Speaker 1: All right, March from the second twenty twenty three, literally
Speaker 1: twelve o'clock on the dot, I have taken that long
Speaker 1: drive to f Daly, Orlando Lab. Start the clock on
Speaker 1: this process of trying to solve the case through science.
Speaker 2: In October of nineteen eighty six, the body of twenty
Speaker 2: eight year old Billy Halpern was discovered in his town
Speaker 2: home in Miramar, Florida. Billy, who was a bodybuilder and
Speaker 2: former firefighter, had been bound with electrical tape before being
Speaker 2: strangled and nearly decapitated in what appeared to be a
Speaker 2: brutal and bloody execution style murder. With no witnesses, no leads,
Speaker 2: and little forensic evidence left at the scene, Billy's murder
Speaker 2: went unsolved for months, but then there were four more
Speaker 2: slayings in the span of eight days. Twenty six year
Speaker 2: old Mitch Hall had gone to high school with Billy
Speaker 2: Hawburn and was also a competitive bodybuilder. He and his
Speaker 2: living girlfriend, twenty three year old shar Linda, were found
Speaker 2: inside their town home just twenty minutes away, with their
Speaker 2: throats slashed in a scene eerily similar to Billy's. A
Speaker 2: week later, another fellow bodybuild a friend of Billy's named
Speaker 2: Jimmy Hinoe, along with a man identified as a New
Speaker 2: Jersey resident, Harry Collier, were found murdered in nearby Pembroke Pines,
Speaker 2: each shot once in the back of the head, five
Speaker 2: execution style homicides in less than eight months. Hectives from
Speaker 2: Miramar and the Brower County Sheriff's Office were convinced they
Speaker 2: were all connected. Not only did Billy, Mitch, and Jimmy
Speaker 2: all know each other, they were all bodybuilders. They worked
Speaker 2: out together, competed together, and police suspected were involved in
Speaker 2: something that got them all killed was a drugs a
Speaker 2: string of robberies. Police didn't know, but one thing had
Speaker 2: become clear. The motive behind the killing spree, and more importantly,
Speaker 2: who was behind it, would likely be found in one
Speaker 2: place that Billy and the other victims had in common,
Speaker 2: a bodybuilding mecca in Hollywood Beach called the Apollo Gym.
Speaker 3: It's difficult enough to go back in time and try
Speaker 3: to investigate it one particular case, but if there's an
Speaker 3: association with another homicide, I'm essentially working two homicide cases.
Speaker 3: And then if that branches off to a third homicide,
Speaker 3: now I've got that much more work to do, so
Speaker 3: I think the complexity of this case is unique, and
Speaker 3: I've actually never heard of any other cold case that
Speaker 3: has this many complexities.
Speaker 2: I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff, and
Speaker 2: this is cold blooded. The Apollo Jim murders. Nearly forty
Speaker 2: years after his murder, cold case Detective Danny Smith and
Speaker 2: I knew that tracking down people that knew Billy Hauburn
Speaker 2: and could shed light on why he was killed would
Speaker 2: not be an easy task. But Billy's sister Laurie was
Speaker 2: able to provide us with a couple of names of
Speaker 2: friends that were still living in South Florida.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I wasn't.
Speaker 5: I was wondering when I was going to hear something
Speaker 5: from somebody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a long time and lots of answers
Speaker 2: had not come fair to.
Speaker 5: Say, yeah, well, there's a lot of unsolved murders that
Speaker 5: I think are all tied to the same people.
Speaker 2: Day Fasano met Billy Hauburn when he was still a teenager,
Speaker 2: it was clear from the beginning that the two aspiring
Speaker 2: bodybuilders were cut from the same cloth, or more accurately,
Speaker 2: from the same piece of granite.
Speaker 5: I was a bodybuilder and a competitive bodybuilder. I won
Speaker 5: Mister Teenage Florida, Mister America third Place, Mister Hollywood, Mister
Speaker 5: brit like a bunch of titles. I was a hardcore
Speaker 5: teenage bodybuilder that was doing very well. Billy was a
Speaker 5: little older than me, and he was bigger than me
Speaker 5: and my friends that were teenagers that were starting out,
Speaker 5: and we kind of became good friends with.
Speaker 2: Billion Fasano is now in his early sixties, and while
Speaker 2: he might not be as big as he was when
Speaker 2: he was competing, he's still in great shape. He sports
Speaker 2: a Goals Jym T shirt, a pair of flip flops,
Speaker 2: and a deep South Florida tan. I ventured to guests
Speaker 2: is year round.
Speaker 4: Billy and I became very good friends.
Speaker 5: And we would go out and we would go He
Speaker 5: would come to the swimming pool every day, hung out.
Speaker 4: With me, and then we went out a couple times.
Speaker 5: We'd go out partying together and picking up girls and
Speaker 5: doing bodybuilding and partying basically is what we did.
Speaker 2: Dave also reiterated something I had heard from more than
Speaker 2: one person who knew Billy Hoppurn that despite looking like
Speaker 2: a TV action hero who could take anyone out two
Speaker 2: at a time. He was just really a nice guy.
Speaker 5: I mean, he'd give you the shirt up his back,
Speaker 5: and he was handsome, and he had charisma, he was
Speaker 5: good looking, he was built.
Speaker 4: He was just a nice, humble guy.
Speaker 5: And him and a bunch of the other guys we
Speaker 5: kind of looked up to them, and they kind of
Speaker 5: mentored us a little bit, and then we ended up
Speaker 5: all ended up at Apollo Gym.
Speaker 4: In the end.
Speaker 2: Bodybuilding and keeping fit was something of an obsession in
Speaker 2: South Florida in the nineteen eighties. I was a young
Speaker 2: deputy sheriff from Browere County back then, and it seemed
Speaker 2: like new gyms were opening on every corner. But in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six, for the serious muscleheads, there was really
Speaker 2: just one place to go, a hole in the wall
Speaker 2: on Route four forty one near the Seminole Indian Reservation.
Speaker 2: It was called the Apollo Gym.
Speaker 5: When we went into Apollo Gym, it was the best
Speaker 5: gym around and it had all the best bodybuilders.
Speaker 2: Billy's friend Mark Lopez also worked out at the Apollo
Speaker 2: and described it to me as a no frills, concrete
Speaker 2: box dedicated to painting game.
Speaker 6: The Apollo was very unusual because it was a hardcore gym.
Speaker 6: I try to tell people today, it's not like walking
Speaker 6: into an La Fitness today.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: It was very dungeon esque. The air conditioner wasn't always
Speaker 6: working great in the place, The ceilings leaked, the equipment
Speaker 6: a lot of it, you know, needed maintenance.
Speaker 4: Or was broken.
Speaker 2: Safe to say, this was not a place for the
Speaker 2: casual weekend warrior.
Speaker 6: There was a reputation about the place, and it was
Speaker 6: if you were a little skittish, it wasn't the place
Speaker 6: that you were going to go because you never knew
Speaker 6: what was gonna happen there, like you know, fights in
Speaker 6: the gym that ice, scrap and write in the gym.
Speaker 2: I also got the feeling from Dave and Mark that
Speaker 2: kind of like the rest of South Florida, the Apollo
Speaker 2: was in anything goes kind of place. How prevalent was
Speaker 2: story t at the Jim that you remember.
Speaker 4: All over the place.
Speaker 5: You'd walk in the bathroom, you look in the trash
Speaker 5: cannon be filled with syringes. You could buy anything you wanted,
Speaker 5: and back then you didn't go to jail for you
Speaker 5: could walk into gym'sa I need some testosterone.
Speaker 4: People would talk about it, Bam, you have it in
Speaker 4: a week.
Speaker 2: Along with the serious bodybuilders like David Mark, the Apollo
Speaker 2: also attracted cops, firefighters, and a fair share of guys
Speaker 2: who were probably using their bulk for less law abiding purposes.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the dealers, the hustlers, and the low
Speaker 2: level gangsters that occupied the same South Florida streets and
Speaker 2: at the Apollo the same bench presses as local law.
Speaker 6: Enforcement at that time the Apollo, there are several Hollywood
Speaker 6: cops that were members there, you know, generally the local cops,
Speaker 6: the Hollywood cops, the Davy cops that I knew, they
Speaker 6: knew the element that hung out there, and that they
Speaker 6: were kind of outnumbered good guys the bad guys, so
Speaker 6: to speak. So there was a lot of fear from
Speaker 6: local law enforcement about the element there. I saw that firsthand.
Speaker 2: But there was kind of a don't ask, don't tell
Speaker 2: policy at the Apollo, creating an environment where cops and
Speaker 2: crooks could share a safe space to push iron. But
Speaker 2: as we will learn, that would ultimately prove to be
Speaker 2: a volatile and dangerous mix. The Apollogym had two owners
Speaker 2: Bert Christy was originally from New Jersey and had moved
Speaker 2: to Fort Lauderdale in the late nineteen sixties. Christy was
Speaker 2: a former Mister Florida who in his fifties had become
Speaker 2: kind of a mentor to young bodybuilders. This is Mark
Speaker 2: Lopez describing Bert Christie.
Speaker 6: Bert at the time, I'm guessing was probably in his
Speaker 6: early fifties. Not a big guy. Bert probably stood I'm
Speaker 6: guessing about five to nine. And you know, it was
Speaker 6: kind of a not a flashy guy, like not a
Speaker 6: guy that was loud and brash or anything like that.
Speaker 6: Pretty soft spoken. But you know, even though he wasn't
Speaker 6: like a big scary looking guy, he probably wasn't the
Speaker 6: guy you want to piss off.
Speaker 2: Bert Christie's partner was a former Miami Dade Police officer
Speaker 2: by the name of Gil Fernandez.
Speaker 6: When I first met Gil, I had no idea he
Speaker 6: was a former cop, right, I didn't know anything about it.
Speaker 6: I just know him some guy in the gym that
Speaker 6: worked in the same gym I did.
Speaker 4: And you know, he's a.
Speaker 6: Big, scary looking guy with his physique and the tats
Speaker 6: and the New York accent, and like I said, Gills's
Speaker 6: voice was like a combination of West Side New York
Speaker 6: with cut gravel, and when he walked in the room,
Speaker 6: he got your attention, believe me, one way or the other.
Speaker 2: At one time, then officer Fernandez had been singled out
Speaker 2: by the local paper from multiple complaints of excessive.
Speaker 6: Violence during the McDuffie riots. He basically built a reputation
Speaker 6: there as Miami's meanest cop. And you know, I'm sure
Speaker 6: the steroids didn't help.
Speaker 2: A Fasano was also well aware of Gil's reputation.
Speaker 5: I knew he was a cop, and I heard he
Speaker 5: was a racist cop, and that he was a bad cop.
Speaker 4: That's what I heard.
Speaker 2: Gil's famous temper, coupled with his enormous physique, earned him
Speaker 2: an appropriate, if predictable name, the Hulk.
Speaker 4: People were afraid of Gil. He was very aggressive and
Speaker 4: he was a bully.
Speaker 6: I knew from the beginning, like, this is not a
Speaker 6: guy that you want to piss off. He's just not
Speaker 6: I knew that within the first couple of days and
Speaker 6: knowing the.
Speaker 2: Guy at first glance. Burt and Gill were a couple
Speaker 2: of older bodybuilders mentoring young guys and drumming up attention
Speaker 2: for their business, which included sponsoring young bodybuilders like Dave
Speaker 2: Farsano in local competitions.
Speaker 5: So when I went to Apollo Gym, they immediately took
Speaker 5: me under their wing and they gave me free membership.
Speaker 5: I didn't even have to pay. They gave me free
Speaker 5: supplements and clothing. Because I was representing the gym and
Speaker 5: I was winning pretty much everything, they gave me the
Speaker 5: keys and we formed a team of bodybuilders, and Gil
Speaker 5: and Bert were best friends, and Bert was my training partner.
Speaker 5: When I won the Mister Florida, we all went and
Speaker 5: Mister Florida together as a team.
Speaker 2: These competitions were pretty low stakes, prize money in the hundreds,
Speaker 2: not thousands. It was all about the bragging rights, and
Speaker 2: the guys from the Apollo Gym were in it to
Speaker 2: win it.
Speaker 5: Billy didn't compete, but there was Guild Fernanders who was competing.
Speaker 5: There was Tommy Felts who was competing. There was Bert
Speaker 5: Christie who was competing.
Speaker 4: There was me a bunch of other guys.
Speaker 5: Now Billy wasn't part of that because he didn't compete,
Speaker 5: but Billy was in the gym all the time training.
Speaker 2: And by Billy he means Billy Halpern, who a short
Speaker 2: time later would end up dead, his throat slashed from
Speaker 2: ear to ear. Tommy Felts he was murdered too, but
Speaker 2: we'll get to that. And while on the surface, Christy
Speaker 2: and Fernandez appeared to be running a first class gym,
Speaker 2: there were rumors that the ex cop and the former
Speaker 2: mister Florida were doing more than just mentoring young muscle.
Speaker 6: Like I would be in the gym sometimes and Gil
Speaker 6: would be there with me, and Bert would show up.
Speaker 6: Might be the middle of the afternoon while it's quiet,
Speaker 6: there not a lot of people around, and they would
Speaker 6: go out front and they would do a walk and
Speaker 6: talk and they would walk up and down the plaza
Speaker 6: the whole length of the plaza, the whole way back,
Speaker 6: and then just keep turning around doing laps until they
Speaker 6: were done with their conversation. And then they would come
Speaker 6: back in the gym. So that was like an everyday occurrence.
Speaker 6: That was street smart enough to know that when I
Speaker 6: see certain things, I don't need anybody to tap me
Speaker 6: on the shoulder and say, hey, this is what's happening.
Speaker 6: I just put two and two together and I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 6: this is what's up.
Speaker 2: Dave Fasano had also heard the stories about Gil and Burt.
Speaker 5: So there was always rumors around the gym, and I
Speaker 5: always thought it was people. People talk, and people think
Speaker 5: they're cool when they talk. And I'm from New York
Speaker 5: and I never thought it was cool when people sat, Oh,
Speaker 5: my father's in the mafia or my uncle.
Speaker 4: And this they wear like a badge bond.
Speaker 5: There was rumors circulating in the gym all the time
Speaker 5: that Bert and Dial were somehow connected and they were
Speaker 5: drug dealers and they were bad people. But I never
Speaker 5: believed it. I always thought it was just talk, you know.
Speaker 2: But the truth was that the Apollo Gym was not
Speaker 2: just a clubhouse for like minded gym rats. The Apollo
Speaker 2: Gym was a front for some of the most ruthless
Speaker 2: criminals in South Florida.
Speaker 6: And there was a lot of craziness in the place.
Speaker 6: And of course not when you first walk in and
Speaker 6: see it from the surface, but won't just spend time
Speaker 6: around the place and realize kind of what's going on
Speaker 6: beneath the surface. It wasn't just a gym. It was
Speaker 6: a criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2: The more Danny and I learned about the Apollo, the
Speaker 2: more we were convinced that the truth behind Billy Halpern's
Speaker 2: murder was hidden somewhere behind its doors and its many secrets.
Speaker 2: But to better understand how a bodybuilding gym could double
Speaker 2: as a headquarters for a criminal operation, we have to
Speaker 2: go back a few years. Mark Lopez is a New
Speaker 2: Jersey native, and he was able to give us a
Speaker 2: little history lesson on the origins of the South Florida
Speaker 2: criminal underground and how the mob came to Miami.
Speaker 6: The town that I grew up in is called South Amboy.
Speaker 6: It's a little town right across from Staten Island, and
Speaker 6: my family on both sides, my mother's side and my
Speaker 6: dad's side, were both in the bar business. The house
Speaker 6: that I grew up in was a normal ranch style
Speaker 6: home in a residential zone in town. But when I
Speaker 6: grew up there, the basement, the whole basement of the
Speaker 6: house was a nightclub. A lounge was my dad's lounge
Speaker 6: called the Hideaway, which at the time was, you know,
Speaker 6: the most hop and spot in town.
Speaker 2: Upstairs, Mark lived with his parents, four sisters, and his grandmother.
Speaker 2: But downstairs the family speak easy attracted a colorful cast of.
Speaker 6: Characters, bikers, hell's angels, mob guys, you know, just miscellaneous craziness.
Speaker 6: But my dad ran a very tight ship there, like
Speaker 6: he didn't put up in any nonsense and if you
Speaker 6: acted up, you were going to go out the front
Speaker 6: door head first.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't just live music and booze flowing out
Speaker 2: of the basement.
Speaker 6: My dad was in the cannabis smuggling business, like a
Speaker 6: lot of guys were in those days, and you know,
Speaker 6: guys were bringing in product from Mexico, from Columbia. At
Speaker 6: that time, it was you know, it's cannabis is not
Speaker 6: look the way it is today. It was very taboo
Speaker 6: and if you were caught, you were going to get
Speaker 6: probably some type of draconian sentence.
Speaker 2: Safe to say that Mark was exposed to the inner
Speaker 2: workings of the criminal underworld at a very early age.
Speaker 6: You know where I grew up, I know, knew guys
Speaker 6: from the time I was in my early to mid
Speaker 6: teens that were guys that what I would call, you know,
Speaker 6: young and up and coming wanna be gangsters, right, And
Speaker 6: they were guys that were from my neck of the
Speaker 6: woods or Staten Island or Brooklyn. And these guys from
Speaker 6: the time that they're like fifteen years old were out
Speaker 6: committing crimes, selling drugs, doing collections. When they got in
Speaker 6: their late teens, they were robbing banks, they were doing
Speaker 6: home invasions, they were trying to impress the powers that be.
Speaker 6: So they were brazen, and so I saw a side
Speaker 6: of I guess adulthood at that point that I realized
Speaker 6: that it's not all pieces and cream, Like there's some
Speaker 6: rough stuff that you're going to encounter. And I was
Speaker 6: always smart enough to keep my distance away from guys
Speaker 6: that were just out of control. So, you know, before
Speaker 6: I came to Florida, which was at nineteen, I had
Speaker 6: already been exposed to a pretty rough element.
Speaker 2: But it was that experience and a few points from
Speaker 2: his dad that would give him such a unique perspective
Speaker 2: on the goings on in South Florida, or what he
Speaker 2: called the life my dad.
Speaker 6: He would tell me my entire life, like, if you're
Speaker 6: ever going to do anything illegal, you want to be invisible.
Speaker 6: You want to blend into the background. You want to
Speaker 6: look like an upstanding member of society. You want to
Speaker 6: make sure you have the legitimate business running parallel to
Speaker 6: your illegitimate business to show that you have legitimate income.
Speaker 6: Don't drive a flashy car, don't wear flashy jewelry. You know,
Speaker 6: the common mistakes that guys tied up in that element,
Speaker 6: you know, get taken down from eventually, right.
Speaker 2: Mark's family would eventually move to South Florida in the
Speaker 2: mid nineteen eighties, opening the Steakhouse in the Hollywood Beach Hotel,
Speaker 2: about twenty miles outside of Miami, which at that time
Speaker 2: was already a playground and profit center for the organized
Speaker 2: crime families from up north.
Speaker 6: Almost directly across the street from the Hollywood Beach Hotel
Speaker 6: at the time was the Gold Coast Restaurant, which was
Speaker 6: the most mobbed up joint in South Florida. I tell people,
Speaker 6: like when you see that scene in Goodfellas where they
Speaker 6: kind of tore you through the bar showing you all
Speaker 6: the cast of characters, the Gold Coast on a Friday
Speaker 6: or Saturday night in December or January back in the
Speaker 6: day was exactly like that. I mean, they're all, you know,
Speaker 6: mob guys from New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, New England, Chicago, Cleveland,
Speaker 6: from all over the country. So it was kind of
Speaker 6: like a mutual meeting ground, if you will, And there
Speaker 6: was a lot of business done there all types of business.
Speaker 2: And along with some mafia specialties like bookmaking, prostitution, and extortion,
Speaker 2: South Florida was becoming a hub for the most profitable
Speaker 2: business of all.
Speaker 6: You know at South Florida, right, and at that time
Speaker 6: it was kind of the cocaine cowboys era, if you will.
Speaker 6: When I came here, I would say that, without exaggerating,
Speaker 6: most of the guys that I met, probably seventy five
Speaker 6: percent of them were in the cocaine business on some level.
Speaker 6: You know, you'll hear frequently when mob guys are interviewed that, oh,
Speaker 6: we don't sell drugs, it's against our rules to sell drugs. Well,
Speaker 6: that might be against the rules, but most of them
Speaker 6: are doing it.
Speaker 2: But of course this isn't just a movie. And along
Speaker 2: with the crime and the drugs came the potential.
Speaker 6: For violence because you didn't just have the mob, right
Speaker 6: in different factions of the mob, different families of the mob,
Speaker 6: but you had cartel guys. And some of these guys
Speaker 6: were scary too, because you know, all they know how
Speaker 6: to do really is killed.
Speaker 2: Not that Mark needed much help, by the way, a protection.
Speaker 2: At nineteen, the aspiring bodybuilder was already pushing two hundred
Speaker 2: and forty pounds of pure muscle.
Speaker 6: So you know, most guys really didn't want to mess
Speaker 6: with me, just because I wasn't a small guy and
Speaker 6: I was only a young kid. But I was full
Speaker 6: of piss and vinegar, and at the time, I was
Speaker 6: using steroids, and that doesn't help the matter, because you know,
Speaker 6: you're basically pumping artificial testosterone into your body, and at
Speaker 6: nineteen you're already really at peak levels naturally, So I
Speaker 6: was probably at ten fifteen, twenty times a distosterone of
Speaker 6: a natural guy my age, and that makes you very aggressive,
Speaker 6: and you know, when you're big in ornery and kind
Speaker 6: of have my background, you know, in that situation, I
Speaker 6: probably wasn't the right guy who antagonized.
Speaker 2: Which is probably why when he walked into Burton Gill's
Speaker 2: stripped down shrine to piss in vinegar, the Apollo, Jim
Speaker 2: Mark felt right at home, and for someone who had
Speaker 2: grown up in the life, it was no secret that
Speaker 2: its owners were in on the action.
Speaker 6: When those two were together, they were like John Gottie
Speaker 6: and Sammy the Bull.
Speaker 2: He had a particularly memorable first encounter with Gil Fernandez.
Speaker 6: So he walks out of the aerobics room to the
Speaker 6: men's room, which goes right in front of me where
Speaker 6: I'm sitting behind the front desk. And you know, he's
Speaker 6: a big, scary looking guy, you know, tat it up.
Speaker 6: He's wearing a tank top. The first impression to me
Speaker 6: in my mind was that guy is a fucking gangster.
Speaker 6: He says, well, what the fuck is the matter with you?
Speaker 6: He says, don't don't you ever check the fucking ben's room?
Speaker 6: And I said, what are you talking about? I said,
Speaker 6: I just cleaned the whole men's room a half hour ago.
Speaker 6: So he said, well, somebody's got the goddamn toilet clogged.
Speaker 2: Okay, a little warning here if you have a weak's stomach,
Speaker 2: you might want to brace yourself for the next part.
Speaker 6: And it's almost filled to the top.
Speaker 4: It's almost overflowing.
Speaker 6: So he, without hesitation, kneels down in front of the
Speaker 6: ball and jams his whole you know, arm up to
Speaker 6: past his elbow into the bowl and he is reaching
Speaker 6: around down there trying to see what's clogged.
Speaker 7: And then he looks at me and he says, now
Speaker 7: you owe me one. And I said to myself, well,
Speaker 7: what the hell just happened? I've been here for three hours,
Speaker 7: I'm already into this maniac for a favor, you know.
Speaker 6: So that was my introduction to Gil.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: It made an impression on me, like this guy's a
Speaker 6: little nuts, right, Like.
Speaker 2: A lot of the guys that hung out at the Apollo.
Speaker 2: Mark was there every day, and over that time he
Speaker 2: heard some things and he saw some things.
Speaker 6: And it's just exposure over time that you kind of
Speaker 6: see these little things and you start putting two and
Speaker 6: two together. You know, it doesn't take long for somebody
Speaker 6: that street smart to kind of figure out the big picture.
Speaker 2: And part of that big picture involved drugs. For one, steroids.
Speaker 6: I know Gil was selling steroids as well as I was.
Speaker 6: It was you have to remember too, at that time.
Speaker 6: I think the Antebout the Control Act passed in eighty eight,
Speaker 6: so up until that point it wasn't even in controlled substance,
Speaker 6: so getting it selling it was very commonplace. We saw
Speaker 6: to everybody, including the local cops.
Speaker 2: And this being the go go eighties, there was also
Speaker 2: a fair share of marijuana and cocaine moving through the Apollo.
Speaker 2: But apparently an ex cop provided great protection against too
Speaker 2: much scrutiny from local law enforcement.
Speaker 6: A lot of the local cops the Hollywood cops, the
Speaker 6: Davy cops. They were friendly with them, right. I mean
Speaker 6: they were scared of them, don't get me wrong, but
Speaker 6: they were friendly with him.
Speaker 2: And Mark should know. He was Gill's partner pushing steroids
Speaker 2: and other drugs to customers at the Apollo.
Speaker 6: So we didn't really fear law enforcement. I can remember
Speaker 6: getting stopped on a traffic stop one time, having my
Speaker 6: gym bag and the car and it was.
Speaker 4: Open and the cop had flight was at night.
Speaker 6: He stuck his flashlight in and saw that I had
Speaker 6: some vials in there, and he said, watch in your bag,
Speaker 6: and I showed him up was in there. He said, yeah, okay,
Speaker 6: no problem. So I didn't say thing to me about it.
Speaker 2: But as you might imagine, selling steroids out of the
Speaker 2: trunk of their cars was not the only stream of
Speaker 2: illicit revenue. Some members of the Apollos team of star
Speaker 2: bodybuilders were moonlighting as local muscle.
Speaker 6: Those guys, under the direction of Bert Christie, they were
Speaker 6: doing shakedowns. It was well known a.
Speaker 2: Shakedown for the uninitiated is another word for extortion, an
Speaker 2: activity especially suited to men of a particular size and temperament.
Speaker 6: They were basically going to guys that were, you know,
Speaker 6: in the drug business generally just you know, little crews
Speaker 6: that banded together that were selling drugs, smuggling drugs, and
Speaker 6: these guys knew that they could go step on their
Speaker 6: neck more or less by saying, hey, listen, you're going
Speaker 6: to pay us. You're going to pay us, or we're
Speaker 6: going to kill you.
Speaker 2: And apparently Bert's crew wasn't afraid to make good on
Speaker 2: their threats.
Speaker 6: If you didn't pay, like they were clicked to, you know,
Speaker 6: shoot up your house, beat you down, like whatever it
Speaker 6: took to make that impression like we're enough fucking around here,
Speaker 6: like give me the money or you're going to end
Speaker 6: up dead. They knew what their strong points were, which
Speaker 6: was they were true muscle right, they were big, scary
Speaker 6: guys that weren't afraid to be violent. Bert was like
Speaker 6: the Batman villain, sending his goons out on the city
Speaker 6: to wreck havoc.
Speaker 2: Which begs a serious question. Could Billy Halpern have been
Speaker 2: a target of one of Burt Christie's extortion crews or
Speaker 2: was this all just a bunch of rumors.
Speaker 5: There was always talk about them being some type of
Speaker 5: organized crime ring and that Burt was the head of
Speaker 5: the crime.
Speaker 4: He was like the godfather.
Speaker 5: There was always talk about that in the gym, and
Speaker 5: again I always thought it was bullshit until the end
Speaker 5: when I realized it was all true.
Speaker 2: Mark Lopez worked at the Apollo Gym, reporting directly to
Speaker 2: its owners, Bert Christie and Gil Fernandez.
Speaker 6: I saw Bert basically every day, and that's because he
Speaker 6: was around Gil Fernandez, who I saw every day. Bert
Speaker 6: at the time, I'm guessing was probably in his early
Speaker 6: fifties and he had had some issues with I don't
Speaker 6: know if it was colitis or what it was, but
Speaker 6: he had part of his culin removes who had a
Speaker 6: colostomy bag.
Speaker 2: But colitis or not. Christie's reputation as a mafia tough
Speaker 2: guy and a bag man preceded him.
Speaker 6: Bert was basically muscle for hire for many years for
Speaker 6: the mob. But after he got sick, he couldn't do
Speaker 6: the heavy work anymore. He couldn't do the beatdowns and
Speaker 6: some of the other stuff he wented done when he
Speaker 6: was younger and healthy. So to me, Gil became his sword.
Speaker 6: I think he nurtured Gil when he met him when
Speaker 6: he was younger and a cop and said, this guy
Speaker 6: is going to be my tool.
Speaker 2: We heard the same thing from multiple people that either
Speaker 2: worked for or worked out at the Apollo Gym that
Speaker 2: its owners, Bert Christie and Gil Fernandez were suspected of
Speaker 2: using cruise of young muscle to run a protection racket
Speaker 2: in and around Hollywood Beach. So is it plausible that
Speaker 2: Billy Halbert, someone that worked out alongside Bert and Gil
Speaker 2: and all of the other guys at the Apollo, could
Speaker 2: have found himself the target of one of Bert and
Speaker 2: Gil's shakedown cruise and could that really be the motive
Speaker 2: behind his brutal murder. It's possible, but Mark Lopez is skeptical.
Speaker 6: I know when he was killed that you know, I
Speaker 6: created credit up war because he was well liked. I
Speaker 6: knew that and just was a guy that I don't
Speaker 6: think anybody thought was tied up. And you know, a
Speaker 6: lot of craziness, right, It was like somebody came there
Speaker 6: and essentially ambushed him in his own home and killed him,
Speaker 6: and like he didn't fit the mold.
Speaker 2: In other words, as far as anyone knew, Billy was
Speaker 2: not known to be in the life.
Speaker 6: It was obviously some type of gangland style killing, right.
Speaker 6: I don't think anybody thought that Billy was dealing drugs,
Speaker 6: So I think it was just shocked for most people,
Speaker 6: like why would anybody kill this guy? The people that
Speaker 6: I knew that I talked to were just like, who
Speaker 6: would kill Billy?
Speaker 2: But Dave Fasano was also close to Burtngil and was
Speaker 2: part of the Apollo in a circle. He has a
Speaker 2: theory of his own that Billy might have run a
Speaker 2: foul of one of those other small crews that were
Speaker 2: dealing drugs around South Florida.
Speaker 5: The story I was told from the gym people talking
Speaker 5: like why would they kill Billy?
Speaker 4: Why would they kill Billy?
Speaker 5: And the rumor that circulated again it's all here said
Speaker 5: was that Billy had the best coke and that they
Speaker 5: couldn't compete, that he had.
Speaker 4: The best coke around. That's the stories that circulated that
Speaker 4: I heard.
Speaker 5: I never heard anything that it's because he was talking
Speaker 5: about them. The story I heard was that he had
Speaker 5: his coke was so good that they wanted to take
Speaker 5: him out because he was in their territory.
Speaker 2: Now, as a reminder, no drugs were ever found at
Speaker 2: Billy's home, and most people we talked to did not
Speaker 2: believe Billy was involved in the drug trade at all,
Speaker 2: but his girlfriend did tell police that the contents of
Speaker 2: the safe had been stolen from their town home. Could
Speaker 2: a stash of drugs have been the target of a
Speaker 2: fatal robbery? According to the forty year old police report,
Speaker 2: as Danny reminded me, it was a lead police were
Speaker 2: running down in the aftermath of his murder.
Speaker 3: There was mentioned in the lead detective Bell Rose's report
Speaker 3: about home invasion crews that were hitting people and ripping
Speaker 3: them for drugs, and there was mentioned about they thought
Speaker 3: that Halpern came into a large quantity of cocaine and
Speaker 3: they were going to rip him for that.
Speaker 2: But after interviewing so many friends of Billy and getting
Speaker 2: to know the players in this scene, I just can't
Speaker 2: see Billy Halpert as being the kind of person that
Speaker 2: would have been moving the kind of weight that would
Speaker 2: attract that kind of attention. For one thing, where would
Speaker 2: he have gotten the money? Even in the eighties, it
Speaker 2: took a bit of upfront investment to acquire a significant
Speaker 2: amount of cocaine. Billy was making a little over minimum
Speaker 2: wage as a paramedic for the Hollandale Fire Department, and
Speaker 2: after he heard his back on the job he was
Speaker 2: living on far less.
Speaker 6: I think Billy, like I said, just he never seemed
Speaker 6: like the type of guy to me that would be
Speaker 6: tied up in that kind of life, even on the
Speaker 6: drug dealing side.
Speaker 2: But he certainly was exposed to it, which does raise
Speaker 2: another possibility.
Speaker 6: I don't think Billy was necessarily tied up in anything specifically.
Speaker 6: I think he may have just inadvertently been exposed to
Speaker 6: some information that probably got him killed, right because somebody
Speaker 6: thought that, hey, he may have been told something, or
Speaker 6: whether it was secondhand information, or maybe he had overheard something,
Speaker 6: and the powers that be thought, why take a chance, right,
Speaker 6: It's just one more guy that's going to need to go.
Speaker 2: But what could Billy have known that might have put
Speaker 2: his life at risk? Was it something about Christie or
Speaker 2: Gil Fernandez? Or did it even go deeper than that
Speaker 2: and deadlier?
Speaker 6: Maybe nine months or so after I moved to Florida,
Speaker 6: there was a series of murders.
Speaker 3: They were out in the Everglade and their fingers were
Speaker 3: chopped off.
Speaker 2: It was getting really dark.
Speaker 6: The three men would line we gagged and driven to
Speaker 6: Jones Fish Camp.
Speaker 2: Way out in the Everglade.
Speaker 1: One by one they were shot.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty three, three years before Billy was killed,
Speaker 2: the bodies of three men were found on what was
Speaker 2: the swampy Florida backstreet called Angel Road, and the main
Speaker 2: suspect in those murders none other than the meanest cop
Speaker 2: in Miami, Gil Fernandez. Could those killings be the key
Speaker 2: to solving Billy's murder?
Speaker 3: And it's almost incestuous that everyone knew each other, everyone together,
Speaker 3: and then ultimately almost vere was.
Speaker 2: Killed cold blooded. The Apollo Jim Murders is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeart Podcasts and Authentic Wave Media. Scott Weinberger, Kevin Bennett,
Speaker 2: and Walker LeMond are executive producers. Sabrina Siree is our
Speaker 2: line producer, scoring sound design and mixing by Mark lamar
Speaker 2: j Z For iHeart Podcasts, Christina Everett is executive producer,
Speaker 2: and David Wasserman is brand marketing manager. And with special
Speaker 2: thanks to the Miramar Police Department, Chief del Rich Moss,
Speaker 2: Pio Tanya Ardaz, and Detective Susie Smith.