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Our volunteer team found and delved into the unsolved 1966 case of Estelle Oddo.
Estelle was a widow, living alone in a building in northeast Dade County. She occasionally visited restaurants and lounges in the Miami Shores area, and had friends and family, some in New York and California. Members of her family had a major jewelry business. One of her distant relatives was actress and celebrity Tina Louise, renowned for many roles over decades including “Ginger” in the classic Gilligan’s Island television series.
The facts we discovered about the homicide of Estelle Oddo are so substantial that, had they been acted upon back then, other homicides would have been prevented, and lives would have been saved. It could have, and should have, happened that way. However, corruption interfered and created blocks to derail the case. The consequences persist today.
Investigating detectives of the Dade Sheriff’s Office were deceived by the “upper echelon” comprised of corrupt officials determined to prevent certain arrests, convictions, and public awareness. The hard work of honorable homicide detectives was thwarted by corruption higher up the ladder.
Estelle Oddo, 58, was found dead in her apartment on Oct. 23, 1966. Mrs. Oddo lived on the first floor of an apartment building just west of Miami Shores in unincorporated Dade County. An anonymous caller to the Dade County Sheriff’s Office reported a burglary in progress. Responding deputies found Mrs. Oddo deceased on her bed. She was bound, gagged, and bruised from a scuffle. She had suffocated on the gag.
Items stolen from the Oddo apartment included personal jewelry and her late husband’s European firearm, a pistol. The intruder had entered through the rear sliding glass door.
The murder was never solved. We have found significant information and startling connections between what happened to Mrs. Oddo and what happened to a number of others.
We were able to share our findings with one of the original detectives who would have made an arrest for the murder of Mrs. Oddo, had he known then what we shared with him several decades later. Had that arrest occurred and had the participants in this crime been timely exposed, other cases could have been solved and future victims’ lives would have been saved.
In the apartment two doors down lived George DeFeis and his alleged wife Shirley. However, Shirley was actually Shirley Cacciatore, also known as Shirley Poveromo, mother of Anita Poveromo. Just two years later, young Anita also would be deceased – officially from a heroin overdose.
We believe otherwise. Anyone reading this who knew Anita or Shirley should contact us.
While George and Shirley DeFeis were being questioned by Sheriff’s Office detectives in their apartment, Joseph Cacciatore walked in – he had a key. Neighbors of Estelle Oddo, Joe, George, and Shirley knew of Estelle’s jewelry – and that she had family in the jewelry business. Shirley often visited Estelle at her apartment.
On the day following the death of Estelle Oddo, George DeFeis suffered a gunshot wound to the hand. He said it was self-inflicted. He refused to provide the firearm to the police. Later, Shirley showed detectives a pistol she brought out from under the couch, a Beretta .32 auto.
The missing Oddo pistol?
Did Cacciatore shoot Defeis in the hand as punishment, a lesson, for making a phone call?
The anonymous call to the police that led to finding Mrs. Oddo’s body was recorded on tape by the deputy working the desk. Det. Bob James and Sgt. Lou Diecedue, acting on information developed by James, later called George Defeis from that same desk phone and recorded the conversation.
James’ skill had produced potential valuable evidence. Detectives had recordings of the incoming call alerting the police to go to the apartment of Mrs. Oddo, and the outgoing call from the same equipment – to George Defeis.
The Sheriff of Dade County, T.A. Buchanan, asked the FBI to compare the two recordings, but FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover refused, personally responding to say that the FBI did not perform such work for local departments. The two recordings were then forwarded for analysis to an audio lab run by an internationally recognized expert in voice print analysis, located in New Jersey.
Following forensic examination of the recordings, the lab notified the Sheriff thst the anonymous caller was George Defeis. Voice prints on the tapes were a match.
The case’s lead investigator, Detective Bob James, was not informed.
Five decades later, with the proof in hand, I shared the “news” with James.
“Had I known that then, I would have arrested George Defeis for first-degree murder,” James said.
James knew who was in charge back then and who kept the information from him. The same “upper echelon” men in the Sheriff’s Department that were involved in quite a few other officially unsolved homicides of the era. James is now unfortunately deceased, but his verifications have been preserved.
Our small volunteer team deeply appreciates the active participation in our work by retired long-term officials of the Sheriff’s Office and its successor agencies, including Bob Hoelscher, Bob James and Marshal Frank.
Hoelscher and James are deceased now. Both will forever be true heroes of Miami-Dade County. The currently surviving people who knew them are personally aware of their incredible service. Other retired detectives and agents continue now to provide invaluable information to us, advancing their own endless desire for justice.
In the 1960s, the Sheriff’s Office was run by Sheriff Talmadge Buchanan and his Chief of Detectives, Manson Hill. Both were essentially partners of organized crime. Both knew much, too much, about organized crime.
The threats posed by that knowledge were both eliminated within the following decade.
One died allegedly by natural causes and one allegedly by accident. Those were the official conclusions. We have serious doubts, based upon evidence and information we have discovered.
Our investigations in cold cases found that there was a call made following the kidnapping of Danny Goldman in Surfside. There was also such a call made following the burglary/murder of Gertrude Henschel in Miami Shores. And, there was a call made following the burglary/murder of Estelle Oddo just outside of Miami Shores. Point of entry for all three of these intrusions and homicides were rear sliding glass doors.
We found and verified that Joseph Cacciatore, also know as “Chicken Cacciatore” in Miami and “Radio Mouth” in Tampa, was not just a burglar but was also a first cousin to Santo Trafficante Jr. who headed organized crime in Florida. George Defeis, we found, also was involved in many Trafficante related criminal activities. We have ample reason to conclude that they were “connected” and remarkably, unofficially immune.
No one was ever arrested or prosecuted for the murder of Estelle Oddo. Same for the other cases noted. It seems George Defeis was involved at the core of all of these crimes. He even had a role in a conspiracy which included the assassination of a law enforcement hero. We have uncovered all this and will not let it be forever unknown and hidden, as some would prefer it to be.
Sgt. Richard Cloud was a courageous policeman who vigorously fought organized crime in Tampa. He was forced into retirement. He began working with federal agents going after the same mobsters. One day, nine years after the separate 1966 murders of Estelle Oddo and Danny Goldman, a car pulled up in front of the Cloud family house. Two men were in the car. Sgt. Cloud was home alone. The car’s passenger walked to the front door, rang the bell, and when Sgt. Cloud opened the door, he was shot in the face. The shooter kept firing until Sgt. Cloud went down, then he went back to the car.
The two men drove to Miami – straight to the apartment of George Defeis. Defeis had counterfeit cash and drugs for them. Cloud was assassinated by organized crime led by Santo Trafficante and his right-hand man Frank Diecedue. The hit was orchestrated by Anthony Antone, a Miami associate of George Defeis. Antone ended up in the electric chair.
Charges against Defeis were dropped, supposedly due to Defeis’ medical condition at the time.
Cloud is among those whose lives might have been saved if the wave of major crimes and homicides had been stopped and the network put out of commission. Organized crime had developed a network that frequently thwarted justice. It has surviving tentacles today.
Even after all these years, the facts, the connections, the web of criminality and corruption should be exposed, recognized and understood. We all have the right to know the truth about these aspects of our community, and to try to guard against such a wave of crime and corruption occurring again in the future. Technology changes, methodology changes, names change, but imperfections in human nature and the draws of greed and corruption: not so much.
Paul D. Novack, Esq. is an Attorney at Law in Miami. He is a graduate of the Nova Southeastern College of Law and the University of Miami. Novack has an active civil litigation practice handling cases in numerous jurisdictions. He served six terms as mayor of the Town of Surfside, and served on behalf of the Florida House of Representatives on the Oversight Board for the Miami-Dade County School System.
He is a member of the Advisory Council to the Florida Highway Patrol. Novack leads a volunteer cold case investigation team that tackles Florida’s oldest and most vexing cold cases of murder and corruption. He has devoted tens of thousands of hours to public service and pro bono work.
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