Episode 9 - The Close

I never met, y'all.

I don't even know him.

I know who he is.

He came into a restaurant that I worked at with his family and my friend who knew him. Do you know that Gil Fernandez, who we didn't kill Billy. I'm like, oh my god, and I was freaking out, and then I couldn't wait on him. I'm like, oh my god, I think he killed my brother.

Laurie Halpern is convinced that ex Miami police officer Gil Fernandez and is Apollo Jim Co owner Bert Christi were the men behind her brother Billy's.

Nineteen eighty six murder. She's not the only one.

They got wins somehow that he had information. He suspected he said something out loud that somebody overheard and had got back to Bert or Gil or both, and so they took him out.

That was Prosecutor Cindy Imperado, who believe Fernandez and Christi were running a crew of fellow bodybuilders that were responsible for a string of ripoffs and shakedowns, some of them deadly, and when they feared Billy knew too much about their criminal activity, Christie ordered Gil to make the threat disappear.

Whether he did it or not. Nothing's been proven. I mean, he hasn't been charged with it, but that was the theory of the case. So you had a police officer who was ripping off drug dealers and killing them and then killing anybody else that might witness it.

If true, it may account for Billy's execution style murder in October of nineteen eighty six, the murder of his friends Mitch Hall and Charlotte de Drought in May of nineteen eighty seven, and the executions of two of Gil's own crew, Jimmy high Note and Harry Pollier just six weeks later. All of them were members of the Apollo, which means all of them could have had the goods on Fernandez and Christie.

If Billy was killed because he knew too much, which is the theory that I'm working on, then anyone that he could have put into prison by giving that information or led that information out, that's who would have benefited. So if Billy had information that could put someone in jail with what he knew, then killing him is going to benefit that person or those people.

And that may even include members of organized crime.

There were multiple people that gave information saying that Burt Christie was working for the Columbo family out of Chicago. Was Billy just in as much danger if a Columbo family didn't know about him?

Yeah, I think he was.

But I think that a little bit of pressure from maybe bosses so Burt Christie would seal a deal for Billy and it really seal his faith.

But if that were true, and Billy was in possession of information that could endanger Fernandez and Christie's operation, a larger question still looms. How would Gill and Burt have known that Billy was a potential threat? After all, according to Mark Lopez, there were plenty of guys at the gym that knew what was going on and were smart enough to look the other way.

Do you have to realize something that people were very afraid because, you know, if he and d was the one committing these murders, they thought if they went in or cooperated, they were going to be in a jackpot.

Was Billy's mere proximity to the rumors swirling around the Apollo really a reason to kill him?

It seemed unlikely.

It just was a guy that I don't think anybody thought was tied up. And you know a lot of craziness, right, So I think it was just shocked for most people, like why would anybody kill this guy?

But if Billy had indeed gone to the police, that was another story. When Billy's friend, Mitch Hall was killed six months later, Mitch's sister came to believe that the motive behind both their murders was right there in black and white.

My brother came to me and he said, Billy Helpurn died and I'm going to find out.

Who killed him.

And he went to the police station and he was killed the next day. So I'm assuming there was a leak in the police station and somebody said Mitch Hall knows who killed Billy, and then they went and killed him that next day.

Billy's sister, she'd been harboring the same.

Thought, like you were going to tell what you knew about Billy and none then you get killed. Who in the police department is a bad guy?

It was time to talk about the elephant in the room. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff, and this is cold blooded the Apollo Jim murders.

It is truly a terrifying thought.

But when Danny had to confront could Gil Fernandez, the next cop with dozens of friends in contacts still on the force, had been tipped off that Billy halpurn was cooperating with law enforcement, and if so, did it cost Billy his life?

My initial thought was not a chance, and that's probably a little naive on my part, because obviously there's a chance.

The first step in uncovering the truth would be the search for any record of Billy Halpern's contact with investigators in either Miramar or Broward County.

Well, considering that the Danger Road triple murder was in nineteen eighty three and Billy was eighty six, I figured there may be some kind of a record that Billy was interviewed, just like many other people that were around the Apollo gym.

Which, as we heard from Mark Lopez, would have carried with it considerable risk.

People were very afraid because they knew not he was a hardcore gangster, but he was an ex cop and he had friends still on the force, So it was like, well, if he runted a law how do you know that one of his buddies, I'm going to look it back to him, and then you're in trouble.

Danny hoped the truth would lie somewhere in the forty year old case file.

All I could do was just read every single piece of paper and at least the case fall that I have, and look for any indication that Billy was interviewed.

And I really couldn't find anything.

According to the case file kept by a mirror MARPDI, there was no evidence that Billy had ever cooperated with investigators. Of course, no record on file didn't mean Billy was never approached.

It may just mean that Billy was smart.

Enough to keep it a secret, and Danny, he's smart enough to know that not everything makes it.

On paper and into an investigative file.

I was able to speak to a couple of the detectives that previously worked in these cases back in the eighties and asked them, and they also said that they don't have any recollection Billy being interviewed.

So what if Billy didn't go to police, it was still likely he had heard the rumors about Gilan Burt, possibly even their involvement in the triple murder on Danger Road, and that by itself would have been dangerous information to possess.

I think that Billy did know. I think that anyone that spent any amount of time over at the Apollo gym would either hear the rumors or maybe even see the meetings, or even hear certain conversations by being there. The odds of them hearing about certain crimes, I think is possible.

This was confirmed by other Apollo members like Mark Lopez and Dave Fasano, guys who had more than an inkling of what was going on, but who were wise enough to mind their own business.

So what made them different from Billy?

Why target Billy and not the other guys at the gym?

Best guess, and this is speaking with a lot of people that were very close with Billy. I think Billy was less willing to play ball and keep his mouth shut. I think that Billy was probably a little outspoken at the atrocities that he had heard about.

Mark Lopez tends to agree.

I don't think Billy was necessarily tied up in anything specifically. I think he may have just inadvertently been exposed to some information and the powers that be thought, why take a chance, right, It's just one more guy that's going to need to.

Go one person.

Danny thinks Billy may have talked to his friend, Mitch Hall. The evidence was circumstantial but persuasive, and I said.

Mitch, don't can involve with those type of people.

Mitch's sister also remembers Mitch telling her that he was willing to go to the police and tell them what he knew.

And he went to the police station and he was killed the next day.

Billy's sister, Laurie, was also convinced that the timing of Mitch's murder was no coincidence.

I really think there had to be a rat, a dirty rat in a police department.

Even a CoP's son like Danny Smith, whose father worked in law enforcement for nearly thirty years, knows that South Florida in the nineteen eighties was plagued with police corruption. The easy money from drugs flowing into South America proved irresistible to a lot of people, including some members of law enforcement. In fact, the result of a massive crackdown on police corruption in nineteen eighty seven revealed that up to ten percent of the entire MIAMIPD had been suspended, fired,

We don't know.

I obviously want to give the investigators or the police officers and the tecers back then the benefit of the doubt.

However, is it possible? Yeah?

Absolutely, And the only way that I could verify that is just to legitimately read every word of every document that was provided to me and see if there's anything there, and then moreover me or speak with the previous detectives and just ask ask the question.

If Danny could find the evidence that Mitch Hall had indeed filed a report or met with anyone at Mirror, Marpadi or Browie County Sheriff's office, it would go a long way to casting suspicion on someone within law enforcement being complicit in his murder. But according to Danny, there was no record that Mitch had ever met with.

Police now it happened the crimes were eighty six in nineteen eighty seven. Is it very easy for investigators to have that conversation with Mitch Hall and not take any notes and just ignore it.

Yeah.

Absolutely, There's no way I could verify that, And if they didn't want to tell me, then there's nothing I can do about that. But assuming that there were notes taken because the case file that I have on Billy Holburn is extremely well done, well written organized. If anyone came in and had an information on Billy's murder, that that would have been written down.

Whether that was enough to quell rumors that someone within law enforcement leaked information to Gil. Danny still doesn't know.

Most of the rumors, if not all. The rumors were centered around the fact that Gill was a cop, and the assumption was that all cops know each other and all cops share information, and there's the idea of he's a cop. Even if he's bad, other people are gonna cover for him because he's a cop.

Danny has been in uniform for twenty seven years and he knows as well as anybody about the sworn loyalty that exists between people who every day put their lives into each other's hands. And he can also understand the suspicion surrounding his fellow brothers in blue.

It's a society. Police officers have their own family. There's good cops and bad cops out there. Obviously, again, it would be naive on my part to blindly say that there was never any corruption at any level. I feel that it was incumbent upon me to go through and check to see if there was any internal affairs investigations or any statements that show corruption, because it does happen, let's be honest with each other.

But that search also yielded no evidence that any member of law enforcement was ever suspected of being complicit in Billy or Mitch's murder.

There was no indication that there was an internal affairs investigation on anyone that related to helping Gil.

Or helping the Apollo, or saying anything that can be hearing. Put the investigators on a different path on purpose. So there were never any substantiated rumors naving specific comps or improper behavior.

But they were there. The rumors were around. Everyone around it knew it.

Unfortunately, no solid answers were found in the documentation, and unfortunately, in a cold case, that's all I've gotten for now.

The rumors proved to be just that prosecutors sending imperado things that even for Florida cops, there was a limit to their loyalty.

For the most part, law enforcement is loyal to their own But I think once they saw what he was charged with and everything, it was a different story.

But considering the client tele at the Apollo, Fernandez and Christie probably didn't need a crooked cop to keep threats at bay.

They had enough eyes and ears right there in the gym, including.

One long time friend who may have set the stage for Billy's murder. By nineteen eighty six, Billy Halburn had left his job as a paramedic at the Hollandale Fire Department due to a lingering back injury.

Billy told his sister Laurie.

That he was going to deploy his charm and good looks into a new career in sales, namely the trade of fine art and rare coins. The career change suited him, after all, South Florida in the mid eighties seemed to be flushed with easy money, and Billy was eager to get a piece of it.

I think Billy probably still had been for Nickolie ever made when he died.

She was so frugal.

He had a paper of a pad like that of all the money that people owed him.

But according to Laurie, she did notice signs that the rare coin trade might have given way to another more lucrative business.

Then Billy and Jimmy got involved with I thought our dealing or you know, I'm not even sure what I thought they were doing, but I didn't really think about it because we all grew up together.

Were there a couple of guys that said that you might have been selling a little bit of drugs here and there?

Yeah?

Oh huge death last Yeah, I mean, we're not an idiot, and safe to say it paid a lot better than coins.

They were making money. Oh my god, the money was sick that you would that they were making. And I really always felt that he would talk about it too much.

But according to Laurie, Billy was never long for that world.

He bought property up in Melbourne Beach at nineteen eighty four and it was extream, you know, make the money, get out, go up to Melbourne, beef bee surfer, live on REGI, you know, live my life.

But he would never get the chance.

Instead, he was killed in his home in October of nineteen eighty six. Laurie realizes now that he's pleased to leave town before his death may have been more than just an idle daydream.

Billy had left me, you know, money, He had a will, and when he went to some and do the will, it's like Lord by come on, we're going to bob our childhood friend to drop a will. I'm like, get out of here, and we're not going to get away.

No, I'm serious, lord, come on.

Was Billy's wonderlust desire to leave South Florida to another paradise up the coast, or wasn't motivated by fear of what could happen if he stayed.

Let me tell you, I remember that when I lived with him, he came to the door my bedroom at the front, the front door, and he opened up my door, Floria, I love you.

If anything happened to me. She knows that I love you, I'm like, and he caught me off gard like what are you talking about?

And he ran off, like where are you going?

Looking back, Laurie now thinks he sounded like a guy who was in too deep and was fearing for his life, and she thinks she knows who's to blame. After Billy was murdered, Laurie was shaken by a memory of walking into a tense meeting at Billy's town home.

Well, I came over one day and I walked in. I'm like, Jimmy, like, what do you what he doing here?

By this time, Jimmy high Note was a regular member of Gil's shakedown crew. We can only speculate as to why one of Billy's suspected killers was in his town home just weeks before Billy was killed.

Was Jimmy warning him of imminent danger?

Or was he casing the location on orders from Gil and Burt?

And I think with the art pretending to be into the art maybe or coin collecting, but maybe that was the way he got in comfortable with Billy on behalf of them.

I think maybe, whatever the reason, after Billy was killed, Laurie said she knew it was no innocent.

Visit, you know. Then I knew Jimmy had to be involved.

Which brings us back to that empty safe in Billy's bedroom and the possibility that it contained not rare coins, but what Dave Fersano called the best coke in town.

I know that some people say that Billy was ripped for drugs. Some people say that he was ripped for coins and art.

I heard that rumor a lot.

I did, and after a year and a half of looking into it and trying to either confirm or deny those rumors, I feel that the rumors were.

Just that.

No matter what evidence Danny had turned up about Billy's source of income, he remains convinced Billy's.

Murder was no robbery, It was a hit.

The comment thoughts and ideas that I got from those closest to Billy, Gil, Harry, Collier, Apollo, Jim was that Billy was killed because he knew or overheard or was told something about murders that occurred or who could have been involved in those murders. And I honestly think that people just were not comfortable with Billy having.

This information, information that threatened the illicit livelihood of Fernandez and Christi, but also that of his old friend Jimmy Heinault, whose betrayal may have resulted in Billy's murder.

The concept of clearing a case exceptionally is relatively simple, and what it means is that the prosecutor, in conjunction with law enforcement who investigated the matter, is convinced that there is probable cause to charge someone with the crime. However, for some reason, it is either an opportune or impossible to charge the suspect with the offense, and the way that most frequently occurs is that the suspect is dead at the time probable cause is developed, as so happened in this case.

Brian Porter is a veteran prosecutor who is not associated with this case. He is a legal scholar who has been part of several investigations I've reported on.

I've been the elected prosecutor in my jurisdiction for over eleven years, and I've made exceptional case closure calls on any number of occasions. And really what it boils down to is it's the same exact analysis that I would make if a detective came to me and asked me to charge somebody with murder. It's not a lesser standard in my mind, It's the same exact standard.

Danny had untangled as much as he could with the given evidence, and he believed he had a convincing version of what happened to Billy Halpern. But still he had to convince Broward County's top homicide prosecutor that he was right.

Writing the close up memo to the State Attorney's office was really an opportunity for me to take all of the work that I've done and shrink it to five or six seven page memo giving the bullet points as to what I found, and why I believe that this case should be solved.

The keystone in his argument was the striking similarity between the Hall Drought murders and Billy Halpern's murder.

In this case, a great deal of the case relies on what we would call common scheme or plan evidence. In other words, is it very obvious that these offenses had to be related, because the individual facts that each murder are so similar in nature that it kind of just defies logic that they weren't related.

Neither had fourth century.

The same materials were used to bind all three victims in the two cases, the binding, the way that they were bound was similar or even identical, and the use of a sharp edged tool, which neither weapon was found, so we can't verify exactly if it was the same weapon, but the modus opera and I, or the way that these crimes were committed were literally almost identical.

Danny went on to argue that because Harry Collier's fingerprint was proof he killed Paul and Drought, then it stands to reason that he was also the man who killed Billy Halpern.

I was able to write it up and say that if Harry Collier were alive today, then I would feel comfortable taking this to grand jury, and even more comfortable or confident that we would give an indictment.

You may be asking, as I did, wasn't this case against Collier based entirely on circumstantial evidence?

Again, here's veteran prosecutor Brian Porter.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, television and the movies have led way people to kind of equate the phrase circumstantial evidence with weak case, and that's most definitely not the situation. The only type of direct evidence that actually exists would be either eyewitness testimony, a confession by the suspect, or perhaps nowadays, if you had video of the actual offense

After nearly two years on Billy Halpin's murder case, Danny submitted his memo to the State Attorney's office.

In the end, the evidence in this case is very compelling, and I think prosecutor would be duty bound to close the case exceptionally.

But we would have to wait and see.

I submitted the memo.

In reality, it was probably a couple hours, but it felt like four years. But I got a response from the State Attorney's office and they confirmed my findings and they agreed with me.

The state attorney agreed that there was enough evidence to charge Harry Collier with Billy Helper's murder, but because Collier was dead and unable to stand trial, the state attorney would exceptionally clear the case. Danny was confident in his conclusion that Harry Collier killed Billy halpern.

So obviously I was happy. I was happy for the case. I was happy for Laurie. It was short lived, honestly, because as happy as I was for Laurie and the helping family and all their friends. Honestly, my mind immediately went to Harry Collier's widow and his son.

Holly's wife Miami, had cooperated, her son had given DNA, and they had held on to hope that Harry was not the man they suspected him of being.

I tend to view them as victims in this case also because they didn't ask for any of this, and this information is going to come out and he's essentially going to victimize his family again from beyond the grave.

But as a detective, his was still first and foremost to Billy and his surviving family. And after thirty seven years, it was finally time to give lour some good news.

May fourteenth, twenty twenty four. It is one oh one in the afternoon. I'm just about to go sit down with Lori Halpern and do really one of the good things that we get to do as homicide detectives, which is to speak with victim's family and give them a resolution, give them some kind of comfort that we've identified the person that's involved, for the person responsible for their loved ones murder.

Laurie Halpurn has been intimately involved in Danny's investigation since the beginning, so no news was going to come completely as a shock, but it was important to Danny to deliver the state attorney's decision in person.

What I have here is a memo that I wrote to our state Attorney's office. This is what we have, this is the evidence, this is what my conclusion is, and then I leave it up to them.

Danny summarizes his case, including the disappointing reality of the inability to use DNA to id Billy's killer.

She had no DNA for Gil in there. The DNA that we had was so degraded. And to answer your question, Gil, I cannot say that he was involved. I'm not saying he wasn't involved, but I can't prove that he had any knowledge or he had any involvement of being there. But I can say that Harry Collier was involved, He was there, took part in it.

What about Jimmy hin Note.

Jimmy h Note is the same for me as Gil. I believe that he probably was there, but I don't have enough that I can definitively say that, yes, Jimmy was there, Gil was there, or even in Mike Carbone. I can't say any of them just because the science isn't there.

But despite the degraded DNA, Danny believed his case against Harry Collier was rock solid.

So for me as an investigator, I was able to do this document, send it over to the State Attorney's office and say, if Harry Callier were alive today, I would be taken him to Grand Jerry and I would probably be arresting him on the evidence that I have.

And they said, we.

Agree, we agree.

And for nothing though, I mean, if he didn't believe it, truly sad you kick everything away from my fit parents for devastated and for nothing.

How can you kill people like that and not even think anything of it?

You're a freaking evil, sir.

He's pure evil.

How do you get involved with Jimmy?

I know?

So Collier was not from down here, which is why really not many people know him.

He was from the northeast, Okay, and he had ties to.

Burt Christie. But it looks like he was the guy that they called and they said we need something done.

He was the hit man.

Was he was a hit man? Yeah, he was a violent, violent man.

Here's the thing about solving a murder case. It can answer long unanswered questions. It can unburden survivors of uncertainty surrounding a loved one's death, maybe even deliver a sense of justice, but it can't bring a victim back, and the end is always bittersweet.

I believe we've proven that Harry Collier was a principal and was involved in Billy's murder. He's dead and there's really not a whole lot that can be done. But at the very least it'll give you a little bit of something.

I hope no my parents be happy to know that you cared enough to do this.

Well.

I'll be honest, I'm a little disappointed that I couldn't get a live person to charge now. I really wanted to, but.

It wouldn't matter even if Gil didn't. You had proof that Gil did it. I mean, he's Gurdi in jail for life. What's going to happen Nothing, I have.

To admit I shared some of Laurie's frustrations about why it took nearly forty years to get real answers, but it is a credit to Danny that he remained steadfast in his commitment to what he could prove, not what he may have believed to be true.

But here again, I felt it was important to put this officially.

I say it is.

My opinion that Billy heard mention of the triple murder in nineteen eighty three that was committed by Gil Fernandez. I mentioned that I agree with the previous investigators that Fernandez orchestrated and potentially participated in the murders of not only Billy, but Mitch Sharonda, Jimmy Heina, and Harry Pollier. I don't have jurisdiction on those cases, so I can't pursue them, but I am working with other detectives that have now reopened those cases.

Really, the fact was that Billy's case may have been cleared, but that does not mean it has been closed. The DNA sample retrieved from the help and crime scene may have been inadequate to ideas suspect, but there was no telling where the science would be in a few years and what it may reveal about who else was in the room when Collier killed Billy.

You got my carbone DNA?

You do?

I do?

And that was a big one. That was a big one because if I couldn't get him on this, at the very least, maybe I can help another agency or another.

Ida great if he has something to do with it.

So indirectly Billy's investigations, he could.

Help open the other rights are yeah, that would be great.

After Danny's visit with Laurie, we discussed whether after nearly two years of an investigation and successfully clearing the Helper and cold case, he still had any lingering, doubts or uncertainty about his conclusions.

I was happy that I was able to ensure that Laurie, after this is all said, Laura helped and has more answers than she has questions. After all these years, I know there's more to the story, and there are certain things that I just simply was unable to get an answer to. I gave everything that I had, but I still feel that it's slightly incomplete because there's just answers that I don't have.

Many of those questions revolve around the role of Gil Fernandez or Christi, and even the unseen forces that may have been behind the order to kill Billy.

I would have loved to prove that additional people were involved, and I do feel very confident.

That there were other people involved.

But at this stage in the investigation, I can only go as far as the evidence will take me, and in this case, the evidence took me to an ending. I just I don't think it's the ending. I think it's an ending, but not the ending.

This was also the story of DNA, its promise and its limitations.

And at the very beginning, every single piece of evidence that I asked to be tested, I was, in my mind positive we were going to come back with a hit and a match.

The discovery of untested DNA at Billy's crime scene felt destined for an instant match and swift resolution to the investigation.

But of course that proved not to be the case.

And unfortunately it was a It was a punch in the gut every time I got those results.

But those disappointing results had a positive effect too, in that it forced Danny to lean on what he did best, the research, the interviews, and the old school gumshoe detective work that helped piece together the narrative of the crime. And while the DNA results did not prove who was present at Billy's murder, it did not disprove any theories either.

Just because someone's DNA is not on a piece of evidence does not mean that they were not involved. I think a lot of people will hear that, oh, well, Gill's DNA was not located on the binding, so that means he wasn't involved, And no, that's not the case. I'm not saying that he was or wasn't because I can't prove it, but I can say that it's possible that anyone is involved even if their DNA was found on the evidence.

Harry Collier was a hulking hit man, hired for his muscle and his ruthless skills with a knife, and ultimately he bears responsibility.

For the murder of Billy Halpern.

But Danny and I still can't shake the one thing that everyone we talked to agreed on, and the fact that the evidence supported Billy's killer did not work alone. And while most of the suspects in our investigation were long dead, there was still one man who Danny thought might be interested in hearing the results of the investigation, the man once known as the meanest cop in Miami and the last remaining suspect in Billy's murder, Bill Fernandez.

Cold Blooded.

The Apollo Jim Murders is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Authentic Wave Media. Scott Weinberger, Kevin Bennett, and Walker LeMond are executive producers. Sabrina Sire is our line producer, scoring sound design and mixing by Mark lamoorg Z. For iHeart Podcasts, Christina Everett is executive producer, and David Wasserman is brand marketing manager. And with special thanks to the Miramar Police Department, Chief del Rich Moss, p Io Tanya Ardaz, and Detective Susie Smith