New developments could help Miramar police solve 37 year old murder mystery
MIAMI - Miramar police have developments that could help them solve a cold case murder from 37 years ago.
On October 31st, 1986, Billy Halpern was brutally murdered in his townhome.
During a briefing on Wednesday, Miramar police Chief Delrish Moss said Halpern was a family, a former firefighter, and a bodybuilder.
He said Detective Danny Smith has worked tirelessly over the years to solve Halpern's murder.
"During the course of the last 16 months of this investigation I have not been able to find anyone that can speak badly about Billy," said Smith.
Smith said Halpern's murder has been tied to other murders throughout Miami-Dade and Broward in the 1980s and to the gym where he worked.
"Central to those murders was a former Miami-Dade police Officer Gil Fernandez and his partner, Bert Christie, who both worked and owned or ran Apollo Gym out of Hollywood. Many of the other homicides were also associated with that gym," said Smith.
He said over the last 16 months they have been able to interview many people who did not come forward in the 1980s and early 1990s out of fear.
"More importantly we were able to locate and test dozens of pieces of evidence and obtain multiple DNA profiles from suspects from that evidence and through DNA labs we were able to find DNA profiles of unknown suspects. The reason that we are bringing this out now is that we need suspects to compare them to, we need names, we need somebody to come forward and give us information that will allow us to identify these unknown suspect DNA profiles," said Smith.
He said they have a working theory on the case.
"We know that Billy was safety conscious, we know that he would not have opened the door to anyone he either didn't know or didn't like. There was no forced entry at this house. So our working theory is that we had multiple people that went to, in broad daylight, to Billy's townhome, knocked on the door, Billy allowed them into the house because he probably knew one or more of the people that were in this group, (and) they pushed their way in. Once inside, Billy was bound, beaten, and ultimately killed," said Smith. "His throat was slashed from ear to ear."
Smith said they don't believe Halpern was part of any "criminal enterprise."
"He was not involved in the same schemes that a lot of the individuals that he's been connected to through other victims of murders. We believe that Billy heard something he shouldn't have heard and he saw something he shouldn't have seen," he said. "We believe that Billy was killed to keep him quiet."
Smith said they are asking the public to come forward if they have any information that can help solve the case.
"We have a 99 percent complete puzzle, we just need that one puzzle piece," he said. "We figured out the 'why' Billy was killed which has opened the door to possibly finding out who killed Billy. We are asking for the truth. It's been 37 years, we know people have information and we need that one little bit to just push this over the edge."
Investigators believe that those responsible for Halpern's death are either dead or already behind bars.
