Truth and Bullets

Last time on silenced.

Whenever you speak your MANI, you're never safe.

They would come to see who's demonstrating against the Juvalier, so that our names could be placed on the black book like Luis Noir.

It went from being here's the murder that no one has solved yet, too, this is a campaign of murder targeting Creole language broadcasters. So it really sort of raised the question of how much farther is this going to go?

From nineteen seventy four to nineteen ninety one when it passed will Always Together.

That's John Rodrigue Marcella's, a former city councilman of North Maya, talking about his best friend Fritz Dahr. Growing up in Haiti. They were more like brothers. Marcellus lived with Fritz's family when his own moved out of the city.

They become mystle good parents. Me and Fritz. We never fight. Fwitz was so wise.

Marcellus looked up to Fritz from an early age, and despite his short stature, Fritz was clearly a leader with deep convictions and growing up during the Devalier regime that got him into trouble. In the late seventies, he was an ambitious twenty one year old who'd been selected for a program to identify the next generation of Haitian educators. At the end of the program, the students gathered to find out whether they'd got in a job. There was

Fwitz said, he said, I'm not going to be on that on that celebration with baby dog Duvalier. A man like me cannot be with that man.

The room fell silent, right there in front of hundreds of people. Fritz had stepped over an uncrossable line. He criticized the Duvalier. He and Marcellus left in a hurry. It wasn't even fifteen minutes later that the whispers started. Marcella says an enforcer, a Tonton maccout, had been at the event and heard Fritz's declaration against du Valier. Now the mccout was out for revenge.

When that man went after him. We know exactly what time was it time for them to kill us.

Fritz's parents acted fast. They hid Fritz away and pulled together all the money they could for two seats on a boat heading from Haiti to Miami, one for Fritz and one for Marcellus.

And he's not an easy from Haiti to hear the ocean was warf.

The two men joined the surge of tens of thousands of refugees who fled the Duvalier regime in small boats.

It was very scary. One hundred and fifty one people was in that boat. There was an hurricane one of the night. We thought they boat will crash little piece by a little because it was so hard.

But Marcello's and Fritz made it. After fourteen days at sea, they arrived as refugees in Florida just after Christmas Day on December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy nine.

We came here on a Friday night and Saturday night while wey at the meeting with Fada Juice. When we met with Fadai Jia Janice was like a dream come true.

Fritz quickly became a leader in father Jeanju's movement, the AO and on the radio in Florida. He'd become an outspoken critic of the Duvaliers. But soon after their perilous journey, he and Marcellus would learn that Miami was not as safe.

As they thought. Any one of us at any tank.

From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts, This is Silenced, I'm os Valoscian and.

I'm Anna Arana.

This is episode two, Truth and Bullets.

Chris was so involved in the community. I believe Fred You just give him a setting where he can practice what he loved the most.

Fritz became one of Father John Juw's most trusted followers and an inspiration to other young exiles.

Fritzdal was like a real organizer.

People like Marlon Bastien.

I liked it because when I first give you, I saw people on the street and then speaking about against the dictatorship. How I said, Oh I found my nest, Oh my lord. I was like in the right place.

Fritz's stage job was helping community members with immigration paperwork, but he spent his free time devoted to activism.

But THEO, he was very active in the organizing to topple the diver dictatorship and also to advocate for the busic rights of due process of the Hitsian refugees were coming on mass at the time. But he was very outspoken and he was on all the radios. He was a young, brash, seuless, young leader.

For all his courage. Fritz was described as a gentle and unimposing person. He always wore a tie. He lived in a small house, taking care of his four children and a brother who was paralyzed, and he hosted a show called Radio AO Ask.

Black abdomin.

Wl QY twighteen twenty am. This is the most well listening radio and the Asian Committee.

This is Tony John Deanor. He was Fritz's co host. Father John Jus had asked both of them to start the show because he wanted a media platform where they could fully control the message.

Tony, go back there.

Our first poll cup started for if I remember it's nineteen eighty eight or nineteen a nine, I was pretty young back then.

Tony was in charge of fundraising. They needed money for the airtime. They paid the station a couple of hundred dollars per hour.

He liked to fight for cause, or it was fighting for a cause.

What does his voice.

Sound like.

Loud.

I don't know.

Maybe if you're short, you like to talk loud to get attention. It was a great It was a great moment. It was a great time because there was a lot of hope in the air for us here and and Haiti.

When John Berton Aristide emerged as a candidate in the presidential election, Tony and Fritz became vocal support on the Miami airwaves.

We're going to put somebody we know from us, from our whoop to become president of the country.

After Aristeid's landslide victory, it seemed in that brief moment like via Yo's allies had won in Haiti. Refugees like Tony and Fritz, imagine the Haiti that Aristide had promised actually becoming real. He'd said he'd make radical change. Maybe they could even move back home. Tony and Fritz celebrated Aristide's victory at a huge street party in Miami, alongside one of the movement's other broadcasters, Jean Cordo Olivier, also known as Division Star. But Aristide's enemies hadn't gone away,

In Haiti today another coup attempt by a former supporter of the dictator, baby doctor Valier, but loyal West troops managed to storm the presidential palace and arrested Offontaine and as followers. At least thirty seven people were killed, however, seven were launched.

It failed, but it stoked the ongoing battles on the radio in little Haiti. On one side, Tony and Fritz and other pro Aristide broadcasters speaking for change for democracy. On the other side, pro military voices, often representing Haiti's moneyed interests, fighting for the status quo.

They had no radios. Look they got money, they got money.

This show what the good life for the bourgeois. And here is the message was, don't talk about change too much.

And then less than two weeks after Aristide's inauguration in February nineteen ninety one, the battle on the airwaves moved to the streets. Via Yo broadcaster jeentlaur Olivier was gunned down outside the Chateau Club in his white suit, roses in hand. Tony says he and Fritz had heard whispers about a hit list of enemies of the military regime, what Marlene had called the Black Book, and word was that Fritz's name was on the list, but it wasn't

Like I'm going to destroy you.

I'm going to destroy you.

You talk too much, too much.

Garbage on the radio, and we don't want to change.

You got to pay for it.

Tony remembers these threats ratcheting up, called him with increasing ferocity to the radio show. Someone even came to the station with a gun.

Continued to talk.

To their family and friends pleaded with them to be careful, but the threats didn't face them.

Lilydies, Oh, nothing would happen to us.

At around eight pm on March fifteenth, Tony drove to the Dixie Express driving School, right across the street from the Caribbean Market in the heart of Little Haiti. Fritz ran his immigration business out of the driving school, and that night he happened to be working on Tony's brother's case.

My little border was with him, My little border was with him.

Tony was at the driving school to pick up Fritz for of AO meeting He took us to the location.

Right there, and I opened the door.

And Tony expected Fritz to jump in his car.

I come there to get him because it was in the air that were going to be attack and then we may get killed.

But that night Fritz told Tony to go on without him, so Tony went to the meeting, thinking Fritz would soon walk through the door to join him.

It was inside the old building.

If it was, it was full of people close to one hundred.

Not long after the meeting started, the door banged open and someone burst into the room. He said, first, got chat, First, got chat.

Theo went cold, the woman went cold. And then people start running the street and go back to fifty to fifty nine street. When we get to fifty Night Street, the embullace was right there.

Tony sail Fritz was still conscious. He rushed over.

Are you all right? He said, yeah, Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine, I'm fine. You get to the hospital live. You get to the hospital.

That then all the doctors I remember that day, all the doctors, many three or four doctors rushed into the Jackson.

The doctor come out.

When I saw the doctor's face and the doctor saying they start shaking their head like this and they say fris is gone.

They say Fritz is gone.

It was that Monday night when you go to the radio show that think that was a tough one for all of us.

At the first radio VIAO broadcast without Fritz, there was a void next to the microphone where Fritz usually stood.

That the toughest day for all of us when we get to go do that show without him.

Yeah, I couldn't believe it.

I couldn't.

It was at this center was even I was in shock.

I was.

It was surreal. It's so powerful, so strong, so energetic, so.

Full of life.

I couldn't believe that he died.

Fritz have been cut down in his prime. Less than a month after Jean Lord, Olivier, Tony and the others from Vero were haunted by the murders.

Somebody, someone else is going to get killed. This says someone else is going to get killed.

The question was who's next.

It really not only struck a blow against these broadcasters and the causes they were advocating, but the community itself.

This is Harold mass Again, the Miami Herald reporter who was following the crimes on Craile Radio. He was struck in particular by the symbolic location of Fritz's murder right in the heart of little Haiti.

It chipped away at whatever remaining doubts there were that Jacques Clouda Olivier's killing had been political, because it was just too much of a coincidence that they both expressed support of jehn bachand Aristid.

The Haitian community knew how dangerous it could be to speak out against the dictatorship or the military back home. That's why Fritz and Marlene and so many others had left Haiti in the first place. But with these killings, the fear was growing that even in exile on American soil, on the streets of Miami, they were not safe to speak freely, that their enemies were still close at hand. Back in Haiti, other journalists were following the cases intently.

You can kill the truth with the bullet.

Fritz had been inspired by Jean Dominique and would listen to broadcasts to Radio Haiti from across the water. Now the same journalist he looked up to were covering his murder. When we interviewed Michelle, she played us the segment.

That's you that's what you say.

I was announcing the clips saying that March fifteen, the Fritz Door is killed. Okay, So in that that the recording must have been on March sixteen or seventeen.

On that broadcast, Father John Jus raised the community's theory about the murders. They had angered their political enemies and that's why they were killed. What if the murder for the murder came from Haiti. What if the murderer himself had crossed the ocean.

Talking about the fact that this assassins could have left Haiti to go to Miami. Hypothesis mamvel at, we know that this will not this will not go unpunished because we were, Ao say, we were in the Haitian community already. The people around Fitzdor have given a lot of information. If the Miami Police decides to do its work, the assassin will be in prison very.

Soon if the Miami Police decides to do its work. It was a big.

If, a big if, But why the if?

It all Father Johns and the rest of Ao. We're not really fully trusting what the Miami Police Department was doing. I think back in Haiti, you see anyone in a uniform, and they were allies of the dictatorship and enemies of the democratic movement that they were pushing forward in Miami. The white officers and superiors could not make sense of the feuds that immigrants actually harbored in their communities.

But there were also a number of Haitian Americans.

Wearing the uniform. Gives pause to a community that has been so bruce, like the patient community at that time, and maybe even now. Communities know each other, they know where they come from, they know their last names, they know their families. And then later we find that there were some connections that maybe led some of the members of the community to think, well, should we trust them?

Connections in other words, between the Haitian American cops in Miami and military families back home. Yes, despite the community's distrust, the police did put together a task force to investigate both killings, and they assigned all the Craole speaking offices they could find to the case.

My creoll suckslave. You know, Mamstein is great speak, it is poor. But the whole focus is can you relate? Yes? One hundred and nine half percent.

That's Officer Raymond Carville. He came from a Haitian family but grew up in the Bahamas. He was assigned to the task force and told us they work practically twenty four to seven to solve these cases.

The way we get involved. Words start to circulate that it was it was more than just a had to be so blood but typical homicide. It was, you know, a politically motivated and we got to put a stop to it because who knows who's next. But those two individual were high profile speakers and the Haitian community people listen to them.

The Miami PD also set up a Crayole language hotline. Leeds started pouring in. Most of the callers believed that the murders were politically motivated, but the theories about who was involved varied. Was the hit order from Haiti or from Miami? Did the hit man come from or a prince? Or was he already in Florida.

We were a little haiti, and I mean it was there almost Other than a few hours of sleep, we were there.

NonStop, day in and day out. Raymond says. They fielded calls and chase leads. Some tips were stranger than others. A witness claimed she saw a man in a long wig fleeing the scene of Fritz's murder. We were told that, though odd, it struck some as a clue. Dressing as women had been a classic disguise of the Tonton macouts. Another claimed the getaway car had a new Jersey license plate. Had the killers come from out of state? According to an officer's deposition. Cops also noticed a post it note

At ten hundred hours, Detective Watkins and I went to Metro Date headquarters.

This is an actor reading from a copy of the incident report from the Miami PD. We got our hands on it after a Freedom of information request. It's marked for internal use only, not suitable for public release, and it's all marked up with blacked out redactions, but it reveals a major clue. The bullets recovered from the bodies of Fritz dor and Jean Claude Olivier matched. Both men

Redacted could offer no further information. Redacted denied any involvement in the homicide of Fritz Door or John Claude Olivier.

The hunt for the killer seemed to be going nowhere.

There were those in Little Haiti who did not believe that the police would ever truly get to the bottom of it all. So about a month after fritz Is killing, Little Haiti took to the streets and anger. A thousand people marched with candles to protest the way the investigation was being handled. They carried signs. One sign read police FBI stop protecting Tantum mccoud.

A few weeks later, a major break in the case appeared in the form of a guy named Glossy Bruce Joseph. Joseph was in a Miami day jail cell for a totally unrelated crime when officers from the Task Force showed up to interview him. This is what they learned. According to the police report.

Joseph said that he was to be paid five thousand dollars to watch the driving school for Fritzdor when he leaves work.

Glossi had a bunch of knowledge about the case, including knowing where fritz was that night, and he gave the police a tidy motive.

Joseph states that fritz Dor was killed over a nineteen kilogram cocaine deal where nine kilograms were stolen.

A drug deal gone bad. This was territory the police were familiar with. In fact, at the time, in Miami, if a police officer interacted with someone little Haiti, it often has signs to do with drugs. The picture all started to fit, at least to the investigators. Just like with John tord Olivier, the specter of drugs showed up. After the interview, Joseph was immediately brought into the homicide division, and that's when he had a change of heart.

While at the homicide office, Joseph told us that he had been lying, that he had not been truthful on what he had said, and that he had made the whole story up.

The police report is a head spinner of a document. First, Lossy Bruce confesses to knowledge of the murder, then he says he's lying. Then detectives questioned him for a few more hours and give him an inconclusive polygraph test, and Lossy Bruce goes back to his original story. Over the next few days, he changed his story back and forth several more times before the report concluded on May twenty third,

When I heard and read about Glossy Bruce, I just thought, this is weird. It doesn't really make sense to me. My feeling was there was pressure on the police department to close the investigation. It was expensive, it was two months, it was creating a lot of hassholds within the community, and they wanted to save face. It also seemed to be easier for the investigators to follow this confession rather

I never bought this idea that these killings were about drugs.

It makes me wonder why did it happen. What did they think that it was just going to go away?

The idea that Fritz dr would be mixed up in the drug trade just seemed preposterous to me.

In fact, it began to emerge that it was Fritz's enemies who were involved in the drug trade. That's next time I Silenced. We should note that we tried to get comment from Glossie, Bruce Joseph, but we couldn't locate him. Silenced is a Kaleidoscope content original produced by Margaret Katscher, Jen Kinney and Padmini Ragunov, research assistance from Sybylla Phipps, Jeremy big Wood and Kira Sinnis, edited by Lacy Roberts. Executive producers by Kate Osborne, reported and hosted by Anna

By Kyle Murdoch.

Deposition actor was Brian mcaulay Johnson thanks to mangosh Ha, Tikta Costaslinas and Vainy Shuri.

Our executive producers at.

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