Muscles, Murder, and a Messiah
Tuesday, January 10, 2006 at 20:11
Gil Fernandez JR. Bodybuilder and murdererEx-cop and bodybuilder Gil Fernandez Jr. murdered three men in the Everglades. But he only admits to killing the man he was.
Thursday, January 5, 2006 It should have been his last job. Richard "Dickie" Robertson was getting out, going straight. On April 1, 1983, Robertson had orchestrated a deal to sell 20 kilos of cocaine, worth roughly $300,000. And the timing couldn't have been better. He'd just purchased a house in Fort Lauderdale with his longtime girlfriend, Linda Allard. They had a daughter, Nicole, and they looked forward to life in a new neighborhood near Griffin Road.
"He promised me that this was going to be it," Allard later testified in court. "We stood to make a lot of money, and he was going to get out of the business."
Still, that day, Allard was nervous. Something was different this time. "A woman's intuition," Allard explained. She pressed her 26-year-old boyfriend about the deal. It's OK, he assured her. The buyers, he said, had a "family atmosphere." "He said [the buyers were] three guys," Allard said. "One of them was a spic." Around 1 p.m., Robertson — dressed in blue Sergio Valente jeans and a black T-shirt that read "Eat Shit and Die" — left in his shiny, black, 1983 Chevy Camaro Z28.
He picked up his partners, Walter Leahy Jr., 25, and Alfred Tringali, 31, and headed for a house in Hollywood. Gil Fernandez Jr. was waiting. Inside the Hollywood house, the six-foot, 275-pound Fernandez sat quietly in the living room. A decorated but troubled street cop with the Miami-Dade Police Department, Fernandez went by the nickname "The Hulk." He was enormous and menacing, a champion bodybuilder with a second-degree black belt in karate. No one knows exactly when Fernandez transformed from courageous lawman to ferocious thug, but by the day Robertson and his crew drove toward the house, Fernandez held little regard for life, liberty, or justice. Fernandez was accompanied by fellow bodybuilders Tommy Felts and Michael Carbone. Felts waited by the door. Carbone hid in a bedroom, a Thompson submachine gun by his side. "You fucked over the boss!" Fernandez yelled. Carbone ran into the living room, bringing to the house a silent terror as he held the enormous machine gun. Nervous, he pointed the firearm at Fernandez. "Point the gun at those guys, not at me," Fernandez instructed him.
Robertson's pager beeped. It was Allard; she knew something had gone wrong. A few minutes later, it beeped again. "Who is trying to call you?" Fernandez asked, grabbing the pager and smashing it to the floor. The Miami cop then slipped on weight-lifting gloves and tied the three men's hands behind their backs. He wrapped brown cloth around their heads, covering their eyes. They pleaded. They begged. Take the coke. Just let us go. They didn't want to die. Felts stuffed paper towels into their mouths, stifling their terrified pleas. For complete article click here
Reader Comments (1)
My hope is that the prosecutors and law enforcement are conducting an equitable and responsible investigation into the matter.
We have all seen the tragic results from reckless and irresponsible investigations, names like Bernhard Goetz, OJ Simpson, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jackson, Robert Blake, and even Mike Tyson come to mind.
The prosecutor has the responsibility to seek real justice for everyone not just two scalps to boost his or her career.
We saw what happened in most of the aforementioned cases.
In almost all of those cases, and in all too many cases involving high-profile individiuals, the prosecutors failed to get the scalps they wanted because the jury somehow managed to stay unbiased despite prosecutors' efforts to mislead them and the public with false stories and false angles.
I feel sorry for the victim's family, my heart goes out to them; however I have been following high profile cases like these for too long not to know the need for real justice for all of the people.
And that is what the prosecutors must remember. The prosecutor must now assemble a competent and rational defence if s/he is to maintain his/her integrity irrespective of the outcome. It is better to present a rational straightforward and honest case even with an acquittal than a tarnished and biased case with a conviction.