and they always had for
Speaker 5: sale signs on them. And the day we would pick
Speaker 5: up our report cards, we drove by there on our
Speaker 5: bicycles and we smelled something awful. You know, we know
Speaker 5: what roadkill smells like, but this was bigger than that,
Speaker 5: because it engulfed the entire area, and we started looking
Speaker 5: around the cars, just being nosy, and we came across
Speaker 5: one where there was something dripping out of the trunk,
Speaker 5: which ended up being maggots, And there was a huge,
Speaker 5: very large, stained brownish reddish stain underneath the trunk of
Speaker 5: that car, so we knew something was in that trunk. Well,
Speaker 5: we flagged down a local police officer Miami Dade, and
Speaker 5: he stopped, cleared us out and told us to step back,
Speaker 5: and roped off the scene and homicide responded. You know,
Speaker 5: the guys when the cool looking glasses and the dress
Speaker 5: pants and the dress shoes showed up and they popped
Speaker 5: that trunk, and indeed there was a body located that
Speaker 5: was bound and gagged. So that's you know, that brings
Speaker 5: it home to me again. I was born and raised
Speaker 5: here in Miami. So when we saw that and figured,
Speaker 5: you know, everything was going down and that was all
Speaker 5: during the eighties, we knew times were changing.
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