The Deck - James Rowe, John Spivey & Nancy Spivey (Jack of Spades, Florida)

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

Our card this week is James Rowe, John Spivey and Nancy Spivey, the Jack of Spades from Florida. James Rowe, 60, and his roommates, married couple John and Nancy Spivey, 33 and 37 respectively, spent their last night alive, January 9th, 1991, hosting friends for drinks and card games at their apartment in St. Petersburg, Florida. The three were found bludgeoned to death the following morning. After 31 years, their killer — or killers — continues to elude investigators, with just a handful of tips having come in over years. If you think you know anything about the January 1991 murders of James Rowe and John and Nancy Spivey you can reach St. Pete Detective Wallace Pavelski directly at 727-893-4823. You can also submit a tip or information anonymously to Crime Stoppers of Pinellas County, which is offering a cash reward up to $3,000, at 1-800-873-8477. To learn more about The Deck, visit www.thedeckpodcast.com. To apply for the Cold Case Playing Cards grant through Season of Justice, visit www.seasonofjustice.org

Our card this week is James Rowe and John and Nancy Spivey, the Jack of Spades from Florida. On a cool January evening in 1991, the three roommates hosted a small group of friends in their St. Petersburg apartment for a night of drinks and card games. But exactly what happened next that night has baffled investigators for three decades. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. On January 10, 1991, during the pre-dawn hours in the Tampa Bay area, a man who were going to call Ralph headed to pick up his three colleagues for work. Ralph, along with 60-year-old James Rowe and married couple John and Nancy Spidey, who were 33 and 37, were all day laborers and made their living by picking up odd jobs through

attempt services agency in St. Petersburg where they lived. It was around 5.30 that morning when Ralph climbed the stairs of the apartment complex and knocked on the door to the small one bedroom, one bath unit, but nobody came to greet him. He couldn't even pick up any sounds of feet shuffling or people getting ready from inside. Thinking maybe they were still asleep, he shrugged it off and went out to grab some coffee and breakfast. Since they got their work through the temp agency, they weren't expected to clock in at a certain time, so it's not really a big deal, first come, first served.

Ralph returned about an hour later and knocked again, but this time he noticed something out of place, something that gave him pause. This time, the door was slightly ajar. Now, whether he noticed the door was slightly open the previous time he showed up at the apartment, or if it was even open, then police aren't sure. But now that he saw it, it made Ralph super uneasy. So uneasy, he didn't even dare go inside alone. Ralph left the apartment and walked out to a nearby street where a St. Petersburg police officer happened to be patrolling the area. He flagged down the cop and directed the officer to the apartment as he explained why he was so concerned. When the officer reached the front door,

he too knocked and called out for someone to respond. Taking in the silence, the cop thought this was definitely reason enough for a welfare check. So since the door was technically already open, he stepped inside. But nothing could have prepared him for what was waiting on the other side. There on the floor were the bodies of John and Nancy, with blood covering their faces and pooling around them. Observing no signs of life, the officer continued to call out as he cleared the residents to make sure there wasn't any kind of looming threat.

When he got to the bedroom, the officer saw the couple's roommate, James, lying on his blood-soaked bed. All three were so brutalized that it wasn't immediately obvious how they may have died. Over the next few hours, cops and first responders were all over the place, and investigators began their work of processing the apartment for possible evidence, as well as documenting the crime scene with photos and a video walkthrough.

According to reporting from the Tampa Bay Times, which was called the St. Petersburg Times back then, quote unquote, bags of evidence were taken from inside the apartment, though police, both now and then, wouldn't say what was in those bags. As far as police on the scene could tell, nothing had been rummaged through or taken. And it probably would have been easy to spot if something was missing, because the apartment was small.

We're talking like six, maybe 700 square feet. St. Petersburg Police Detective Wallace Povellsky, who heads up the department's cold case unit, is the lead on the case. The biggest thing I think they were trying to turn was what was the motive for what occurred, and I think that's the biggest mystery to the case right now, as there was no motive for it. Robert didn't appear to be any type of a motivation in this case. Looking at the three bodies, investigators couldn't help but notice that each of the victims

looked as if they had been attacked in the position in which they were found, possibly while they were sleeping, because John and Nancy were lying on the floor and James was on his bed. Each of their autopsy were scheduled for the following day, January 11, and St. Petersburg officers got to work canvassing the rest of the apartment complex and the surrounding neighborhood, hoping to speak with anyone who might have heard or seen anything. The first person they spoke to was Ralph, who then brought police up to speed with the events of that morning.

But as far as we know, he didn't have much else to add. Investigators couldn't provide us more context beyond this, but I have to imagine that this guy was still in shock to some degree in processing the news of his colleagues' murders. For what it's worth, Ralph was never considered a suspect, though police didn't say why, and again, they wouldn't even release his real name. Anyway, after Ralph, one of the other people that police talked to that day was a next-door neighbor named Jackie Gibson. She told the officer who knocked on her door that it was a next-door neighbor named Jackie Gibson. She told the officer who knocked

on her door that it was technically James who was renting the apartment and that he was letting John and Nancy stay there on a temporary basis because money was tight, and they lived a transient lifestyle, regularly hopping from one place to the next, and not having any real long-term digs to call their own. With that in mind, police said John and Nancy had been found on the floor, and there was only one bedroom, so they very likely could have been sleeping there. But police wouldn't say if the couple was on sleeping bags or a mech-shipped bed or anything like that.

If that was the case, if all of them were killed as they slept, that would maybe explain why Jackie never heard screams or clamoring. Jackie told police that she only really knew James, and that he was always nice, and more than once offered up his couch and floor space to friends or colleagues that needed a place to stay. Jackie thought James had lived at the complex for a few years, while John and Nancy had only been there for a few months. And she said James, John, and Nancy were a social bunch. It was a pretty regular thing for them to host card nights and open house style get-togethers,

the most recent one taking place the night before. Now, she said they were making some noise from what she could hear. It seemed like there was maybe two or three people there in addition to the three that lived there. It was kind of a late night for them, but this was a regular thing, so it didn't stand out to her. Jackie didn't talk as if the get-t but this was a regular thing, so it didn't stand out to her. Jackie didn't talk as if the get-togethers annoyed her anything, just that the walls were thin enough that she knew John and his roommates liked to party.

But beyond the regular party noises, she didn't hear anything that stood out to her late that night or in the early morning hours. They talked to the other neighbors, too, but they all pretty much said the same story. But they did pick up the extra detail that James rarely locked his door. So next stop, police needed to find and interview the Card Party attendees. But much like John and Nancy, they were thought to be transient, so tracking them down ended up being a major challenge. News of the murders hit the papers the following day on January 11, the same day of the three

autopsies. One neighbor told a reporter for the Tampa Tribune, quote, �All I know is he was just a nice person, a good neighbor. This is very shocking." The way information about the killings was framed in initial news reports really underscored just how perplexed investigators were about the killings was framed in initial news reports really underscore just how perplexed investigators were about the investigation. According to a Tampa Bay time story, police initially called the deaths a possible murder suicide and said all three had gunshot wounds to the upper torso. But what's weird is when the

autopsy findings were published the next day on January 12, there was no indication that this was a murder suicide, nor did anyone appear to have been shot. The medical examiner at the time concluded that John died of, quote, homicidal violence including stab wounds of neck and blunt trauma to head and face. It was also concluded that he died within minutes after being attacked.

As for James and Nancy, officials confirmed that they too died of blunt trauma. But the medical examiner said the office couldn't release the reports since the investigation was still ongoing. We were only able to receive John since it was shared with us by a relative. To this day, investigators remained in the dark about a possible murder weapon. And Detective Povelski told our team that there was nothing recovered from the crime scene

that police believed could have been used to bludgeon James John and Nancy. I'm not sure how the situation was so misconstrued at the time, but it did eventually get cleared up. And to add to the already horrific circumstances, police shared with local media that the Spivies were parents to a toddler. Though thankfully, their daughter was staying elsewhere at the time of the murders and investigators confirmed she was safe. By now, two days had passed since James John and Nancy were found,

and their lives in St. Petersburg were starting to come into focus. According to a January 12 news story in the Tampa Tribune, other laborers who worked with James John and Nancy liked them, at least for the most part. And I say for the most part because at least a couple of these colleagues were dismissive of John and Nancy, calling them street people, and they stuck their noses up at the couple's lifestyle. Other people interviewed seemed to be particularly fond of Nancy and went on and on about her solid work ethic. In a Tribune article, one of the workers said she was, quote, an exceptionally good worker who was often called back by customers. End quote.

As for James, a Tribune reporter tracked down a man named Joe Bells, who claimed to have known James for more than a decade. Joe talked about how James would walk up and down alleys in town, picking up discarded aluminum cans that he would take to recycling centers for a quick buck. Another thing set in the news story that really stood out to me is that James worked really hard to hold on to as many paychecks as he could at one time. He was also known to carry large amounts of cash on him. Again, though, that didn't give police much to work with considering they'd ruled out robbery as a motive for the killings. Lastly, Joe Bells told the Tribune that James had roots in Michigan, where his family was from,

and that he had a daughter who lived locally. As investigators pieced together, more and more about the lives led by James and the Spivies, they also were starting to get a clearer understanding of the days leading up to their murders. Notably, in continuing to interview colleagues and acquaintances, police gathered that the Spivies didn't exactly have a perfect marriage and often argued, especially when there was alcohol involved. According to reporting from the Tampa Bay Times

on the evening of January 9th, which was the last time the Spivies were seen alive in public and the day before their bodies were found in the apartment, the couple showed up to the Gail Porter temp office to see if there was any work available. The same story went on to say that when they walked in around 5.30 p.m., the supervisor told them that there wasn't any work available. The same story went on to say that when they walked in around 5.30pm, the supervisor told

them that there wasn't any work. As they turned around and walked out of the office, though, they began to argue. A little later that same night at around 8pm, John and Anci stopped at a nearby convenience store, which they reportedly did on a daily basis. The manager who was on duty at the time told the reporter from the Tribune that the couple seemed drunk and that they were fighting. The manager didn't say what they bought, if anything, or what John and Nancy may have been arguing about, though.

The alleged argument in the convenience store was the last time that the couple was seen alive by anyone who wasn't at the Card Party later that night. So assuming for a moment that John and Nancy immediately returned to the apartment after the store, that gave investigators a window from 5.30 to 11, or 11.30 pm in which the Spivies were definitely alive. Now we know James was at the apartment in the same window of time,

but Detective Pavellski couldn't account for what he may have been up to earlier that day. Slowly, Detective started tracking down people who might have been at the party, or at least were maybe at some card party at some point. I think there's a circle of friends would, it seems like it would change on a regular basis depending who they met at the day labor place.

So that added to the difficulty of this too. So you could have a guy show up, he'd work for two weeks and they'd disappear. So I think what they'd have is every time they go back, they'd meet different people. And they were very social people. So they'd probably invite them back to the house and they'd have some drinks or whatever.

So if you wanted to stay there the night, they'd probably let you stay there the night. So unfortunately that makes it difficult to pin down specific people. One by one, each of the card party guests were interviewed. Quote unquote, exhaustively according to Povelski. And ultimately, they were ruled out as suspects, though he declined to offer any level of detail about their respective alibis and reasoning as to why exactly they were ruled out. Any investigative means you can think of at the time that we had they used.

So that would include interviewing by detectives, that would include polygraph testing, so any of those means would have been used at that time. One of the Card Party guests who was last to leave said that they left between 11 and 11.30 pm, and that James, John, and Nancy were very much alive at that time. This person indicated to police that the card night went off without a hitch, no conflicts, no arguments, just a chill night of drinks and games. So even though all of the legwork was necessary for the investigation, police were no closer to figuring out what had happened in that apartment.

On January 24th, this is about two weeks after the murders, law enforcement announced a cash reward, $2,000 for tips leading to an arrest in the triple homicide. The call to action prompted several tips that investigators looked into, but police declined to offer any details about those leads. They just said that they were all dead ends. Four more tips came in after the crime stoppers call out, which in the grand scheme of things really isn't much at all. In a triple homicide with so many close neighbors, you'd think a lot more people would be calling in, even if all they could offer was speculation.

Now, the detective wouldn't tell us what those tips were either, but he did say that investigators looked closely at interactions that the three had with some other people at work. Folks from the temp agency that they would go out on jobs with, but there was no beef between colleagues or anything like that that they could tell. That was the biggest thing I think that they spoke of, just generally speaking about the interviews they had, is they didn't seem to have a lot of enemies. Obviously, you know, they drank and they'd have disagreements that type of thing, but no one specific person was really considering an enemy of them that we could find at the time. But everybody that was involved, again, was thoroughly vetted. Anyone that even considered they had disagreements with or anything in the past, they were all vetted.

It seems like in this 30 plus year old case that the beginning stages of the investigation anyone even considered they had disagreements with or anything in the past, they were all vetted. It seems like in this 30 plus year old case that the beginning stages of the investigation were arguably its most active, because after January 1991, activity in the case pretty much fizzled. Nearly two years had come and gone with pretty much no substantial progress that could be accounted for, and in all that time, investigators were still grasping at straws as to a motive. In this case, it's probably the some type of emotional aspect to it. And we just have to find the mistake that the person made. And almost every case, there's going to be

a mistake in there that we can find. If you're involved in one of these homicides, it's an emotional thing. It's probably something you may have had done before. A lot of cases, you're going to make a mistake. And that's the one thing that I strive to find is that mistake that you made. And that's what I focus on. But that mistake, if there was one, has yet to present itself.

And with each passing month, the greater community was definitely not oblivious to the lack of progress in the investigation. People had started to wonder if police were even still trying to solve the triple murder. In December 1992, a head of the second anniversary of James John and Nancy's murders. Late Tampa Bay Times columnist Elijah Gozier put into words, with some people in the community suspected. Under the headline, all bodies aren't created equal. He wrote, quote,

homicide officers will tell you in a minute that it doesn't matter whose body is on the slab at the morgue. Their integrity and pride demand that they put the same effort into trying to figure out who put it there." But, the columnist went on to write quote, give them a few more minutes, and they'll tell you just the opposite. They'll tell you that in fact, it does matter who you were. That solving your murder may well depend as much on how you lived your life as on how you lost it."

End quote. The writer also noted that in the roughly two years since the investigation began, three different detectives had been assigned to the case at one point or another. In the column, Gozure called into question the lack of attention paid to James, John, and Nancy's case. Especially compared to another, much more high-profile triple homicide. The murders of a tourist and her two teenage daughters that happened a year and a half before. In June 1989, the mom and her daughters were on a return cross-country road trip from Disney World

in Orlando back to their home in Ohio. After getting lost and driving in the opposite direction, they stopped in Tampa, which, again, is part of that same greater metropolitan area as St. Petersburg. During their pit stop, the mother, 36-year-old Joe Rogers and her teenage daughters, 14-year-old Christy and 17-year-old Michelle, met a man who offered them a sunset boat ride. All three were sexually assaulted and weighed down with ropes and cement blocks to the bottom of Tampa Bay where they drowned. The man was indicted in the murders just days before Gojars' column ran. His indictment must have been what prompted the Tampa Bay Times columnist to basically write that police and local media alike cared more about the tourist triple homicide than three blue collar locals.

And his column struck me because the disparities in the cases do seem staggering. I mean, during our research for this episode, it's obvious there were tons of stories about the Rogers murders, but we could barely find any information about who John, Nancy, and James were, let alone who killed them or why anyone would want them dead. Over the course of the 1989 triple homicide investigation

of the Rogers women, the FBI got involved. More than 3,000 tips came in, 3,000. And it resulted in the eventual indictment, arrest, and conviction of the man responsible. And let me be clear, I am beyond relieved for the outpouring of support and tips that led to identifying the man who stole these women's lives. But you can't really help but compare the general attention paid to these respective triple homicides that happened in the same jurisdiction, and investigated by the same municipal police agency less than two years apart. But even with this callout and comparison, the needle on James John and Nancy's case

remained stagnant. From 1992 to 2011, Detective Povellsky told us the case was pretty much at a standstill, despite police calling it an active investigation. The only development, if you can call it that, was a crime stopper's billboard being erected in the summer of 2011. And that was only because the family of John Spivey approached the group about what could be done to bolster the investigation's visibility. That billboard, according to Detective Povelski, generated zero tips. Nothing.

When we were reporting on this episode, our team interviewed one of John Spivey's daughters, Alana Lester, who's 45 now and lives with her three kids in South Carolina. I should point out that Alana is not the child of John and Nancy's who was mentioned earlier in this episode. Alana is the daughter of John, but Nancy is not her mother. Alana told us that she believes that, frankly, people cared less about the deaths of her father, as well as James and Nancy, because they didn't have a stable home or reliable jobs and didn't have scores of loved ones and media attention to drum up tips and investigative leads.

There's a way to there that I'll never be able to feel and the way that their deaths were investigated or really were not investigated. I mean you know to be honest at the time I'm not sure what you know the detective's currently are doing but as far as the detectives that were on scene at the time, that does not seem that there was much effort put into investigating, you know, the crimes against my father in 19 and James. It seemed like other things were more important and that they weren't

the types of individuals that weren't at the time of the police on the scene as kind of how it how it seems and that that's heartbreaking. Like her father, Alana was born and raised in North Carolina where a lot of their extended family remains and where John was laid to rest in a family plot. At the time of his murder in 1991, Alana was young and estranged from her father, and she had never met him. When Alana turned 16, she decided to do some research of her own to try and track him down,

so she wrote a letter to a distant relative that knew her father. When the relative wrote back, though, Alana learned that her father had been murdered just two years prior. To this day, Alana learned that her father had been murdered just two years prior. To this day, Alana's extended family has no clue as to the possible motive behind the killings. But Alana told our team that John's wife Nancy sent a letter to family several months

before they were killed, saying that she and John were thinking about leaving Florida all together and soon, because they'd run into some sort of trouble. So, I'm not sure if they had maybe gotten involved in something bad and they felt the need to run. I mean, he did have some possible drug offenses in his past. I didn't know if maybe, you know, they just met it with the wrong people and were just trying to, you know, move themselves out of the situation.

That's kind of the only thing that I've been really feared that I've ever really had. They definitely made someone angry. I mean, we don't even really know who the actual intended target was. It is my understanding that my dad was beating a little worse. Alana now has three children of her own, 19-year-old twin girls and a 12-year-old son. And she made it a priority as she was raising them to ensure that they knew who their grandfather was. I was never able to have the relationship that I wanted with him, but I had always hoped that I'd be able to have an adult relationship with him and that he would be able to be in my children's lives in ways that he wasn't allowed to be a man, and that has probably been the

hardest part emotionally about it was. I don't know, I guess I feel like so many circumstances took away the possibility of me ever having her like she with him. Detective Pavellski was assigned this case in 2020, but he said there haven't been any development since that time. Frankly, it's why he's agreed to do this interview with us. If there is a case that desperately needs our listeners help, it's this one. For as much blood and potential DNA evidence that was collected from the crime scene all those years ago, none of it belonged to anyone that wasn't James John or Nancy. Three decades is a long time.

But even with the same samples being tested again in 2019, the results were no more illuminating them before. If you think you know anything, about the January 1991 murders of James Row and John and Nancy Spidey, or maybe you or someone you know socialized with the three, or attended a hard-party at James' apartment. The information you provide could be the key to solving this three decades old case. You can reach St. Petersburg detective Wallace Povelski directly at 727-893-4823. You can also submit a tip or information

anonymously to Crime Stoppers of Pinellas County, which is offering a cash reward of up to $3,000. Their number is 1-800-873-8477. 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?