Cold Case Files - Who Killed My Father

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

When 34-year-old Freddie Farah is gunned down in his Florida grocery store, police urgently seek his killer. Decades later, Farah's son will have a chance encounter with a cold case detective which brings the case back to life and exposes a killer. This Episode is sponsored by BetterHelp BetterHelp: Visit BetterHelp.com/COLDCASE to get 10% off your first month. Homes.com: We’ve done your homework. IQBAR - Get 20% off all IQBAR products plus free shipping by texting COLD to 64000 Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at Shopify.com/coldcase and take your retail business to the next level today! 

Hi, cold case listeners. I'm Marissa Pinson. And if you're enjoying this show, I just want to remind you that episodes of Cold Case Files as well as the A&E Classic Podcasts, I Survived, American Justice, and City Confidential are all available ad free on the new A&E Crime and Investigation channel on Apple Podcasts and Apple Plus

for just $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. And now onto the show. The following episode contains disturbing acts of violence. Listener discretion is advised. My son Bobby was only six and a half at the time of his father's death. Every policeman he saw he would always ask, would you find out who killed my daddy? Freddie Farrer was shot one time in the head and died as a result. How do you forget something like this? I took a bullet out of my pocket

and I slid it across the table. We were left with trying to figure out how, if at all, we could prove our case. When you tell me that you were never there, then your denials are just as good as the confession. So like, Mom, I'm not going to stop asking until they tell me to stop. After 40 years, I had hoped that Bobby would move on.

So just let it go. But he never would. He just wanted to know. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only about 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. It's May 22nd, 1974 in Jacksonville, Florida. It's the Wednesday before Memorial Day weekend,

and Freddie Farah, owner of the Grand Park Food Market, is busy ringing up his regular customers. Pam Hazel is an assistant state attorney for the Florida State Attorney's Office. A young man entered the store. That young man asked for a price check, and as Mr. Farah was giving that response, the young man pulled out a firearm. Detective Margaret Radegan is from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. The suspect pointed it at Mr. Farah. Mr. Farah stepped to his right, kind of in front of the register. The suspect made a couple statements, like,

give it up, give me the money. Mr. Farah instinctively reached up to move the firearm out of his face, and as he did, the young man shot one time the money. Mr. Farah instinctively reached up to move the firearm out of his face. And as he did, the young man shot one time and hit Mr. Farah. One bullet struck Mr. Farah in the head just above the right eye. The man bolts out of Grand Park food market empty handed.

34-year-old Freddy Farah cleans to life as an ambulance rushes him to nearby Methodist Hospital. Nadia Ferra is Freddie Ferra's wife. My mother-in-law told me Freddie got shot in the hand and that he's at the emergency room. I ran to the emergency room and all of my relatives were in the front of the emergency room and the minute I saw their faces, I knew it wasn't a shot in the hand. I fell to the ground, and they told me they had been shot in the head.

His heart was still beating, but they think he was brain dead. We stayed there until they finally pronounced him dead. I was born in Jerusalem, Palestine. In 1948, the country of Palestine was partitioned into Israel and Palestine. And there were a lot of wars going on and upheavals and massacres. So my father was worried about my mother and the children. So we came to the United States when I was five and have lived in Jacksonville all of that time.

Jacksonville has a very large, close-knit Palestinian community. They look after each other. They support each other. I met Fred at a family wedding. His Arabic name is Fuad, F-U-A-D, but they all called him Fred or Freddie. Freddie was born in Boudreau, Georgia, but his parents, of course, were Palestinian. When Freddie was in high school,

he would go to work in the grocery stores. When he graduated, he really wanted to go to college. He wanted to be a pharmacist. So he had to take the bus to the University of Florida for the entrance exam. The bus was late and he missed the exam. And I guess that he was so disappointed that he never tried again.

Since he was well known at the grocery stores where he worked, he stayed with them and progressed up to manager at the time when we were married. He was only 21 years old and he was already a manager. Freddie was a very fun-loving young man. His smile could just melt your heart. He loved to dance.

He loved to country music, not the twang country music, but the story country music, like John Denver, Eddie Arnold, and most of all, he loved his children. As a matter of fact, he wanted more children. But I said, no, four is enough. But he did love his family and his son, Bobby is just like him.

Freddie was very particular about everything. Bobby Farah is Freddie Farah's son. My mom saw me organizing my money in my wallet. She said, your daddy was the same way. Look at that smile. Yeah. Yeah, you had your daddy's smile. He worked a lot, so we saw him at night.

He always would come home and play with us. He bought two grocery stores of his own. The very first one was a very small grocery store. And the second one was when his cousin died who had a very small grocery store. And the second one was when his cousin died who had a much larger grocery store. His uncle told him, why don't you come take over this grocery store? In 1972, Freddie buys the Grand Park Food Market.

I was allowed to go to the store and I would stand on a milk crate, wooden crate, I remember. And I was fascinated with the coins in the cash register. So he would let me stand on the crate and I would, you know, play with the coins. He would always give the children some candy when they came into the store.

He would extend credit to the customers until they got their welfare checks. So he was very well liked. Shortly after he bought that store, he told me, I don't think I'm going to stay in the store very long. And I was wondering why he said that. There were long hours. Maybe he wanted to spend more time with the children. He was a very family-oriented man, but he never answered me why he didn't want to stay in that store for very long. Jacksonville police arrive on the scene at the Grand Park Food Market.

Sergeant Dan Janssen is with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Back in the 70s, the Grand Park area was more of a residential neighborhood that had a convenience store kind of in the middle of it. When the detectives entered the store, they noticed three items. A paint mix box, a frosting can, and a soda can on the counter near the register. But nothing was taken. Money wasn't taken. Unsure who left these items on the counter and why, crime scene technicians bagged them as potential evidence. Detectives then turned to Freddie's uncle and coworker, Issa Farah.

Also in the store at the time, along with Freddie Farah, was Freddie's uncle, who was sitting on a kind of bread box that was at the other end of the counter. He didn't really see a whole lot. He heard the gunshot and saw the suspect flee out of the store. Issa Farah gave a description of a black male about six foot tall. Detectives hit the neighborhood around Grand Park Food Market, eager to find more witnesses. One local resident grabs their attention. Alfonso Bates is interviewed. Mr. Bates tells the detectives that he's walking down the street on his way to the dry cleaners,

which is nearby the food store. He remembers he sees Billy McCloud. Billy lived in the neighborhood, not very far from the store. His mom had some sort of tavern that was just down the street from the mini-mart. He tells the detectives Billy's wearing a blue shirt, blue pants. When Alfonso hears the gunshot, he sees Billy McCloud running through the alleyway, running from the direction of the store. I don't know what other evidence they had, but Billy McCloud running from the business piqued the detective's interest. Jacksonville detectives tracked down 22-year-old Billy McCloud.

He's taken in. Billy McCloud is interviewed by detectives. He said he didn't know anything about the murder. He just heard that it had happened and that Mr. Farah had died. Detectives called Freddie's uncle Issa to the station, hoping he can identify their only suspect. Issa takes a good look at Billy McCloud. Asim Farah stated that Mr. McCloud is not the person who committed the murder. Detectives release Billy McCloud. My oldest was 11.

She understood very well what death was. The second one was eight, and I think she understood too. But the two youngest, Bobby, was six six and the youngest was five. They did not have that concept of death at that time. I remember being upstairs and one of my aunts was sitting on the bed with us and my sisters were crying. The house was full of people and not sure that we really comprehended 100% what was really going on.

They did not go to the funeral. I don't know why. In hindsight, I think they should have, because there would have been closure for them. It was a struggle day by day. The youngest, she came up to me and she says, when's daddy coming home? I just explained to her that daddy was up in heaven

and that he would not be coming home because he's in a much better place. I did not break down in front of them, but of course when I was alone that was a different story. Six days after Freddie's murder, desperate for leads, detectives double down on their canvas of the neighborhood around the Grand Park food market. You would go out into the neighborhood because people talk in the neighborhood. They know people, and then there's word on the street when people start talking. So you definitely get out there and see what people have heard, what they know, and what

they saw. Through word on the street, detectives learned there may have been a customer in the store at the time of the shooting. Annette Bryant was 14 years old at the time. She lived in the neighborhood. She had gone up to the store to buy some items for her mother. Detectives find Annette at her home. Miss Bryant saw the tall, thin black male with a red shirt outside the store. And when she was inside the store, that same young man entered the store,

putting the cake mix, cake frosting, and the soda can on the counter. She was able to tell the police that the young man pulled out a firearm and said something along the lines of, this is a robbery or this is a stick-up. She said that Mr. Farah reached forward to move the gun, potentially protecting her,

as the gun was pointing also in her direction. And when he did, the gun fired as the shooter shot the firearm. Annette is the only eyewitness who sees the shooting. And she even sees the suspect place the cake mix, the frosting can, and the soda can on the counter prior to the shooting. Because Mr. Farah's uncle was not able to see the shooter

and not able to see the shooter put items on the counter, Ms. Bryant's account was crucial in that she was the one who was able to give context to those items and connected them directly to the shooter. Detectives then realized one of those items might hold the key to the case. The fingerprints would be the only thing they would have to go on forensically. They dusted the cake mix, they dusted the frosting, and they dusted the red apple shasta can. They were able to achieve positive prints. We had fingerprints on two of the items.

They had a partial on the cake mix and the frosting can. It was a much more significant piece of evidence than anything that they had at the time. With today's fingerprint technology, not only can they read the ridges, but they can read depth of ridges and how those ridges interact with each other. Back in 74, you rolled prints and you looked at them under a magnifying glass. If you were lucky, maybe a microscope. And the evidence technicians attempt to lift prints off of the items left behind. They lift fingerprints off of two of the items. They did do a search and that

search was only done on a local level. This is before you're able to check stuff nationally. And if the suspect hadn't had an arrest record prior to the homicide occurring, he would have never been identified. So they weren't able to get any matches. Back in 1974, there was not DNA as there is today. So when they were unable to get a fingerprint match, there was not a lot more for them to do. The investigation slows to a crawl by summer's end, and with new leads drying up, the case goes cold.

Until three months later. Freddie and I had the same birthday, January the 24th. And for several years, I did not celebrate our birthdays. It was just a very sad day for me. I don't think the children even realized when my birthday was, those early years. For the children, they had birthdays as always, Christmas as always. I didn't deprive them of anything. If it wasn't for my mother, I'm not sure where we'd be, you know. She's always provided for us and I felt it's my job to protect my mother and my family. If I had to go to the grocery store,

the children would not let me go by myself. They were afraid I would not come back. That's probably about the time I started asking police officers, friends, whatever, to help me find who killed my dad. Three of my children were in the school safety patrol. The safety patrols had a police officer sponsor and Bobby would always ask,

would you look into my daddy's case? Would you find out who killed my daddy? As I got older, I became good friends with several of the police officers and I'd do a few ride-alongs with them. As years become decades, Bobby keeps a close circle of connections in law enforcement. He's always on the lookout for an opportunity to revive his father's case.

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His name was Jim Parker. He told me how he worked in cold case and that's when I mentioned to him about my dad's murder. Detective Parker cracks open Freddie Farrah's case and zeros in on the fingerprints from the cake mix box in Frostington. With advances in fingerprint technology over the last 26 years, Detective Parker hopes a wider database search could be the answer. He specifically asked for these prints to be run statewide, to be run basically up the eastern coast, you know, surrounding states, Georgia,

North Carolina, Virginia, but all of them come back negative. There just wasn't enough at that time to make the connection. In December of 2016, I walked into Southern Grill to go grab some breakfast. I saw Bobby at the counter. I made contact with him just to say,

hi, haven't seen you in a long time. Bobby had met Dan years earlier through the officers he'd accompanied on ride-alongs. He was wearing a shirt and tie and a sport coat. And I kind of teased him, said, what'd you do? Get a real job? Said, you're not a police officer anymore. He said, they moved me from homicide to cold case.

And when he said that, I said, my dad was murdered in 1974. He said, did you not know that my dad was murdered? And I said, no. And now that I was a cold case sergeant, did I mind if I would take a look at his father's case? Dan said, let me look into it. But Bobby, you know, 40-something years is a long time. I don't want to make you any promises

that we can do anything for you. Sergeant Dan Jansen, my supervisor at the time, came to me and asked me if I would look at the 1974 Freddy Farah case. He hands me a brown folder. There's not much in there. A responding officer report. There's a crime scene investigator's report.

There's probably 10 photographs of the scene. So there wasn't a whole lot to work with. But there were some latent prints that have not been resolved. So my first thing is, okay, let's try these prints. They ran unsuccessfully in 1998. Why not try it again? It's now January 4th, 2017, 43 years after Freddie Farah's murder. Technology has grown immensely over the years, and we've got great equipment to identify suspects. years and we've got great equipment to identify suspects. When I looked at the Freddy Farah case we just had fingerprints and so we ran the

fingerprints again. Ended up getting a report that the latent print from the frosting can and the cake mix box came back to a Johnny Miller. It was exhilarating. It was amazing to me that here we are, 43 years later, and we're getting ready to possibly solve a cold case. I run Johnny Miller in our local databases. Back in 1974, he was a young male, late teens. All right, we got something. But then you also have to think this could just be anybody who went over and picked up a can and put it back down on the counter prior to the suspect coming in. I had met with the Farrer family to find out if they had hired anybody to come in and help stock

shells. Any explanation? Well, his fingerprints were on there. And the family told me they never hired anybody outside the family. I sat my mom down and I told her, I said, listen, something's going on in daddy's case. And mom just kind of looks at me and I said, Bobby, what are you talking about? I lost Freddy. Nothing could have brought him back.

So what good was it going to do me if they caught this individual? To me, it didn't make any difference whether they caught him or not. I had hoped that Bobby would move on because this happened so many years ago. So just let it go. But he never would. I was like, Mom, I'm not going to stop asking until they tell me to stop or there's no other

avenue. Bobby's mom didn't want this case reopened. And when I heard that, I knew that it was time for Project Cold Case to step in and help the Farrah family go through this time. Ryan Backman is the executive director of Project Cold Case. In October 2009, my father had been murdered. And then as my dad's case went cold, I started to recognize avoidance services for families of unsolved cases. So in 2015, I founded Project Cold Case to serve those families. Though Project Cold Case typically helps families advocate for their loved ones, Sergeant Jansen believes Ryan can offer the Farrah family, especially Bobby, something more.

Bobby was a lot like me. He had lost his dad, and my dad was murdered. We truly bonded over both having that experience. I felt like for a long time, there were people that kind of wanted Bobby to move on, and that was not the case with me. He knew that he could tell me anything about his dad, anything that he was thinking about his dad and about the investigation.

I feel like I can call Ryan and talk to him at any time about anything, you know, and I think he feels the same way about me. It can be very complicated when you're working with families of unsolved murders, and particularly some family members that don't want to reopen those wounds. But the most important thing to Bobby in the world was finding out who did it.

That was the thing that he needed and wanted most. He wanted justice. Once the identification of the Prince came back to Johnny Miller, the next thing that Detective Redigan needed to do was locate the witnesses in the case. I had one witness statement from Annette Bryant. I ended up locating her in Charlotte, North Carolina. Only 14 at the time of Freddie's murder, Annette Bryant is now 57 years old.

And she was now somewhat frail. She had stage four cancer. Detectives asked if she recalled the incident at the convenience store in 1974. She said, you watch the man get shot and actually die right before your eyes. Of course I remember that. She remembered the suspect coming in. She remembered him asking Mr. Farah for a cake mix, placing

it on the counter, asking for the frosting can, placing it on the counter. And she remembers him grabbing a can of fruit soda and placing that on the counter as well. That's huge for us because it's something that she's identifying exactly to a T all these years later. And then she remembers the suspect shooting Mr. Farah and running out. Her memory was so great and she made my case so strong. We definitely had to find Johnny Miller and we had to talk to him. He had to explain his fingerprints. Our last known address for Johnny Miller is in New Orleans.

Then that was a five-year-old address. What if we went out there and he's not there? He's just this needle in a haystack. But there's only one way. Sergeant Jansen said, you got to go. Detective Radigan and her partner drive eight hours from Jacksonville to New Orleans in search of Johnny Miller. We coordinated with New Orleans Cold Case Unit to help us out. The detectives took us by the last known address of Johnny Miller. We found out that Johnny was evicted several years prior.

The last the landlord knew he was living on the streets in New Orleans. All I could think of is we've driven all the way out here and we're going to come up empty handed. The New Orleans cold case investigator working with Detective Rattigan takes a close look at her photo of Johnny Miller. The detective said, I recognize this guy. He dresses up as a street performer in the French Quarter, but really had no other information.

My partner and I took it upon ourselves to drive around the French Quarter to try to locate this guy. After about an hour, we saw a lot of street performers, but no luck. We ended up going into one of the precincts in the French Quarter and met up with a uniformed officer. Once we showed him the picture, he ended up recognizing Johnny Miller, and he said, I'll look around for him.

Less than an hour later, Detective Ratigan gets a phone call. The officer has found Johnny Miller. He spoke with Mr. Miller just briefly. I told him I was a detective from Jacksonville and I was working an investigation. Johnny agreed to come speak with us. Never been to that store? No, I can't remember. I'm not sure if I know.

Hmm? I said, I'm putting nothing on me. I never been to that store. OK. When I've got your fingerprints and you tell me that you were never there, then your denials are just as good as a confession. There would be no other explanation

for his fingerprints being on the items inside the store, items that Miss Bryant would be able to testify that the shooter put on the counter directly before the murder. friends, these fingerprints were lifted. And when we recently ran them in December of this past year, they matched with you. And me? Yes, sir. I don't even let me be in there.

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for. Being rude to waiters, playing music out loud while hiking. But what about the positive signs? You know those little things that make you think, wow, this person might be a keeper. Maybe it's how they actively listen when you speak, respect your boundaries, or always return their shopping cart. These green flags are crucial in building healthy, loving relationships. But here's the thing, sometimes it's hard to recognize these positive signs especially if you've had challenging relationships in the past. That's where therapy comes in. It can help you identify those green flags, learn how to embody them yourself and build relationships that truly nurture you. Therapy has been extremely beneficial

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wow, something's going on. They had Margot on a conference call in Louisiana, and they told us that they had made an arrest. And I remember kind of slamming my hand down on the table and saying, I knew it, you know, and I got up and walked out. I followed Bobby out the door. There's something that just overcomes you in that moment.

I grabbed him, gave him a big hug, and we just kind of allowed the moment to sink in. I sat there, dumbfounded. I did not know what to say. The grand jury issued an indictment for Mr. Miller. The state intended to proceed with first degree murder charges on Mr. Miller. I believed that the case was strong. We had forensic scientific evidence, latent fingerprints that were

unequivocally identified to Mr. Miller. And we had a witness who had a very clear recall of the events. Though Annette Bryant gave police a statement at the time of the murder, prosecutors now need her sworn testimony. We spoke to her in early December of 2017 and let her know that her deposition was scheduled

for January of 2018, at which point she said that she would absolutely be available for a deposition. Right after the holidays, we contacted Miss Bryant and we learned from her daughter that she had actually passed away approximately two weeks after we last spoke with her. I felt like the wind was taken out of our sails in this particular case. An arrest had been made. We had a suspect in custody on a 43-year-old cold case, the oldest cold case solved in the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office history.

It was painful to hear that Miss Bryant had passed away. Miss Bryant was the link between the items placed on the counter with fingerprints and the shooter. Without Miss Bryant, the jury could find Mr. Miller not guilty, and the family would never get the answers they were looking for. So we were left with trying to figure out how, if at all, we could prove our case.

When Ms. Bryant passed away, we had to regroup and decide what was most important for the Farrah family and justice moving forward. And justice obviously can mean different things for different cases. Without Miss Bryant's testimony, it seemed to us that the likelihood of obtaining a conviction in this case was quite low.

And it was important to us to be able to provide the family with answers while still holding the defendant accountable. The state approaches the Farrah family with an idea, a plea deal with Johnny Miller. In exchange for time served, Miller would plead guilty to Freddie's murder and meet with the Farrer family to answer their questions. I did want to see him face to face. I knew Bobby was going to ask questions and I did want to hear his answers. Johnny Miller takes the plea deal and agrees to meet with the Farrer family in a restorative justice session.

The main goal of restorative justice is to bring the offender and victim or victim's family together so that the offender is held to account by explaining and apologizing for what he or she has done. Restorative justice was a good opportunity in this particular case because the family had 43 years to somewhat come to terms with the death. And Mr. Miller had 43 years to mature into a person who would be willing to tell them the answers to their questions.

This was the first time that I had ever been involved in something like this, where the defendant would be sitting in the room with the family. The Farahs, along with the detectives, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, anxiously await Johnny Miller's arrival. Finally, I could hear him. He was in shackles and cuffs, and you could hear him coming down the hallway into the library where we were. When he came into the room, you could hear a pin drop.

Everyone, I think, was a little on edge about how it was going to go. I asked him, did he know my dad? He told me yes, that he shopped at my dad's store, that my dad was very nice to all the children that came in. I asked him, was he angry with my dad? Did my dad upset him? He said that he found the gun,

and he was gonna take it into my dad's store to ask my dad what he should do with it. And he said something overcame him when he got into the store, and he pulled the gun out of his tool bag. He just kind of, something snaps in him and ends up trying to rob the store. And he said that my dad saw the gun and lunged at the gun to protect the little girl and when he did

the gun went off. He said he just turned around and ran out of the store. There was a sigh of relief from around the room at how sincere he was and it really did seem to impact his life as well as, obviously, the life of the victim's family. I actually took a bullet out of my pocket and I slid it across the table and I pointed to it. And I said, that right there, this one little item changed our lives, yours included. And he just looked at me like a deer in headlights. It had such an impact, I think, on everyone to just realize how in one moment in time,

you can change the life of so many people. Mr. Miller kept saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And then I just told him, we forgive you. I live by that rule that you have to forgive others in order to receive forgiveness. And it's a relief off of my mind too. I don't want to hold grudges. Mrs. Farrow just blew me away.

Such a strong woman and such a forgiving woman. I was crying. I believe the state attorney was in there crying. We were just so humbled by her. I'm a little different than my mom. For me to say that I forgive him, no sir, I'm not ready to say that. My mom told me in Arabic, I hope that this gives you your answers and that you can move on with this.

They gave me peace. The hope to give Bobby peace. Five days after meeting with the Farahs, Johnny Miller pleads guilty to second-degree murder and is released from jail. The fact that he is on the street as a free man, I mean, does it bother me? Yes, it bothers me. But the fact that he gave me more answers than I've had in 43 years,

it just, it helped me, you know. So I'm good with this. My dad was a really good man. He loved his children. He loved my mom. There's a picture at their wedding and looks like they're in the back of the limousine and you could just see it in his eyes how in love he was with my mom. And that's the way I want somebody to remember my dad, the big smile on his face.

People ask me why I didn't remarry and I always say when you've had the best you don't want second best. Freddie was the love of my life. I only lived with him, unfortunately, a very short time. So I don't know what would have happened in our later years. But I envy all these old couples that walk hand in hand and I always wonder what would it have been like. and we'll see you next time. Next-level comedies, music video channels, and more. Brilliant black entertainment, intentionally curated, and all free. This month and always on Pluto TV.

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