I got an email yesterday inquiring about this case. I will write here what I wrote in response, nobody has been arrested, I and the whole world would know if that had occurred. Obviously, no one tells me anything (or very little, anyway). Many months ago, after I had first started writing about the case on Public Occurrences, I got a call from the lead detective, John Butchko, an old friend. He told me he had offered to convey a message from Michael Von Zamft, the lead prosecutor, and Michael had told him to go ahead. The message was, and John put it nicely, to please not write about the case as it might jeopardize the investigation. This was back in the summer of 2010. John said he expected an arrest or arrests by September. I agreed, like an idiot, I mean, c'mon, after 17 years??? But, I agreed and told John I would let him know beforehand when I published anything else. I was steamed at myself for agreeing to that too. And then September came and...nothing. So I called John and told him I was going to write about the case again, he understood, and I wrote. That's the last thing I wrote and I never heard anything back from anyone in the S.A.O. or from M.D.P.D.
I do hope I can kick myself in the a** and continue writing about the case in the manner I envisioned, serially, and step-by-step, but I know myself and how much time that takes so I'm going to skip several intervening steps here. I was assigned this case as a prosecutor. This case was ready for presentation to the Grand Jury for Indictment in 2004 (maybe 2005, I don't remember). I prepared the Grand Jury memo, it had been signed off on, it was just a matter of scheduling (the Grand Jury only meets once a week) and then...And then.
And then I came into my office one morning and opened up my computer. I had an email from then lead detective Ramesh (Ram) Nyberg, saying that he and FDLE co-lead Ed Royal had been discussing, and had gotten the approval of their supervisors to tell me that they thought more investigation needed to be done, if I recall correctly, more witnesses needed to be interviewed. This was after I, with the approval of Ms. Rundle, had spent six months doing nothing but work with Nyberg and Royal on this one case. They had agreed with the decision to indict. They had each gotten copies of the Grand Jury memo. I remember Ram and I talking on the phone after we--we--had made the decision. Both of us were almost giddy that it was finally going to happen. And then they pulled the plug. The Miami-Dade Police Department and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement simply pulled the plug.
