The Deck - David Comparetto (King of Hearts, Florida)

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Our card this week is David Comparetto, the King of Hearts from Florida. When a 30-year-old man with disabilities is brutally murdered, stuffed into the trunk of his car, and set on fire, law enforcement in Southwest Florida is left in horror and with few clues to follow. For 29 years the crime has gone unsolved but now could be the season of justice for David Comparetto. If you have any information about the murder of David Comparetto, please call the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers at 1-800-780-8477 -- or you can submit a tip anonymously on their website southwest Florida crime stoppers.comTo learn more about The Deck, visit www.thedeckpodcast.com.   

Our card this week is David Comparetto, the King of Hearts from Florida. David was 30 years old in the early 1990s, had multiple jobs that earned him a steady income, had a loving family to go home to, and was someone who kept a smile on his face every day. But on October 16, 1993, all of that changed. David vanished, only to be found burned inside his car right outside of his hometown. For the last 29 years, his killer has remained unidentified, and the motive behind the crime is no closer to being understood than it was nearly three decades ago.

Detectives say they can solve this case. They just need help from you. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. On Saturday, October 16, 1993, around 8 o'clock that night, a woman named Diana, who worked at a public grocery store in Fort Myers, Florida, noticed her coworker, David Comperetto, acting strange. Normally, Diana knew David to be a happy-go-like-y kind of guy. When he'd clocked in for his shift at 4pm earlier that day, he'd been in a good mood and had spent most of his downtime that night using the store's phone to catch up with friends. But right after 8pm, Diana noticed David got really been out of shape

after he'd received a brief phone call. After he'd hung up the receiver, Diana could tell that David was visibly upset, shaking shaking and crying. I mean, to the point where the rest of his co-workers could tell that something was definitely wrong. Diana and David were pretty close friends, so she asked him what was going on and why he was spiraling, but the only thing he would tell her was, quote, something is going to happen. Someone is waiting, and I'm afraid to go outside the door. What do I do?" End quote. Diana was shaken up by David's bizarre response and unfortunately she couldn't calm him down

or get any more information from him before he abruptly clocked out of his shift early, took off out the store's front doors and ran to his blue Ford Tempo parked in the parking line. After David walked out, Diana and all of his other co-workers didn't know what to do. They didn't call the police because they weren't really sure what to even tell them. Instead, they just figured David had something personal come up and they'd learn all about it the next day when he came in to work. But that wouldn't happen because a few hours later, the Lee County Emergency Dis emergency dispatchers received a 911

call from a man walking on the outskirts of the county in an area known as Lehigh Acres. The call came in around 11 p.m. and it was disturbing. The guy told authorities that he wanted to report a car fire in a vacant field. Here's Lee County Sheriff's Office cold case sergeant, Marsha Sutvin. The vehicle itself was actively engulfed in flames when the 911 caller noticed the vehicle, and by the time fire arrived, it was fully engulfed. As soon as the firefighters put out the blaze, they checked what was left of the car for anyone inside.

The front seats and back seats were empty, but when they opened the trunk, they found a man's lifeless body crumpled up in the fetal position. In that moment, the fire department realized that they were probably dealing with a crime scene, so they called in homicide detectives from the Lee County Sheriff's Office to investigate. When those deputies arrived, they quickly determined the car was a Ford tempo, and it was registered to 30-year-old David Comparado from Fort Myers.

The question investigators couldn't answer right away, though, was, was David the man in the trunk? And if so, who had brought him so far outside of town to kill him in such a heinous way? According to Sergeant Sutton, detectives at the scene process David's car for clues. The obviously fire destroys much of what it touches, but it doesn't destroy everything, and we were able to collect some things from the scene. Luckily, they were able to collect several hairs and fingerprints from the charred remains, and they next tried to canvas the nearby streets and neighborhoods for eye witnesses, but struck out.

and they next tried to canvas the nearby streets and neighborhoods for eye witnesses, but struck out. His vehicle was located out on a pretty desolate area of Lehigh acres. At the time, it was not as built up as it is today. After the body from the trunk was transported for an autopsy, it didn't take investigators long to positively ID the victim as David. Now, because this case is still active, the Lee County Medical Examiner and the State Fire Marshall's Office have never released David's official autopsy or the Arson Investigation Report.

So I'm not sure what state his body was in when he was brought in. We also don't know how the fire was set inside the car, like if gasoline was used or what. That's information that only the investigators and the killer or killers know. The only information that has been released publicly is that the pathologist determined David died of smoke inhalation, which meant that he was still alive and breathing when he was forced into his trunk and then the car was set on fire. Shortly after identifying his body, authorities broke the news to David's parents,

Patsy and Sal. Learning what happened to their son, Devastate, at the couple. You see, ever since they'd gotten married in the late 1950s, Patsy and Sal had tried their hardest to conceive naturally. Viable pregnancies had been a challenge for them, so they decided to try adoption instead. And in 1963, their dreams came true when they adopted David as a baby. At the time, staff at the hospital had actually discouraged the couple from choosing David because they said he'd been born with severe medical issues, including a deformity that doctors labeled as clubbed feet.

But none of that mattered to Patsy and Sal. They fell in love with David and took him home. Patsy actually told Fox 4 News, quote, I didn't see nothing but his face. And right then, he was my baby. End quote. During middle school and high school, the couple learned the depth of their son's disabilities

went beyond just physical. David was socially challenged as well, which caused him to be shy and sometimes naive. Patsy told Fox 4 that, David had trouble differentiating between what most people would consider to be factual information and what was fantasy or people teasing him.

Everyone who knew David back then described him as a meek, kind, very helpful young man. Many people actually struggled to call him a man. They're a young man because his demeanor was very much that of a young, young adult or teenager, if you will. Despite his challenges, though, his parents said David grew up as a fairly normal kid. He had friends, participated in extracurricular activities, graduated from Fort Myers High School, got his driver's license, and maintained several part-time jobs.

But not long after entering the working world, though, his parents noticed that David started to hang out with and be influenced by a group of young men who were sort of a rough crowd and frequented strip clubs in the Fort Myers area. Patsy and Sal discourage their son from joining in with what they consider to be inappropriate activities like that, but technically David was an adult. He could do what he wanted. Over time, Patsy and Sal noticed David spent more and more nights at Strip Clubs with his friends, and he was getting very close with several of the dancers.

Sergeant Sutphen and crime stopper spokes in Trish route, says this never settled well with his parents, but in reality it may have been his only outlet to have interaction with women. This causes parents some concern, obviously. They had some worry about the people that he would encounter and these types of places, but they knew it made David happy. So while they cautioned him about going to these places, they understood why it made David happy, and that his intellectual delays made it difficult for him to find companionship on his own, if you will.

He went because the girls would pay attention to him. He had not a violent or bad bone in his body, but in the strip club type of situation, girls are going to pay attention to you because they're looking for money, but at the end of the day, David was just looking for somebody to pay attention to him. Although it wasn't the ideal place to be, that's where he chose to be because he had connections. He was making conversational connections with these women and that made him happy. Detectives looking into his murder learned quickly that strip clubs and David's friends, which included some dancers, were going to be the best place to start to try and piece

together a timeline of his life in habits. What they learned was that according to David's parents, he'd woken up on the morning of October 16th, gotten dressed for the day, done some things around the house, ate lunch, and then he headed out to one of his friends, named Gary Hughes House, around two or three o'clock in the afternoon. When detectives interviewed Gary, he told them that, yes, David had stopped by his place

and then the two of them had hung out and talked about going to the strip club later that night. Gary was a DJ at a club called Paradise and during their conversation, the men had talked about how the business had been kind of dead lately, and the dancers weren't getting as much work as they normally did. About a quarter to four, Gary said that David left his house and headed to his job at Publix.

When detectives questioned the staff at the store, including Diana, they learned about that bizarre phone call that David had gotten around 8 o'clock and how he'd taken off early. Diana also told investigators that before David's departure around 5 o'clock, he'd been talking on the phone with other people, and she had a name. She said that that person may have a lot more information. Diana told detectives that a few hours before abruptly leaving his shift, David had been speaking on the phone with a woman named Michelle that she knew was a dancer at a local strip club. About two hours after that, the store's phone records show that David had made another

phone call. This one to a DJ named Larry Gore, who worked at a strip club called Mermaid's Lounge. When questioned about their conversation, Larry told investigators that David had called him just to catch up and chat about their day. He said the call hadn't lasted more than a few minutes before David had to hang up and do some things at work. Now Diana emphasized to police that David speaking on the phone with strip club dancers and DJs while he was at work actually wasn't unusual. She said that the stores manager and all of the other staff knew David didn't have the same social skills as everyone else,

and so they let him do some personal stuff like take calls while he was clocked in, just so he could have that interaction with people that he said he cared about. David regularly made phone calls with women who worked as dancers because he considered them his friends. He would often talk with Diana about how he ran errands for the women, sometimes bought them or their kids' meals, and would deliver packages for their bosses who own the strip clubs. Now, detectives knew David left publics sometime right after 8 o'clock. The next time they could account for David's whereabouts before his murder was after 8 o'clock. The next time they could account for David's

whereabouts before his murder was around 9 o'clock. A man named Wayne Woodring told authorities that he'd received a phone call from David asking him to meet up at Burt Strip Club of US 41 and Fort Myers. We don't know where David would have placed that call from. All we know from speaking with investigators is that he didn't go home to make that call. We know he didn't use the phone at publics to dial Wayne, and at the time he didn't have a cell phone. Now Wayne agreed, and by 930 of the men were hanging out at Berts, catching up and admiring the dancers while eating at the snack bar.

Obviously, this part of the story and everything that Wayne is saying doesn't really add up with how David's mood was when he left publics abruptly. Diana said that David seemed super distraught, but then, according to Wayne, like an hour later, David's chumming it up with him at Byrts. There's definitely some discrepancy here, and investigators noticed it too. Dancers at Byrts and at least one other bouncer told detectives that between 10 and 1030 they saw David hanging out. But then around 1030 he left with a man walking behind him, and it was a man that they knew had not arrived with David.

What happened to David after he left is a little TBD. There were some reports that David went to Mermaids lounge after leaving births, but most of the reports say he was actually there before. Some reports that David went to Mermaid's Lounge after leaving Burtz, but most of the reports say he was actually there before. Either way, police went to Mermaid's to follow up. A dancer named Jennifer, who worked there, who knew David well, told investigators that she'd seen the 30-year-old come in, but right away she noticed something was off. Here's audio from an interview and original detective on the case had with Jennifer. anyone. He's never with anybody, especially guys, you don't talk to me. And the guy walked

in with him, and I called David to the stage and asked him if he could pick me up something to eat so he couldn't because he had to go. When Jennifer told police that David seemed off while briefly inside Mermaids' lounge, that forced investigators to ask the question, was David really under duress while at Mermaids and birds, regardless of the order in which he went to the bars? Or was he just telling Jennifer the same thing that he told his co-workers at Publix? No matter how they sliced it, to the detectives it seemed like David had very different interactions with people shortly before his murder that made figuring out his state of mind harder and harder.

Regardless though, detectives were eager to speak with the strange man that Jennifer said she'd seen walking to Mermaids with David, the same guy that he had left births with. The problem was, no one working at either one of those clubs seemed to know who the guy was, or at least they weren't willing to give up his name. Jennifer told deputies that all she knew about the guy was that on occasion she'd seen him at another strip club in Fort Myers called Paradise Club. David coincidentally worked part-time for Paradise as a sort of side hustle. He would basically be what you would consider maybe an intern in the strip club world. He ran errands for the owner, a guy named Jamie Carrillo, and would visit with the dancers.

The only other information the staff at Mermaids could tell investigators about the night of October 16th was that while David had been there, he'd gone to the bar, used the bathroom, and then asked a bouncer if a dancer named Tiffany was working, which the bouncer said she wasn't. Another dancer who was on shift, though, confirmed a police that David had been looking for this Tiffany woman for at least a week or two leading up to that night.

Both Jennifer and this other dancer said the entire time David was in the lounge, he'd been accompanied by that strange man they vaguely recognized. Jennifer said that at one point the guy pushed David and told him to hurry up. The other dancer who saw David told investigators that her interaction with him had been brief, but he did say something about getting a phone call. Do you see him walk up the door?

Dr. Maverick, a few minutes. He was in a hurry. He was saying something about a conversation he had just had. With whom? He didn't say who. He just said a conversation on the phone. After 10.30 p.m., Lee County investigators could not account for David. No one reported seeing him after that.

The only thing detectives knew for sure was that by 11 p.m. that night, the 911 caller and Lehigh Acres reported David's car on fire. So, that left a really narrow window of time, about 30 minutes, for David to be taken from Fort Myers to Lehigh Acres and his car set ablaze with him still alive inside of it. Currently County Sheriff Carmine Marcino still has a hard time comprehending how the killer or killer's worked so fast without being seen and why they chose to commit such a violent crime against David. In this case, it's disturbing. Here we have a mentally challenged adult

who is burnt in his car. So, I mean, I can't even believe you think about that alone. You know, homicide is insane. There's no excuse. I mean, we can go through many different reasons why it's wrong in every which way. When someone shoots someone, it's pretty quick. When someone burns to death in a car, it's completely different. Back in 1993, the one place detectives dug into further for Leeds was the Paradise Club

where David had worked part time. And there was someone who stuck out immediately, the owner of the club, Jamie Carrillo. Turned out, Jamie was sitting in jail facing federal drug charges on the day that David was killed, and authorities theorized he might have had motive to want David dead. According to the Lee County Sheriff's Office, the DEA busted Jamie Corrillo several months before David's murder and charged him with drug trafficking. The accusations were that Jamie was involved in smuggling and illegally transporting drugs throughout Fort Myers, possibly through his businesses and associates. When investigators probed into Jamie's past a little more, they learned that David sometimes

would make deliveries for him, to and from Paradise Club. And he may have unknowingly been partaking in illegal activity, but just didn't realize it. Detective suspicions were that David was too naive to know and understand that Aaron's Jamie sent him on might not have just been David doing some nice favors. The problem was authorities were never able to prove their suspicions.

Here's Sergeant Sutton again. It's just another one of the many theories that have come up over the years, and you're right, Jamie Carillo was the owner of the Paradise Club, and in the months prior to David's murder, he had been arrested along with several of his associates for some drug-related trafficking charges, I believe it was. And during the initial investigation, there was some speculation that perhaps David had been running some errands for Jamie, maybe related to the drug aspect of his life.

But again, it's another theory, another speculation. The reason investigators back in 1993 gave so much thought to Jamie possibly being involved was because they learned that Gary, the paradise DJ who was David's friend who he had hung out with that afternoon before the murder, had visited Jamie in jail the morning of October 16. Several strip club dancers who had spoken with Gary later that night told detectives that Gary said he told Jamie everything would work out for him, and the people who'd put him in prison and ratted him out to the DEA were going to quote, pay. Now, the names of the individuals who'd cooperated with federal authorities were never made public, though.

So it's unclear if perhaps Jamie and Gary thought David was one of those informants. To this day, even the Lee County Sheriff's Office doesn't know that information. Eventually, investigators had to move on from their suspicions about Gary and Jamie, because they just didn't have enough evidence or cooperation from witnesses to pursue them as persons of interest.

Over the years, detectives have spent numerous hours upon hours upon hours interviewing witnesses and trying to identify suspects and gathering background information on people associated with David and associated with the clubs, trying to identify who would want to harm David in this way and unfortunately to this date a viable suspect has not been identified. The next theory detectives considered was whether maybe David had gotten too friendly with a strip club dancer and one of those women's boyfriends had gotten mad and decided to retaliate. The sheriff's office told us that several months before David was killed, he'd actually

been attacked at a strip club in Sarasota. A dancer's boyfriend or brother had assaulted him and David ended up pressing charges for battery, but ultimately that case was dropped. So the idea that David might have gotten too close to a dancer, even though he was considered harmless, might have rubbed some guy the wrong way. Trish route with Southwest Florida crime stoppers thinks that if this was the case, though, and that's what prompted someone to murder David, they more than likely did not understand that he had disabilities.

David would not have hurt anybody, ever. He probably wouldn't have even spoken a foul word about somebody. So whoever did this, I'm assuming did not know David's situation and the challenges that David faced, the disabilities that he had, again, the social awkwardness that he had, because he was not deserving of anybody to execute any level of violence against him, more or less, burning him to death in a vehicle. The only other lead investigators could look into was why he was searching for the dancer

named Tiffany. But again, that avenue of investigation fizzled out too, because no one from the club scene would help detectives find out who she was. If Tiffany was even her real name or if she really worked at the club in Fort Myers at all. Today, the Sheriff's Office is hoping that they can work with what little bit of physical evidence they have in this case to help narrow down a potential suspect pool or at least have more information to go on.

Like DNA, for example. Detectives back in 1993 did find hair in David's car and near his body that current investigators still have. They were also able to pull some possible fingerprints. In an interview with our team, Sergeant Sutton confirmed that at least some of the hairs came back as belonging to David, but there were also hairs that belonged to an unknown person,

as well as other items that contained DNA. What those items are though, is something something that can't go into detail about. Well, I'd like to completely describe the entire crime scene. I can't describe everything because that could be detrimental to corroborating testimony from people who may come forward later. Right now, what cold case detectives are banking on is forensic testing to help them identify

a potential suspect. But even if they get that, they'll still need the public's help to generate conversation and get people who were around in 1993 to start talking. They believe that there is much more to the story than what science can prove, and they need actual people who saw David, anyone that he was with or who overheard conversations related to his murder to come forward.

We've always gotta leave the possibility out there that the theories would have come forth or just simply that, theories, and there may be something else completely unknown out there that we don't know yet. This is not an impossible case to solve. It is possible what we just need, the right information from the right person

and the right time to come forward is now. If there are people that are still around that know you're much older now and the way that you viewed the world 25, 30 years ago is much different than I'm sure the way you perceive the world now. People that have information may now be parents or grandparents. I mean totally different stage of life where you know I get

when you're younger you don't want to get involved and you're trying to just live your life you don't want to be involved but now as a parent or maybe even a grandparent, you look at life through a different set of lenses. David's parents are getting older and are no longer in good health. A lot of detectives who have worked on this case over the years wished they could have solved it before they retired. Now it's up to Marcia Sutvin and others in the department to get David justice and give his family some answers. Before their time on this earth is gone, they want to know that they can have some closure and some justice.

Nothing's going to bring David back, but just the not knowing. All these years of not knowing. At least having justice will be able to allow them to conclude their lives at some point, but at least knowing with that little bit of peace, because until they know what happened to David, until they know who's responsible for David's murder,

you just can't live life the same way, that's their son, their only son. David's case is one that so many law enforcement investigators in Lee County hold near and dear to their hearts. And it's one that the current sheriff says he makes a priority every single day. I'm gonna find you. I'm gonna find you. The message is loud and clear. We're gonna do everything possible and we're never going to stop trying to find out who killed David Copparetto. So many people want to see this killer behind bars, and I'm

one of them. If you have any information about the murder of David Comparado, please call the Lee County Sheriff's Office and Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers at 1-800-780-8477. Or you can submit a tip anonymously on their website, southwestflordakrimestoppers.com. The Deck is an audio-chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?