Cold Case Files - REOPENED: Under a Spell

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

In a dark corner of Miami, several women are found murdered and their bodies burned. A mysterious footprint, a bottle of gasoline, and a Santeria priestess help lead detectives to the serial killer. Progressive: Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. 

On August 1st, 1995, in the Alapata neighborhood of Miami, a place tourists don't visit, an unfamiliar scent filled the air. It was the smell of burning, and the odor attracted the attention of a man in the area. He called the police. This is Detective Manny De La Torriente. He was called to investigate. When I arrived, the officers were here. There were a couple homeless people starting to gather about,

and there was a body of a black female right about here. She had appeared to be wearing some kind of a mesh shirt and shorts, and they were burned. They were burned so badly that the mesh pattern was actually burned into her body. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. The woman was burned from the waist up, and she'd been hit in the head. The coroner ruled the death a homicide and was able to identify the victim. Her name was Vita Hicks. She was 42 years old and lived in the neighborhood.

Detective De La Torriente returned to the area where Vita had been murdered to see if any witnesses could provide a lead in the investigation. Unfortunately, no witnesses to the crime were found, and no one suspicious was identified. This is Detective De La Torriente again. Nobody in particular stood out. So it had to either be one of the local people that frequent the area, that can blend in, or somebody who can look so much like a local that he could pass for one of them. With no witnesses and no suspects, the case quickly went cold. Two months later, another victim is found beaten and burned, making it evident that Alapata had a serial killer on its streets.

Here's Detective Frank Castillo, who investigated the second murder. We responded there and observed the body of a black female laying in a supine or face-up position, and she appeared to have some injuries to the face and head area and appeared to have been set on fire. The victim was identified as Diane Nelms, also a local woman. Her body was only 30 feet from where Vida Hicks' body had been found. Because of the similarities in the cases, Detective Castillo reached out to De La Torriente and the two worked the case together. This is Detective De La Torriente again.

The similarities between the two, between Vida Hicks and Diane Nelms, were scary. They happened almost in the same place. It looked like almost in the same way. Unfortunately, the two murders had another similarity, a lack of evidence. The killer didn't leave behind any fingerprints, hair samples, or DNA evidence to help the police find him.

Police can only guess what the perpetrator's motives were. Here's Detective Castillo again. I just thought he's deranged, the person to do that. Beat somebody up and then beat him to a pulp and then set him on fire. Maybe he's just trying to cover the evidence. Without any physical evidence to help the police identify a suspect, the detectives went in search of a witness. Here's Detective De La Torriente again. Just going out there talking to these homeless people, asking if they'd seen anything, showing them pictures of Vida Higgs, Diane Nelms.

Investigators returned to Alapata, where the victims were discovered. The homeless often congregated in this particular neighborhood, and sex workers were known to operate in the area. Officers hoped that with so many people out on the streets, someone must have seen something. They canvassed the area with photos of Diane and Vida. The detectives aren't able to find anyone who can help identify the attacker. Both women were sex workers and used illegal substances. Neither had strong ties to

the community. Yeah, they're tough, man. You just have to hope that if he does it again, he just leaves a little bit more evidence. And then if he does it again, he leaves a little bit more evidence. That was Detective Castillo. He and Detective De La Torriente were forced to move on to other cases, and Diane's murder took its place next to Evita's in the cold case file. Meanwhile, a murderer was free andillo shelved the files of Vita Hicks and Diane Nelm, their cases caught the attention of Miami's Cold Crimes Unit. Detective Nelson Andrew and Detective Jack Calvar took an active interest in the unsolved murder cases of the two women.

This is Detective Andrew. You get cases like this where, you know, you've got just a very limited amount of leads, nothing else to follow, no, there's no potential for solvability in this case, and the case turns cold real fast. Almost immediately after the detectives started to review the files, they received a call from their captain. The body of a woman had been found in the Miami cemetery.

This is Detective Calvar. We're walking into the cemetery, and my captain comes on over to me, and he says, we found another body beaten and burned like the girls over in the produce center. And I said, okay, what do you want me to do? And he says, you're the lead. You and Nelson and Carlos are taking all three of these cases. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Hey, Cold Case Files listeners, whether you love true crime or comedies, celebrity interviews, news, or even motivational speakers, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue, right?

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She'd been killed by a blow to the head, and her body was burned from the waist up. All signs pointed to the same killer. While investigating Cheryl's murder, detectives discovered a piece of evidence setting it apart from the other two victims. The attacker had left behind semen on Cheryl's body. Here's Detective Andrew again. Because of her lifestyle, it could have been the killers or it could have been another trick that she did, you know, minutes or hours before. But at least we had something to go for and compare later on once we had a suspect.

Detectives finally had a lead to find Diane, Vita, and Cheryl's killer. They also felt a huge amount of pressure from the community to make an arrest. Unfortunately, the added spotlight didn't help the situation. The media immediately said, we've got three women killed in the same exact manner. Now you had the media trucks with their antennas and the reporters yelling questions at you. And after the 4th, it became a zoo. That was Detective Kalvar again. He was called to the scene of another murder on March 27,

1996. The woman was found in an abandoned gas station in North Miami. She was partially dressed and lying near a pool of transmission fluid. The investigators made a video documenting their efforts. The door was found open by the officers that initially responded to the scene. The victim is nude from the waist down. Pants have been pulled down below her ankles. The charring pattern is upper torso. The coroner confirmed what the police had suspected. The M.O. was the same.

The woman had died from a blow to the head, and she was then doused in gasoline and lit on fire. She was lying on the floor of the gas station, surrounded by fallen ceiling tiles. Later, she was identified as Janice Cox. Here's more of the police investigation video. Look at the ceiling tile over here where the cone is. There's definite footwear impressions that are in a red substance. It possibly is blood or it might be grease or transmission fluid. This cone over here is depicting another footwear impression. This cone over here is depicting a number of footwear

impressions. The ceiling tiles provided a lead that could be used to track down the man who had killed four women. Here's Detective Andrew to explain. The ceiling tiles, to our good fortune, landed with the white or the exposed area up. Having stepped on the transmission fluid, he later stepped on the ceiling tiles. Transmission fluid is red, an obvious contrast to the white ceiling tiles. Detective Andrew believed the shoe prints left on the tiles were freshly made and belonged to the killer. He clung to the shoe prints, hoping that they would help identify a suspect. Andrew went as far as carrying a picture of the prints around with him. Here's Detective Andrew again.

I spent the next few months going to shoe stores. When we went to the mall, my family and I, I would go to a shoe store and pick up shoes and turn them over. My wife would say, you looking at more shoes? You want to buy shoes, but you never buy any. And I said, no, I'm not looking to buy shoes. I'm looking for something. It didn't quite work out like the fairy tales because Detective Andrew couldn't find the owner. And the Cold Crimes Unit was forced to pursue other avenues for their investigation. The vast majority of murders are committed by people close to the victim. They had some connection to the victim.

This is a total random act. It's a stranger that just picks and chooses a particular victim. Waiting for another woman to be murdered and hoping for the killer to make a mistake was not an acceptable option for Calvar and Andrew. Instead, the detectives started to study serial murder investigations. Specifically, they looked into the investigations of Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, and the Atlanta Child Murders, trying to teach themselves how to catch a serial killer.

Either they put a decoy police officer, or the police went out hunting for these people. It was a hunt. That was Detective Calvar talking about the squad's plan to be proactive in their investigation. In a brainstorming session, the detectives made a list of everything they knew about the killer. He targeted African-American women, and they were mostly sex workers on the fringe of their community. He murdered one woman

approximately every two months, and his victims were all from the same relatively small section of Miami. Here's Detective Kalbar again. We knew that he knew the area very well, which means that he probably lived in that area. Let's go get him. Let's go hunting. 30 officers were sent to the area where they suspected the killer lived, including Detective Oscar Callejas. You had to stay in the shadows. You couldn't do things out in the open. You couldn't stay out in the light. You had to stay at a distance. You had to use binoculars. Sometimes they knew we were there, but we wanted them to know we were there.

On his first day canvassing the neighborhood for the killer, Detective Callejas was approached by a young woman. Her name was Yolanda and she was a sex worker in the neighborhood. She had some information that could be relevant. Here's Detective Callejas again. She told my partner and I that there was a guy that approximately a year ago had approached her and asked her if she spoke Spanish. She got a little closer, and as she did that, he hit her over the head, and all she could do is run. She told us that she had gone to the gas station, called the police, and made a police report. Callejas gave the woman his card and asked her to contact him if she saw her attacker again.

Three hours later, Yolanda makes the call. She saw the man riding a bicycle down the street. The detectives pick Yolanda up, and together they drive around, trying to locate the man on the bike. And we're going around, and all of a sudden, she points out, and she goes, there he is. That was Detective Callejas. He stopped the man and asked him a few questions.

His name was Francisco Del Junco, a Cuban-American man living in Miami's Little Havana. He had a juice bottle wrapped in a plastic bag hanging from his handlebars. Here's Detective Callejas again. I asked him if he had a weapon there and he said, no, no, that's not a weapon. That's a bottle of gasoline. Well, just so happens that the accelerant used on these victims was gasoline. Detectives Andrew and Calvar arrived at the scene. The investigators all wanted to know why someone riding a bicycle would need gasoline. This is Detective Andrew. Curious. Our questions to him are, why the gasoline? He says, well, the chain on my bicycle falls off every once in a while. It's kind of defective. And I get grease on my hands, so I use the gasoline to wipe the grease off my hands. Didn't satisfy my questions

very well. I said, let me see the bottom of your shoe. And there was that elusive footprint impression that I had been looking for. A true crime podcast. It got me upset because this is someone's kid and someone knows she's gone. That takes a different approach. It was shocking for something like this to happen in our little town. Focusing on the communities affected by life shattering crimes. It made news throughout the entire region that these two people had been shot while they slept in such a safe community. To give a new perspective on the devastation crimes can cause. It was shocking for something like this to happen in our little town. Featuring cases from quiet towns to bustling

cities and interviewing the people closest to the case. My first thought was that it's an unusual location for us to have a homicide. Listen to the true crime podcast, City Confidential, and step beyond the yellow tape to learn just how far a crime can reach. There are certain cases in the history of Boston that I think sort of define the city. I think this is one of them. New episodes of the City Confidential podcast are available every Thursday, available wherever you get your podcasts. Francisco Del Junco denied any involvement with the murders.

After a day of interrogation, the police didn't have enough information to make an arrest. But they also felt uncomfortable releasing the suspect into the community. This is Detective Calvar. He was just having a good old time talking to us. I think that that's the main reason why he didn't just say, hey, screw you guys, I'm not talking to you, I want a lawyer. The detectives present Del Junco with a compromise. They offer to take him to his dishwashing job and then accompany him back home.

Then they'd bring him in for questioning again the following day. Basically, they wanted to be his 24-hour chaperones. Surprisingly, he agreed. By the third day of interrogation, Francisco Del Junco had become relaxed around the police, so Detective Andrew decided to try an unusual approach. The question was, why would somebody do something like this? And his response was like, you wouldn't know what drives people to do things like this or

what makes somebody do this. And we start throwing out a bunch of things. And basically, he's saying like, no, no, well, could be, maybe. Then for some reason, it occurs to me to say Santeria. Santeria is an African Caribbean religion combining elements of Catholicism and the beliefs and customs of the Yoruba people. It's not a topic that often finds its way into an interrogation room. Detective Andrew explains Del Junco's reaction. And he says, what did you say? And I said, Santeria. And basically his demeanor changed, and he says, can we go somewhere else to talk?

And I said to myself, bingo. This is it. He's ready. Hoping his suspect will finally come clean, Andrew's willing to follow this new lead wherever it takes him. In this case, it takes him on a drive along the beach with a man he suspects is a serial killer. Eventually, Andrew stopped his car and waited for Del Junco to share whatever it was that had spooked him at the police station.

The story began with a priestess that Del Junco believed had him under a spell. Andrew explains what Del Junco told him next. He says he's doing his normal daily activities. He will become sexually aroused and without provocation and without any of his own doing, he will ejaculate. He says this is embarrassing. I can be working. I could be shopping. I could be doing something. And he says these people do this is embarrassing. I can be working, I could be shopping, I could be doing something.

And he says, these people do this to me. These people were the voices that were telling him. He says, this is a Santeria priestess, and the leader of them is this black woman. He says that he would kill these women to try to get even with these voices for what they were doing to him, to get revenge, maybe to try to get him to stop. This was his rationale for what he was doing.

To determine if Del Junco's confession was true, they tested it by asking him details only the killer would know. On June 3rd, Francisco de Junco leads police to the place where he picked up his first two victims. He then shows them the crime scenes where the bodies were discovered. After that, he takes the investigators to the cemetery where Cheryl's body was found. Then he tells detectives exactly how he had killed her. We were lost inside the cemetery and he actually found the spot. And then he told us exactly, you know, how he did it. I told her to bend over, dropped her pants. We had sex.

And then as we're having sex, and I'm about ready to ejaculate, I reach back, and on the vertical post of my bicycle, I had the weapon. I took it out and I just started beating her with it. Francisco Del Junco was arrested and charged with multiple counts of murder. His boots were consistent with the ones responsible for the prints on the white tiles. More importantly, though, the DNA found on Cheryl's body was a match to Del Junco. Not surprisingly, one last question needed to be answered before Del Junco could be tried. Was he responsible for his actions at the time of the murders?

Or was he legally insane? Jeffrey Fink was the attorney appointed to defend Francisco Del Junco, and his first order of business was to schedule an evaluation of Del Junco's mental health. A psychiatrist made a diagnosis of schizophrenia. The defense attorney wasn't surprised. This is Jeffrey Fink. His family members testified that at a certain point he began to speak in strange voices. He would actually take on the demeanor of somebody else when he would speak in these voices.

He was off. There was just something off about him. Florida law defines criminal insanity as the inability to distinguish between right and wrong. De Junco's confession makes it appear that he could make that determination. This is David Gilbert, a prosecuting attorney on the case. He told the investigators that he cleaned up his crime scenes so that he would not leave evidence behind. I believe at one time he told them that he didn't use matches from the restaurant where he worked because they could be linked back to him. Pre-trial motions related to Del Junco's legal insanity and mental health

status lasted for seven years. Eventually, in May of 2003, the case was tried by a judge instead of a jury. The trial lasted for six weeks and ended with the judge finding him guilty on four counts of murder. He was given four consecutive life sentences. Though determined legally sane at the time of the murders, Dalhunko didn't appear to understand the magnitude of the judgment. Here's his defense attorney, Jeffrey Fink, again. His principal concern was in having returned to him his shoes that had been taken by the police because they were shoes that were very comfortable to him and he wanted to make sure he had those in prison. The cold case

detectives were glad that Francisco de Junco no longer posed a threat to the women of Miami. We're going to close with Detective Andrews' feelings about the case. My work experience, my ethic when I was in homicide was that, you know, you have a dead person. And it deserved the same amount of investigative work and as much respect from us as any other case. Produced by McKamey Lynn and Steve Delamater. Our executive producer is Ted Butler. Our music was created by Blake Maples. This podcast is distributed by Podcast One. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at aetv.com slash real crime. Mission Impossible and Transformers. Or stay cool inside watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Titanic, or The Wolf of Wall Street.

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