Speaker 1: My name is Danny Smith.
Speaker 2: I'm a detective with Miramar Police Department. I am conducting
Speaker 2: an investigation going back almost forty years in the murder
Speaker 2: of Billy Hopper.
Speaker 3: Back in the nineteen eighties, I was starting a career
Speaker 3: in law enforcement in Browie County, Florida, a native New
Speaker 3: Yorker transplanted to the home of vacation meccas like Fort Lauderdale, Pompino,
Speaker 3: and Hollywood Beach. What the South Florida I remember was
Speaker 3: a place of stark contrasts. The beaches, palm trees, the
Speaker 3: frozen drinks. They all seem to mask a darker side
Speaker 3: of the Sunshine State, one of crime, greed, and a
Speaker 3: creeping sense of desperation. There was just something about Florida
Speaker 3: that could make good people get themselves into bad situations.
Speaker 3: After years in law enforcement, I ended up swapping my
Speaker 3: badging gun for a journalist's pen and pad and headed
Speaker 3: back to New York to report on crimes, not solve them.
Speaker 3: But in twenty twenty two, a unique opportunity brought me
Speaker 3: back to the streets of South Florida to join cold
Speaker 3: case detective Danny Smith as he began an incredible journey
Speaker 3: to solve a forty year old murder, actually as many
Speaker 3: as five of them together. We were looking for new evidence,
Speaker 3: new suspects, and the truth behind the murder of a
Speaker 3: twenty eight year old firefighter named Billy Halpern, all of
Speaker 3: it documented in real time. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist
Speaker 3: and former deputy sheriff, and this is cold blooded the
Speaker 3: Apollo Jim murders. Shortly after six point thirty on October
Speaker 3: twenty first, nineteen eighty six, police in Miramar, Florida responded
Speaker 3: to the sixty nine hundred block of fortieth Street, a
Speaker 3: residential neighborhood of condos and town homes in the center
Speaker 3: of Miramar and about a twenty minute drive to the beach.
Speaker 3: That flood of emergency vehicles prompted by a nine to
Speaker 3: one one call by twenty four year old Jones Socio
Speaker 3: moments after walking in to a horrifying scene finding her boyfriend,
Speaker 3: twenty eight year old Billy Halpern, half dressed, lying face
Speaker 3: up in the bedroom in a pool of his own blood.
Speaker 3: So is this his community right here?
Speaker 1: This is it?
Speaker 2: This is woodscape and it's essentially a big circle that
Speaker 2: kind of Meander's back off the main circle. They're like
Speaker 2: town homes, but they're really right on top of one another.
Speaker 3: In November of twenty twenty two, nearly forty years after
Speaker 3: the murder, I returned to the same location with Miramar
Speaker 3: Police homicide Detective Danny Smith.
Speaker 2: You look at the limited crime scene photos that I
Speaker 2: was actually able to get from the file. They always
Speaker 2: look you know, photos from the outside always make the
Speaker 2: place look so much bigger, and then I'm always surprised
Speaker 2: at how small some of these homes are when I
Speaker 2: actually get there.
Speaker 3: Aside from a few potted plants and a threadbare welcome
Speaker 3: mat in front of the front door, it looked just
Speaker 3: like it did from the photographs in the decades old
Speaker 3: police file Danny had dug out of storage. Was this
Speaker 3: her house or did he live here?
Speaker 2: This was his house and she had been living here,
Speaker 2: I remember correctly, three years with him, And I remember
Speaker 2: reading that she was screaming when she found his body
Speaker 2: and the neighbors came over, and in my mind I
Speaker 2: was thinking they must have just been like outside already
Speaker 2: and they heard it. But now seeing how close these
Speaker 2: homes are together, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: I lived in a complex like this in pember Pines.
Speaker 3: It was very similar to this, and yeah, you hear
Speaker 3: the neighbors, you hear it, you can hear through the walls.
Speaker 3: I had seen the crime scene photos, so I could
Speaker 3: imagine what the uniformed officers must have observed when they
Speaker 3: stepped through the door. The blood pooling from around the
Speaker 3: victim's head, a blood stained towel pressed to his neck,
Speaker 3: and the black electrical tape still wrapped around each of
Speaker 3: his wrists. Another thing they would have quickly noticed. The
Speaker 3: man on the floor was big, six foot two with
Speaker 3: the bodybuilders for zeke is enormous muscles on full display
Speaker 3: even hours after his death. Another thought when I saw
Speaker 3: the crime scene photos was that was a lot of blood.
Speaker 3: My next thought, there is no way one person could
Speaker 3: have overpowered this guy. He was huge. Now do you
Speaker 3: think it's a little unusual when you hear about the
Speaker 3: fact that he was covered by a blanket? I know
Speaker 3: in cases that I've covered sometimes when the victim and
Speaker 3: a homicide, especially their face is covered, there's a psychological
Speaker 3: reason around that. Sometimes the killer it makes us as
Speaker 3: the investigator think maybe there was some connection between the killer,
Speaker 3: the suspect, and the victim and they don't want to
Speaker 3: see the results of what their.
Speaker 2: Actions, right, Yeah, that's common. I would say that if
Speaker 2: his neck being covered by the actual suspect or suspects,
Speaker 2: that tells me a lot in terms of psychology. But
Speaker 2: I believe he was covered by his girlfriend.
Speaker 3: Because of the tremendous amount of blood that comes.
Speaker 2: Because of the blood and the injury itself was one
Speaker 2: of the more gruesome throat injuries that I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: To first responders of the scene, the cause of Billy's
Speaker 3: death appeared to be obvious the severe wound on Billy's
Speaker 3: throat that was deep and jaggered and ran nearly from
Speaker 3: ear to ear. It seemed that Billy died from a
Speaker 3: sudden and dramatic loss of blood caused by an unknown
Speaker 3: sharp object.
Speaker 2: There were multiple cuts, so it seemed like they were
Speaker 2: maybe trying to cut his head off. They were trying
Speaker 2: to decapitate him.
Speaker 3: Detectives from the Briar County Sheriff's Office Crime scene Unit
Speaker 3: were quickly dispatched to the address and began processing the scene,
Speaker 3: and notes from the original incident report detailed what investigators
Speaker 3: did and did not find at the crime scene. Most Importantly,
Speaker 3: they recovered no murder weapon, no fingerprints, no signs of
Speaker 3: forced entry, and, according to neighbors, no witnesses, all of
Speaker 3: which posed serious challenges to figure out the motive behind
Speaker 3: the attack. Was it a robbery, a dispute with a neighbor,
Speaker 3: or something more sinister.
Speaker 2: There was mentioned in the lead detective Belrose's report about
Speaker 2: home invasion crews that were hitting people. There's also mention
Speaker 2: that he had a safe in the house.
Speaker 3: According to his girlfriend Joan, Billy made his living buying
Speaker 3: and selling art and rare coins, which he kept in
Speaker 3: a safe inside the town home. But that's safe was
Speaker 3: now empty. So initially, robbery was suspected to be the
Speaker 3: motive for the break in, a robbery that must have
Speaker 3: quickly gone south and ended in murder. It was a
Speaker 3: theory that seemed to be supported by a tip that
Speaker 3: came into the Sheriff's office back in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 3: from a local confidential informant.
Speaker 2: And that was the tip that I actually read was
Speaker 2: someone he called in and said that whoever they mentioned
Speaker 2: was bragging that they had the safe. They tried to
Speaker 2: torch it open and they ended up ruining all the contents.
Speaker 3: But there was also evidence that this broad daylight break
Speaker 3: in may not be the work of total strangers.
Speaker 2: The front door was unlocked. When Halpern's living girlfriend showed
Speaker 2: up and actually discovered his body, she made note that
Speaker 2: that front door was unlocked, and she said that never happens.
Speaker 2: He was steadfast and always making sure that front door
Speaker 2: was locked and secured. So the fact that the front
Speaker 2: door was unlocked, no signs of a struggle. All of
Speaker 2: those facts right there tell me more than one person.
Speaker 2: Probably they knew him, guy let him in, and they
Speaker 2: brought gloves, and they brought tape.
Speaker 3: So maybe Billy Halpern knew the men robbing him, and
Speaker 3: maybe his killer's motive was to get their hands on
Speaker 3: the car in tents of that safe. But the matter
Speaker 3: in which Billy was killed, even to investigators back in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six, seemed to deliberate, too professional for a
Speaker 3: boxed home invasion. For one thing, there was very little
Speaker 3: evidence of a big struggle, and just looking at Billy,
Speaker 3: you just know he wouldn't have gone down without a fight.
Speaker 2: Even more interesting that I found when I read through
Speaker 2: the autopsy report was that actually the cause of death
Speaker 2: was not the massive cut. It was strangulation or some
Speaker 2: kind of suffocation or something something along those lines. And
Speaker 2: they had actually were noted in their report that they
Speaker 2: likened the marks on his neck to be something like
Speaker 2: a thick nylon strap or a dog collar or something
Speaker 2: in that regard. So the massive injury that is really
Speaker 2: shocking to anyone that first sees it, especially his girlfriend
Speaker 2: finding him, was all post mortem.
Speaker 3: Billy's face had showed evidence of a brutal beating, yet
Speaker 3: his hands and arms showed no defensive wounds. Taken together,
Speaker 3: it didn't look like a typical botched home invasion. It
Speaker 3: looked a lot more like torture. In fact, it looked
Speaker 3: like an execution.
Speaker 2: They're trying to decapitate him, post wartim, postmartum.
Speaker 3: Everything was postmatch, which is a whole different psychology, a.
Speaker 2: Whole different thing. I don't know if that was a
Speaker 2: trophy for someone, or somebody watched Scarface too many times
Speaker 2: and said, bring me his head.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: These days. Billy's sister, Laurie, lives in Fort Lauderdale, but
Speaker 3: in October of nineteen eighty six, she lived with her
Speaker 3: parents in Pembroke Pines, just a couple of blocks away
Speaker 3: from her big brother. She can still remember the moment
Speaker 3: she got the news of Billy's murder.
Speaker 4: It's been such a long time again, I can still
Speaker 4: hear that phone ring, you know, like my mom's screaming Billy,
Speaker 4: Billy's dead, and I'm like.
Speaker 5: What do you mean. She jumped up and ran out
Speaker 5: the door. Come out, we gotta go.
Speaker 4: I'm pulling up to that driveway and all the rescue
Speaker 4: and everybody there. It was real for that one moment,
Speaker 4: you say, no, can't be true, and then my whole
Speaker 4: world crumbled.
Speaker 3: When Danny and I visited Laurie in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: she showed us pictures of Billy. In a lot of them,
Speaker 3: Billy is shirtless or in swim trunks at the beach.
Speaker 3: Sometimes he's holding a surfboard or barbells. There's one of
Speaker 3: him in his firefighter's uniform and another of him hoisting
Speaker 3: a bodybuilder's trophy. In nearly every picture, he's got the
Speaker 3: smile of a guy in on the joke, well aware
Speaker 3: that he was uncommonly blessed with the body and good
Speaker 3: looks of a Greek god. Laurie is petite with long
Speaker 3: blonde hair, but I could still see the resemblance between
Speaker 3: brother and sister, the kindness in their eyes, and maybe
Speaker 3: just a bit of mischief.
Speaker 4: He was good looking, he was funny. Everyone liked him.
Speaker 4: She's a shame, you know that they took him from mcphurmath.
Speaker 3: Dave Aasano, who also grew up in Hollywood Beach, was
Speaker 3: one of Billy's old bodybuilding buddies.
Speaker 6: He was one of the nicest people ever. I mean,
Speaker 6: he'd give you the shirt off his back. And he
Speaker 6: was handsome, and he had charisma. He was good looking,
Speaker 6: he was built. He was just a nice, humble guy.
Speaker 3: According to Dave, Billy was idolized by the younger guys
Speaker 3: at the gym.
Speaker 6: I want to know, how do you get big arms
Speaker 6: like that? And he tell us what to eat and
Speaker 6: how to work out. And he had beautiful green eyes
Speaker 6: with dark hair. Just imagine tan green eyes, dark hair
Speaker 6: and bill, you know, like a Greek guy.
Speaker 3: Billy's popularity just added to the shock of his brutal murder.
Speaker 3: I mean, who kills a god? But Laurie still has
Speaker 3: an idea of who she thinks killed a brother. In fact,
Speaker 3: a lot of people do.
Speaker 5: I don't think it was one person. Involved.
Speaker 4: Billy was too strong for one person to take him down.
Speaker 3: But thirty eight years after he was killed, no one
Speaker 3: has ever been charged with his murder, and to this day,
Speaker 3: no one really knows the whole truth behind why he
Speaker 3: was killed.
Speaker 4: I think at the beginning with my parents' life, like
Speaker 4: they can have the closure, but there's really no closure
Speaker 4: no matter who did it. Now, I mean, Billy's been
Speaker 4: dead for so long. How are they gonna be punished?
Speaker 4: If they're out on the street, what are they gonna
Speaker 4: I mean, they're they're old already orre this's gonna happen
Speaker 4: to them. But I would like he's you know, I'd
Speaker 4: like somebody to pay for what they did. Do they
Speaker 4: really hurt him and he didn't They didn't be survey.
Speaker 2: My number one rule went opening up a cold case,
Speaker 2: you need to get your own opinion.
Speaker 3: Detective Danny Smith was only twelve years old when Billy
Speaker 3: was killed. As for me, I was in the early
Speaker 3: process of transitioning into law enforcement in the Sunshine State.
Speaker 3: But in twenty twenty two, after twenty seven years with
Speaker 3: the City of Miramar Police, Danny was assigned to the
Speaker 3: newly formed cold Case Squad Billy's case was the first
Speaker 3: one he pulled off the shelf. It's filled with nearly
Speaker 3: forty years of tips, leads, witness statements, and dead ends,
Speaker 3: which is why Danny is convinced that if he's going
Speaker 3: to solve this case, it would have to go back
Speaker 3: to the very beginning.
Speaker 2: You need to look at it through your own eyes
Speaker 2: and not be swayed by previous investigators. I refuse to
Speaker 2: read the notes from the previous cold case detective that
Speaker 2: had this. I'm reading the stock basic original incident reports
Speaker 2: from the detectives and the officers, and I think from
Speaker 2: there I can move on to Okay, now, where would
Speaker 2: I go from here if I had it.
Speaker 3: As you see here today on day one of your investigation?
Speaker 3: What are some of your concerns about the complexity.
Speaker 2: Of this One of the top level concerns that I
Speaker 2: have are being unable to actually track down some of
Speaker 2: these people they've moved, if they've passed on, or if
Speaker 2: they just don't want to get involved and they don't
Speaker 2: want to speak to us.
Speaker 3: On top of the challengers that force the case to
Speaker 3: go cold in the first place, there's also the obstacles
Speaker 3: that accumulate in any cold case, lost or degraded evidence,
Speaker 3: faded memories, missing witnesses, and perhaps the most daunting legacy
Speaker 3: of pre digital policing paperwork.
Speaker 2: A cold case, especially going back to eighty six. I
Speaker 2: want to first off, see if there's anything to work with,
Speaker 2: so going back and pulling the files and making sure
Speaker 2: that there are still reports to look at. And when
Speaker 2: I pulled this case in particular, it was immaculate. The
Speaker 2: detectives did a phenomenal job in documenting and cataloging and
Speaker 2: keeping everything, so that was a plus right there.
Speaker 3: Also on Danny's side is science.
Speaker 2: My focus from the beginning was absolutely trying to locate
Speaker 2: as much physical evidence that we had and see what
Speaker 2: was done with it and see what could be done
Speaker 2: with it. Now, just like any other cold case you have,
Speaker 2: you have a homicide, and you have evidence that was
Speaker 2: collected and then there over the years, sometimes evidence is lost,
Speaker 2: sometimes it's destroyed, sometimes it's tested and consumed and you
Speaker 2: no longer have access to it.
Speaker 1: So in this case, I.
Speaker 2: Wanted to find all the evidence that was collected, get
Speaker 2: it into my custody, and then figure out how I
Speaker 2: can go about having that tested.
Speaker 3: With the advancements in DNA technology, Every unsolved case with
Speaker 3: even a sentilla of biological forensic evidence can stake a
Speaker 3: claim for a second look. But Danny also knows that
Speaker 3: solving a cold case is rarely as easy as getting
Speaker 3: a match on notice. Timelines, witness statements, motives, and alibis
Speaker 3: all have to be checked and rechecked, and Billy Halpern's
Speaker 3: case in particular seems to have a lot of loose ends.
Speaker 3: Loose ends that suggest that maybe there was a reason
Speaker 3: that his murder went unsolved for so long.
Speaker 2: Someone persuaded Billy to open that door, whether it was
Speaker 2: friendly hello, or somebody that knows Billy would not have
Speaker 2: opened that door for someone that he doesn't like or
Speaker 2: doesn't know.
Speaker 3: Which begs the question, as it always does, why was
Speaker 3: Billy Halpern mixed up with anyone capable of this kind
Speaker 3: of violence. To answer that question, it was a time
Speaker 3: for a trip back to South Florida to the mid eighties,
Speaker 3: a seductive world of sun, sex, money, and wait for it, weightlifting.
Speaker 3: Our mission to solve Billy Halpern's murder, to convince a
Speaker 3: prosecutor to bring charges against his killer or killers, and
Speaker 3: maybe to bring a bit of peace and closure to
Speaker 3: his family and friends that have lived with the pain
Speaker 3: of his murder for decades.
Speaker 4: I would love for everyone to know the truth why
Speaker 4: Billy died. People have said horrible things, you know, like
Speaker 4: why would they hurt him that way?
Speaker 5: He had it all.
Speaker 4: He had it all, He was twenty eight, his whole
Speaker 4: life to live.
Speaker 3: But Danny and I didn't expect was that reopening this
Speaker 3: cold case would shine a light on a string of
Speaker 3: unsolved murders involving some of South Florida's most dangerous criminals.
Speaker 4: I was really young, but I knew what was going on.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, the money was sick. And then the
Speaker 4: Columbians got involved, and it got dark and dirty and evil.
Speaker 4: People were getting murdered left and right.
Speaker 3: Was Billy just a random victim of a cold blooded
Speaker 3: crime spree? Or was his murder part of a larger
Speaker 3: conspiracy involving the hustlers, dealers, crooked cops, and wise guys
Speaker 3: that were running wild in South Florida during its most
Speaker 3: dangerous decade.
Speaker 4: I really think there had to be a rat, a
Speaker 4: dirty rat in a police department.
Speaker 2: Lurid. Let me tell you a little bit about me
Speaker 2: and how this all came about. I had never heard
Speaker 2: of the case, but the case was brought over to me.
Speaker 2: I took a look at it, and I just read
Speaker 2: it and heard all these names, and I heard some
Speaker 2: of the other homicides that happened sometime.
Speaker 1: In the area.
Speaker 2: Went by Billie's old house, took a look around just
Speaker 2: to kind of get a feel for it, and then
Speaker 2: started my process of going through this as a cold case.
Speaker 2: In a long time, but I felt, we felt that
Speaker 2: it would be important to at least meet with you
Speaker 2: as the investigation started going out.
Speaker 5: And I'm grateful.
Speaker 4: I hope you can find out there truth.
Speaker 3: Laurie and her brother Billy, grew up in Hollywood, Florida,
Speaker 3: a beach town that lies about halfway between Fort Lauderdale
Speaker 3: to the north and Miami twenty miles to the south.
Speaker 3: By the time Billy was born, the Halpurans had already
Speaker 3: been in South Florida for two generations. These were not
Speaker 3: snowbirds or two year tourists at Halpurns were Florida born
Speaker 3: and bred. Laurie was just two years younger than Billy,
Speaker 3: and together they enjoyed a sun soaked, carefree youth and
Speaker 3: cruising the quiet streets of what was then a small
Speaker 3: town with an off season population of just a few thousand.
Speaker 4: We all hung out at Garfield Beach in Allywood. Brother
Speaker 4: kind of hung out with everybody.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: He surfed all the time, and it was extream.
Speaker 5: You know, make.
Speaker 4: Money, be surfer, lived my life. Good guy and he
Speaker 4: really loved me. He's a really good brother. He's a
Speaker 4: very protective, very annoying, a typical big brother.
Speaker 5: But he loved me and he only wanted the best
Speaker 5: for me.
Speaker 3: And he was popular, the king of the beach, with
Speaker 3: long dark hair, a Tom Sellick mustache, and a chiseled
Speaker 3: physique sculpted by hours in the gym. But Billy's friends
Speaker 3: painted a picture of a gentle giant with a thousand
Speaker 3: watts smile, someone with charm and charisma who seemed destined
Speaker 3: for big things.
Speaker 4: I mean, like they y'all knew that he could do anything.
Speaker 4: He was good looking, he was funny. Everyone liked him.
Speaker 4: Quick kills me. It could have been anything.
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty, Billy took a job with the Hollandale
Speaker 3: Fire Department as a paramedic. His friends were cops and
Speaker 3: fellow firefighters, hard charging guys that shared Billy's interest in
Speaker 3: the finer things like blondes, beer and pumping iron. As
Speaker 3: Danny and I learned, when Billy wasn't on the job
Speaker 3: or on the beach, he was in the gym along
Speaker 3: with the deep Tans and Neon. South Florida was a
Speaker 3: bodybuilding mecca back then, and Billy and his friends were
Speaker 3: committed musclehoods.
Speaker 2: He was a workout fiend, so he belonged to three
Speaker 2: or maybe even four gyms, and he would rotate throughout
Speaker 2: those gyms, and I think he had a circle of
Speaker 2: friends through each gym.
Speaker 3: Nights were spent in a string of bars that line
Speaker 3: the boardwalk along Hollywood Beach. There was lots of alcohol, marijuana,
Speaker 3: and this being the early nineteen eighties, plenty of harder
Speaker 3: drugs were available too. But the aphrodisiac of choice youth
Speaker 3: is boundless optimism and the conviction that nothing could ever
Speaker 3: hurt you.
Speaker 4: But believe me, we partied. I'm definitely no angel. He
Speaker 4: didn't think of it. You know, every night yet Nickel Knight,
Speaker 4: dime Knight, ladies night drink till you think night like
Speaker 4: gave a drinking promotion down here. Everyone drank and then
Speaker 4: you do a little bump to wake up and boom,
Speaker 4: you're done. Then it got dirty.
Speaker 3: But despite the partying Billy's faund, me and friends never
Speaker 3: suspected that Billy was into anything criminal or hanging around
Speaker 3: with the kind of people that could put his life
Speaker 3: in danger.
Speaker 6: I always thought Billy was selling art. He showed me
Speaker 6: art at his house that he bought stuff, and I
Speaker 6: honestly believe that's.
Speaker 4: What he was.
Speaker 3: But the truth might have been a little darker than
Speaker 3: anyone ever knew. Time can be both a friend and
Speaker 3: foe to a cold case. Detective memories of a decade's
Speaker 3: old crime are usually spotty and unreliable at best, but
Speaker 3: sometimes the passing years will encourage a potential witness to
Speaker 3: come forward with information that, for whatever reason, they weren't
Speaker 3: willing to share. In the original investigation, Billy's case file
Speaker 3: had the names of dozens of people that we thought
Speaker 3: might still possess crucial bits of information about his life,
Speaker 3: his associations, and the murder itself. Now finding them forty
Speaker 3: years later was another story.
Speaker 1: Let's be back there.
Speaker 3: I do not see who's share the truth.
Speaker 2: No, I don't need, but we're going to knock anyway
Speaker 2: because I think it was like a nineteen seventy nine truck.
Speaker 1: This one.
Speaker 2: Hello, how you doing. Hi, I'm Danny Smith. I'm with
Speaker 2: Milmore Police. To this is Scott Weinberger. So we are
Speaker 2: reopening the case of the murder of Billy Halbern.
Speaker 1: Is that ring a bell?
Speaker 3: Not everyone felt comfortable talking about Billy's murder to a
Speaker 3: reporter or a mirror mar detective. Even fewer were willing
Speaker 3: to go on the record.
Speaker 2: So the reason that I'm reaching out to actually a
Speaker 2: bunch of people. I'll probably give you a bunch of
Speaker 2: names that are gonna kind of come back to you.
Speaker 2: Back in the eighties, they didn't really statements from everybody,
Speaker 2: So I kind of happening to go back and read
Speaker 2: you the way, So tell me what you remember.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it was hard to know what we heard was true,
Speaker 3: what was rumor, and what some of these people may
Speaker 3: have learned from a handful of newspaper articles covering the
Speaker 3: case over the years. But one thing kept coming up.
Speaker 3: Billy was not unfamiliar with some of the less savory
Speaker 3: elements of the Hollywood beach party scene, and the one
Speaker 3: thing we heard repeatedly by several friends of the people
Speaker 3: listed in the case file as friends or acquaintances of
Speaker 3: Billy was that, along with art, Billy was also rumored
Speaker 3: to be selling drugs.
Speaker 6: So there was always rumors around the jam.
Speaker 3: I believe that he was an art deally, and.
Speaker 6: I didn't know until after the fact that one of
Speaker 6: Billy's biggest concerns was me finding out that he was
Speaker 6: a coke dealer. He wanted to make sure that I
Speaker 6: didn't know that, and he made sure from other people
Speaker 6: that I didn't know anything about this, and it was true.
Speaker 6: I didn't know anything about it. I thought he was
Speaker 6: an art dealer.
Speaker 3: It's important to note here that when Billy Halpin was killed,
Speaker 3: he had no criminal record. Police recovered no drugs or
Speaker 3: cash from his town home where he was killed. In fact,
Speaker 3: his girlfriend said it was more likely to be short
Speaker 3: of cash than flush. I mean, the guy drove a
Speaker 3: ten year old Mercury Montego, so a South Florida kingpin
Speaker 3: it was not, but if Billy was sealing drugs, it
Speaker 3: could have put him in contact with potentially dangerous people.
Speaker 3: And of course, just being in possession of drugs or
Speaker 3: cash used to buy it can make anyone a target
Speaker 3: for violence. And for the record, When we asked Laurie
Speaker 3: about whether Billy might have been dealing drugs, she admitted
Speaker 3: it was possible.
Speaker 4: You wanted to make money, you know, he was firefighter
Speaker 4: for a short time, but he didn't want to work.
Speaker 4: And I didn't really know anything. I knew what Billy
Speaker 4: was doing, but I'm not kidding that. He was a
Speaker 4: very protective older brother, and he would if anything was
Speaker 4: going to happen, he'd go go in your room, get
Speaker 4: in your room.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: But I knew what was going on, you know, if
Speaker 4: we were a partying back then, and I was just like,
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: You know, there are drugs involver.
Speaker 1: We don't care.
Speaker 2: We're looking to solve the home side of your brother,
Speaker 2: and that's the bottom line.
Speaker 3: Now, I'll be the first to admit, as an investigator
Speaker 3: and a true crime storyteller, a murder victim's background is
Speaker 3: sometimes the beneficiary of some degree of dancing around the
Speaker 3: truth is that a victim's history of questionable or even
Speaker 3: criminal behavior is not always relevant to a homicide investigation,
Speaker 3: but whether we're part of a jury or a listening audience,
Speaker 3: it can sway our sympathies. So prosecutors and podcasters have
Speaker 3: a tendency to leave out the unsavory bits, But in
Speaker 3: reopening this case, it was clear to me and Danny
Speaker 3: that the level of Billy's involvement in the local drug
Speaker 3: trade was critical to understanding why he was killed, who
Speaker 3: killed him, and most importantly, why no one was ever
Speaker 3: arrested for his murder.
Speaker 2: Right now, the theories that I'm reading all focus around
Speaker 2: his potential drug dealing and the drug underworld, So everything
Speaker 2: that I've read up to this point kind of works
Speaker 2: towards that angle. I haven't gotten any name suspects yet
Speaker 2: in any of these case files.
Speaker 3: Obviously, piecing together all of the players and whatever plot
Speaker 3: was in play in nineteen eighty six that got Billy killed,
Speaker 3: it was going to take some time and some good
Speaker 3: old gumshoe detective work. But there was even more immediate
Speaker 3: promise in the physical evidence that was recovered from the
Speaker 3: original crime scene, evidence that would not just help us
Speaker 3: recreate the crime, but potentially help us identify Billy's killer.
Speaker 2: That was the second big check mark for us is
Speaker 2: that we do have evidence, and it looks like that
Speaker 2: it's been preserved since I think eighty seven we've got,
Speaker 2: at least with Broward Sheriff's office. We've got electrical tape
Speaker 2: from both wrists, hair that was in Halpern's left hand,
Speaker 2: which presumably would be our killer, and then we've got
Speaker 2: looks like a towel, which I believe that towel was
Speaker 2: placed on him when he was found by his living
Speaker 2: girlfriend at the time. That's all. That's all the evidence.
Speaker 3: Electrical tape, a bloody towel, and several strands of human
Speaker 3: hair recovered from the clutches of the victim's left hand.
Speaker 2: And let's not forget that which I find very interesting.
Speaker 2: On one of the pieces of tape that were taken
Speaker 2: from Helper's wrists, there was like a small piece of
Speaker 2: latex glove that appeared to have been ripped off on
Speaker 2: the tape, which tells me that the guy or guys
Speaker 2: or people that were in there were wearing gloves. And
Speaker 2: I have very very high hopes that there's going to
Speaker 2: be some kind of a DNA profile that comes out
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 3: Detectives in nineteen eighty six were never able to match
Speaker 3: any of it to a potential suspect, but by today's
Speaker 3: forensic standards, it feels promising.
Speaker 2: I feel pretty good about the evidence that we still
Speaker 2: have and the fact that to my knowledge, at least
Speaker 2: according to the property receipts, nothing has been tested. The idea,
Speaker 2: I think is maybe next week sit down with the
Speaker 2: DNA supervisor over at bar Shriffs and run it by
Speaker 2: and say this is what I want to do.
Speaker 1: Here's your transmittal.
Speaker 2: Let's get the ball rolling.
Speaker 3: If we could recover viable DNA from any of this
Speaker 3: physical evidence, it would go a long way to identifying
Speaker 3: the killer.
Speaker 2: The thing that's going to take the longest period of
Speaker 2: time is going to be DNA testing and potential hair fibers,
Speaker 2: whatever it is that we can pull out of property
Speaker 2: and evidence. So that's going to be number one on
Speaker 2: my list to do now. So as I'm doing additional
Speaker 2: work interviews and trying to track down people, that testing
Speaker 2: is already going to be in process.
Speaker 3: Hopefully a DNA profile could be matched to one already
Speaker 3: in CODIS, the National DNA Database of known offenders and
Speaker 3: unidentified DNA from other crime scenes, or it could be
Speaker 3: matched one to one to a known suspect whose DNA
Speaker 3: we would have to obtain, either with permission or without.
Speaker 3: But this was technology unavailable to detectives in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: which is one reason why six months after Billy's murder,
Speaker 3: the original investigation had started to stall. None off Billy's
Speaker 3: friends and family could offer police any leads into who
Speaker 3: might have had a reason to hurt him. There were
Speaker 3: no witnesses, no recent crimes with similar mo and no
Speaker 3: shortage of alibis from just about anyone that had ever
Speaker 3: been in cuffs in Brawrie County.
Speaker 2: Someone persuaded Billy to open that door, whether it was
Speaker 2: friendly hello, or somebody that he knows. Billy would not
Speaker 2: have opened that door for someone that he doesn't like
Speaker 2: or doesn't know. The scenario that I have in my
Speaker 2: mind is that maybe a friend of Billy's was there
Speaker 2: front of the door, knocked on the door, Billy allows
Speaker 2: him in, and then at that point it's a bum
Speaker 2: rush into the house where they're forced in.
Speaker 3: Billy's murderer went from the front page to the back.
Speaker 3: And that's until May sixth, nineteen eighty seven, homicide detectives
Speaker 3: were again called to an apartment in the nearby town
Speaker 3: of Tamarack, just a twenty minute try from where Billy
Speaker 3: Halpburn was killed. It was the home of Billy's friend,
Speaker 3: twenty six year old Mitch Hall, and Mitch's twenty three
Speaker 3: year old girlfriend, char Linda Drout. A couple had been bound,
Speaker 3: beaten and their throats slash in a crime scene eerily
Speaker 3: similar to that of Billy Halpern's.
Speaker 5: Him and his girlfriend were found in the bedroom.
Speaker 4: I think so they were completely caught up guard.
Speaker 3: Just like in Billy's murder. There were very few clues
Speaker 3: and no immediate suspects, but the similarities were obviously too
Speaker 3: great to be ignored. Investigators were immediately convinced that the
Speaker 3: three murders were somehow connected. Laurie's first thought was that
Speaker 3: Mitch Hall knew something about her brother's murder and that
Speaker 3: information might have gotten him killed.
Speaker 4: When Mitch died, they thought that he was going to
Speaker 4: rowur and sheriffs to talk to them, that he knew something,
Speaker 4: and that's why they came and killed him.
Speaker 3: It's a sentiment that is shared by Mitch Hall's sister, Kim.
Speaker 7: My brother came to visit me, I would say eighty
Speaker 7: six December of eighty six. He came to me and
Speaker 7: he said, Billy Helpern died and I'm going to find
Speaker 7: out who killed him, and I said, Mitch, don't can
Speaker 7: involved with those type of people, and he went to
Speaker 7: the police station.
Speaker 3: But if that was true, it had some shocking implications
Speaker 3: because how would the killers know Mitch Hall was talking
Speaker 3: to police?
Speaker 5: How would anybody know that?
Speaker 4: Like, you were going to tell what you knew about
Speaker 4: Billy and none then you get killed.
Speaker 5: Who in the police department is a bad guy? I
Speaker 5: really felt that it had to be a dirty cop.
Speaker 3: Mitch Hall and Charlenda Drought had been sharing a home
Speaker 3: together in Tamarack, which is just outside of Fort Lauderdale,
Speaker 3: for a little less than a year. Bob Daughtry was
Speaker 3: a friend of Mitch's working on a job site nearby.
Speaker 3: On the morning of May sixth, nineteen eighty seven, he
Speaker 3: stopped by Mitch's town home.
Speaker 8: I just remember pulling up, went up and knocked on
Speaker 8: the door. He didn't come to the door, turned the
Speaker 8: doorknob and the house was opened.
Speaker 3: Walked in there.
Speaker 8: And Mitch was in his bedroom. Outside the bathroom, I
Speaker 8: mean it was blood. All his throat had been slipped.
Speaker 8: It was a gruesome sign.
Speaker 3: It really was. From their injuries and manner of death,
Speaker 3: there was little doubt that it was somehow connected to
Speaker 3: the execution style murder of Billy Hauburn just six months before.
Speaker 8: His hands were tied behind his back and something stuffed
Speaker 8: out of his mouth. And I also saw some marks
Speaker 8: on his upper body. I don't know if they were
Speaker 8: just from what they were from a fight, the cuts
Speaker 8: from something, I don't know, but I remember seeing some
Speaker 8: wounds on the upper part of his body.
Speaker 3: Not only were the crimes similar, but Mitch Hall and
Speaker 3: Billy had been friends since high school. According to Mitch's sister,
Speaker 3: it hung out in the same group of friends, on
Speaker 3: the same beach and at the same gym.
Speaker 7: We knew all those people from back a long time
Speaker 7: ago when we were growing up at Garfield Beach. We
Speaker 7: used to hang out at the beach, and we've known
Speaker 7: Billy Helpern forever. I know it's sister Lorie Helpern. I
Speaker 7: mean I know their family. God, I knew Billy for years.
Speaker 3: But there was one important difference between the two crime scenes.
Speaker 3: It appeared that nothing had been stolen from Mitch Hall's home.
Speaker 3: Here again, Brad Doughtry, who discovered the bodies.
Speaker 8: Didn't look anymore to disarrayed than it never did. It
Speaker 8: I mean I never would have thoughthen I wllt in
Speaker 8: the front door because I got to the bedroom that
Speaker 8: I was going to find him in there the way
Speaker 8: I did.
Speaker 3: From the way the bodies were positioned, it appeared that
Speaker 3: both Mitch and Charlotne had been forced to their knees,
Speaker 3: bound with tape and then killed in cold blood.
Speaker 7: And there was no evidence of somebody breaking into his house.
Speaker 7: So either his roommate gave the people the key, because
Speaker 7: they pulled Charlnda and they cut her throat and they
Speaker 7: set my brother's throat and it just bullshit.
Speaker 3: Again, no signs of forced entry meant that Mitch and
Speaker 3: Charlenda may have known their killers and invited them inside.
Speaker 3: In May of nineteen eighty seven, the double murder and
Speaker 3: its possible connection to Billy's murder six months before, had
Speaker 3: caused a stir in the local media, and detectives at
Speaker 3: the time hoped that the increased attention may stir up
Speaker 3: some promising leads, but that wasn't the case. In fact,
Speaker 3: investigators had a hard time convincing friends and co workers
Speaker 3: of Billy and Mitch to talk at all. The word
Speaker 3: on the street was that talking was exactly what might
Speaker 3: have gotten Mitch killed in the first place.
Speaker 7: He was killed the next day after he went to
Speaker 7: the police station to tell them who killed Billy, and
Speaker 7: he was killed the next day. So I'm assuming there
Speaker 7: was a leak in the police station and somebody said
Speaker 7: Mitch Hall knows who killed Billy.
Speaker 3: It was a claim that maybe true, but one we
Speaker 3: have so far have not seen any evidence of no
Speaker 3: record that Mitch contacted any member of the department. And
Speaker 3: even if Mitch Hall was telling people he was planning
Speaker 3: on talking to police, that could be dangerous enough.
Speaker 7: Is there any evidence that my brother came to the
Speaker 7: police station and talked to a detective and let them
Speaker 7: know who killed Billy Helpborne. There's no evidence of that
Speaker 7: him coming into the.
Speaker 4: Police station, not that I've seen, and I'm not saying
Speaker 4: that it's not there.
Speaker 2: But we're talking years and years ago.
Speaker 3: But even in nineteen eighty seven, there was a strong
Speaker 3: suspicion that not only were the murders connected, they were
Speaker 3: likely committed by the same person. That suspicion would only
Speaker 3: grow when just eight days later, two more bodies were
Speaker 3: discovered in a house in Pembroke Pines, a twenty minute
Speaker 3: drive inland from Hollywood Beach. The victims were identified as
Speaker 3: thirty one year old Jimmy high Note and twenty eight
Speaker 3: year old Harry Collier. Both men had been bound and
Speaker 3: then shot at close range in the back of the head.
Speaker 3: So it's a slightly different mo but with the same
Speaker 3: deadly result.
Speaker 2: When the names high Note and Callier came up, high
Speaker 2: Note rang a bell because we know that Jimmy high
Speaker 2: Note and Billy went to school together, they knew each other,
Speaker 2: they grew up with each other. The fact that they
Speaker 2: were then killed, that's not a coincidence. We have to
Speaker 2: look into that.
Speaker 3: That's right. Both men were known acquaintances of both Billy
Speaker 3: Halburn and Mitch Hall.
Speaker 4: I mean, we all grew up together. We'd go to
Speaker 4: Big Daddy together, hanging out together.
Speaker 7: Mitch he knew Jimmy h Notes. We used to go
Speaker 7: to as Halloween parties. Billy was always there. We all
Speaker 7: used to hang out together when we were teenagers. It's crazy.
Speaker 7: I mean when all this happened, it was just crazy.
Speaker 3: So what was going on here? Was someone targeting one
Speaker 3: particular group of lifelong friends or where they all involved
Speaker 3: in a conspiracy that ultimately got them all killed.
Speaker 2: I don't like to speculate, but I mean a normal
Speaker 2: prudent person would look at all the facts and say
Speaker 2: that's got to be connected.
Speaker 1: No matter what.
Speaker 2: Forget about them, forget about locations or the way that
Speaker 2: the murders happen. You have to think he was connected,
Speaker 2: and especially that he was in such close time proximity
Speaker 2: to the Helper murder.
Speaker 3: So what was the connection. The further we dug, the
Speaker 3: more we kept coming back to one place, the Apollo, Jim.
Speaker 9: It wasn't just a gym, It was a criminal enterprise.
Speaker 3: The Apollo was a no frills prison yard style facility
Speaker 3: dedicated to pain and gain, owned by a hulking ex cop.
Speaker 3: His name is Gil Fernandez and his partner a former
Speaker 3: mister Florida named Bert CHRISTI.
Speaker 9: That guy is a fucking gangster. Those two were together.
Speaker 9: They were like John Gottie and Sammy the Bull.
Speaker 3: Four of the five murder victims, Billy Halpern, Mitch Hall,
Speaker 3: Harry Collier, and Jimmy high Note were all members of
Speaker 3: the Apollo Gym. That was the connection.
Speaker 4: I think there was a steroid thing going on in
Speaker 4: Apollo Gym, and Billy came to my bedroom door like, Hey, Laura,
Speaker 4: ba I love you. If I don't come home, just
Speaker 4: want you to know that I love you, and then
Speaker 4: boom to get the phone call.
Speaker 3: The more Danny and I learned about the place, the
Speaker 3: more I was convinced that whatever conspiracy existed that led
Speaker 3: to the murders, it was hatched right here. I just
Speaker 3: never expected what we would find along the way.
Speaker 9: They were doing shake that, so it was well known,
Speaker 9: you're gonna pay us or we're going to kill you.
Speaker 6: And I thought they were going to kill me there,
Speaker 6: so I kept my mouth shut and I didn't say anything.
Speaker 6: All these years, I didn't say anything, but I knew that.
Speaker 3: They killed Billy or how deep the corruption would go.
Speaker 9: People were afraid to go to the law because they
Speaker 9: knew that he was a former cop and still had
Speaker 9: lots of friends on the forest, a.
Speaker 6: Lot of unsolved murders that I think are all tied
Speaker 6: to the same people.
Speaker 2: And it's almost incestuous that everyone knew each other, everyone
Speaker 2: worked together, and then ultimately almost everyone was killed.
Speaker 3: Coming up in the next episode of Cold Blooded, the
Speaker 3: Apollo Gym Murders, how Royd's Ripoffs and Revenge of the
Speaker 3: Trail of Murder on the streets and swamps of South Florida,
Speaker 3: and how one killer might still be walking free.
Speaker 9: Well, I was always taught, if you start poking your
Speaker 9: nose around, you're gonna get yourself.
Speaker 3: Killed, cold blooded. The Apollo Jim Murders is a production
Speaker 3: of iHeart Podcasts and Authentic Wave Media. Scott Weinberger, Kevin Bennett,
Speaker 3: and Walker Lemon are executive producers. Sabrina Siree is our
Speaker 3: line producer, scoring sound design and mixing by Mark lamorj
Speaker 3: Z for iHeart Podcasts, Christina Everett is executive producer, and
Speaker 3: David Wasserman is brand marketing manager. And with special thanks
Speaker 3: to the Miramar Police Department, Chief Delrich Moss, Pio Tanya Ardaz,
Speaker 3: and Detective Susie Smith,