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St. Pete police give 'significant update' on 2 cold case murders

Mar 09, 2024
Uh, my name is Mike Cavazov. I'm a deputy chief here at the

police

department. I've been here for about 29 years. Most of my career has been in investigations, overseeing different aspects of the homicide areas, so the oldest

case

s are in the

cold

case

s. are definitely near and dear to my heart, about nine years ago when Chief Holloway took the reins of the

police

department, one of the things that he wanted to provide accountability for within the police department was to make sure that we remembered the victims of homicides than cases that we couldn't always solve or close since we were initially investigating them, so it formed a group of unsolved cases.
st pete police give significant update on 2 cold case murders
We have two detectives. I would like to introduce you and you can sit here with me, Detective Pavelski and Detective Atchinson. The two of them have been instrumental in ensuring that they preserve the memory of the lives of people who were captured too soon, so they put a lot of effort into reviewing these cases today and also by reviewing we make sure that we have accountability. I'm going to look, I'm going to go over two cases, the first one will be from 1997 and the other will be from 1969. The first one is near and dear to me, it's a case that happened in May of 1997.
st pete police give significant update on 2 cold case murders

More Interesting Facts About,

st pete police give significant update on 2 cold case murders...

Oh, and Richard Evans, he was 18 years when he was taken away from us so inopportunely. I was a new patrol officer at the time and the reason I remember it is because I was one of the first officers on scene and I was there when Richard was passing away and I remember the scene. I remember a lot about that and I remember the detectives coming in and trying to deprive the family of a resolution that just never came and then Richard was shot. once in a chest he died in the 3 400 block of 22nd Avenue South and the case went

cold

very quickly.
st pete police give significant update on 2 cold case murders
We were able to get a very very detailed description of the guy at the time who was responsible for taking his life, including gestures and a description of who did it, but it never materialized, it never really went anywhere and after a year or two he just He cooled. One of the things that is also very dear to me and I reached out to her mother about a decade ago was that we wanted to remind our fallen victims that we had a place on our website to make sure that we had accountability for where families can go. and make sure they were remembered and she was one of the first people I approached to get a photo we didn't want. to use driver's license photos, we didn't want to use low quality photos, we want to use an image that was important to the family members, so we contacted her, she provided me with that photo and if you go to our page website, you'll go back to the In the mid-90s we have 100 liabilities for all the older cases going back to the 90s, but that was one of the things we brought forward to try to bring it to light, so it's near and dear for me we were able to kind of present it, I'll leave it if you have the opportunity to talk to the mother too.
st pete police give significant update on 2 cold case murders
Richard's name, his family called him juicy. I'll let her tell that story. It's a bit of a funny story, it's a family thing. I should be able to share it, so I'm going to look at a couple of notes to make sure I stay on track, but the suspect in the Juicy case was recently identified through forensic evidence taken at the scene. This was important to us because it provides the comfort and closure the family needed to be able to say who took their son's life. One of the things that makes this a little more complicated, although the suspect at the time was only 15 years old and had passed away within the last year or two we shared that information with the family.
We have shared information about who we feel is responsible. We're not going to provide that information publicly today, but that's something as we provide the police reports and the closure of that. It's also to highlight the case, but being able to get that forensic evidence to know that there is an individual behind the face that took Richard so early and so juicy is important so that we can provide that comfort to them, but he was 18 when he was taken , he was shot to death in the alley and in the 3 400 block of 22nd Avenue South and as I said, when the detectives provide a final review of the case, we will sit down again with the family we will provide them with reports, but again, this too is to highlight it and also to provide any information if people want to come forward years later to be able to do so, but again we have identified that the suspect was 15 years old and is deceased, we just don't feel that publicly it is something that we should remove because of the nuances of that, but being able to provide that resolution is extremely important to us, so I'd like to thank the family members for showing us Until today, they've obviously never forgotten Juicy's mom and aunt and it's important to them and it's important for us to make sure that this is something that we can present and this was also an opportunity for us to draw attention to our Cold Case unit to highlight these two cases, okay, the second case I would like and then I will answer some questions and I also encourage anyone who wants to talk to family members to do so when we're done that way.
I have a small chance to learn a little more about our victims. The second case I would like to talk about occurred in 1969. This is a case that has stumped the department for a long time. It was thought to be the oldest cold cases we had in the department - we now know we have some from 1962 and 1964 thanks to our cold case efforts - but in 1969, ironically, this was always known as the trunk lady when we started doing the research. I wanted to find out. If the detectives from the original case were still around and I would like to point out that Detective Paul Drolet is 87 years old, I'm sorry I called him out on that, but Paul is the detective from the original case in 1969 who worked on this case. uh, his assignment, as well as several others that were there at the time, Bill Carlisle was a sergeant at the time and they put a lot of effort into trying to resolve this matter. uh, I'm going to read a couple of notes to stay. on the right track and then I'll touch on some other areas, so on Halloween night of Halloween Day 1969, just over 53 years ago, detectives and officers were dispatched to the 4200 block of 32nd Street South at the time which was called the oyster bar is now just a church that is located at that location when they got there, they noticed this trunk that was in the field uh to uh, the young men observed two white male subjects pull up in a pickup truck, place the trunk in the field and then they left.
The officers arrived on the scene, opened the trunk and found the body of a woman inside the trunk wrapped in plastic, one of the things and it's totally different with investigation techniques now than then. Paul and his investigators were forced from writing letters to agencies to making phone calls to agencies trying to find out who has a missing person, who is someone they could look for, is a demographic that would be similar to the woman we found that day in 1969. and after years of trying, he never got anything. Traction theories abound and unfortunately they were never able to identify them in 2010, we wanted to start identifying some of our Jane and John.
In this case, the victim was buried as Jane Doe in the 49th Street Cemetery in the Frontera type of the city of Pinellas Park and was there until 2010. In 2010 we exhumed her, we tried to obtain DNA from her remains, unfortunately that did not work. happened. She was too degraded and again the case went cold over the years, several different news outlets have. I brought it up and it was something that we just weren't able to think that we were ever going to get a resolution on it, so late last year, early this year, the detectives in this case looked at it again and that's one of the things I want to highlight that with unsolved cases you need perseverance, you need to go back and look at things that maybe weren't available to people in 1969, but the most important thing is that when we look at things in 2010, what could we have gone through? high and the detectives noticed it? that there was a section of hair that had not been analyzed and we sent it to a private laboratory, when the hair sample was sent to the private laboratory we were finally able to obtain a DNA profile and that is just a step, a stepping stone towards that.
After we were able to get that DNA profile, Orthum Labs was also out of the labs, Athen Labs was then able to run it through a DNA database, genealogy, and after 53 years, the trunk lady finally has a name , we were able to do it quite a bit. We also did some digging through the uh with DNA discovery and we were able to track down some of our family members so I would like to point out that she is no longer the trunk lady. Her name is Sylvia June Atherton. Sylvia June Atherton. She was murdered when she was 41 years old, she left five children and was from the Tucson, Arizona area, one of the things we've been able to piece together is that there really are no ties to St.
Petersburg that she left saying she left the Tucson area. . with several of her children she had left two of them with a previous husband in Chicago and was never seen again by her children we have her daughter cillin on zoom today she was a child when her mother disappeared and she did not know her mother's whereabouts over the last 53 years, so through their investigative techniques we were able to put together some of the names and this is more of something we don't really have, we still don't have the resolution as to who killed her. where an amateur lock will come in this is where we are asking for help putting the pieces together and the spaces together we know that this trunk was her property um we know that she remarried we know that her husband at the time passed away in 1999 and she never mentioned that she was missing.
We know that he never included any bankruptcy records, so you can see that there are some inferences there that we have to fill in the gaps, but mainly we wanted to present the fact. She has a name now, after 53 years, her family has closure and that is the closure we are trying to bring forward. These are the steps just like with Juicy's family, the closure we need to bring forward, we may not always do. We'll be able to move forward with an arrest, but we have to be able to show that we still care and we have to be able to do more to do that, so I'll answer a few questions.
I know I'm going around in circles. a little bit and then we will definitely encourage you not only if you have any questions for the detectives on the case that picked him up, but also for the detectives, the roulette, as well as the family members who are here also on Zoom, how do you do it? would they do? You would like to break that down and how you would like to be able to touch those cases, the Police Department, your department specifically on the missing person and start using forensic evidence, so we have primarily used the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for the better.
Half a decade, if not a little more, we started using the Pinellas County lab. After that, because we in Pastillas County are lucky enough to have our own lab here in Pinellas County, it has some limitations. In this case, that's why we had to use. a private lab, but for the most part we have a phenomenal relationship with not only our local lab here but also the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, so for the better half of at least a decade or two we've been able to use DNA tests. being able to solve it that wasn't always available obviously with the original case detectives in these cases in the outside world may seem like good, why don't you do the testing right?
Why don't you do DNA tests? It is easy or not for us to be able to send that information. That shows the challenge we faced because when we exhumed the victim's body in 2010 it was too degraded at that time, we couldn't get DNA from any of the remains, so we were able to find another section where we could go in that direction, but it was You can see it's not easy, especially with older cases. DNA wasn't thought of as preserving evidence, it wasn't necessarily thought of that well. the way we do things today we have tactile DNA, we have normal DNA that comes through bodily fluids 15 or 20 years ago that was never thought of and it's because, and if it was, it was prohibitive because we couldn't send it to private laboratories to be able to do that, now we can work with our partners here and be able to take on the new Richard Evans case, the fingerprint that you thought was linked to the suspect in this case was that fingerprint extracted when this was originally investigated or when was recently reviewed so it was taken down when it was originally investigated, but the suspect in this matter had not been arrested so we did not have a fingerprint to compare it to and he was not arrested until several years later. which is important and one of thethe news team and he said he was serious.
I forgot what I was supposed to go to the store to buy. I returned home and told my family when I returned to my mom's house, she was across the street and I asked her if that was the case. really and I just asked the Lord not to let him suffer. Yes, if he had made it to surgery, he would have been a vegetarian. I would see too much oxygen. So ask the Lord not to let him suffer. So he took it. You know, closure. I am so grateful because I thought I was 65. I thought I was going to leave you tomorrow without knowing who took my childhood life.
Yes, because I realized that he was not a friend. He didn't know himself because I could. I've had one of those doubts like I said he was a friend you know everyone was so close and when he left um everyone changed him there were no more boys we used to call them boys yeah it's nothing anymore he was he was there was a life for everything so and he was the youngest and yeah, and it was like he was a real friend if you met him. Yes, no one doesn't like Tuesday, no one, everyone, he still smiled at people, yes, simply.
I released a balloon, oh my goodness, they all brought so many smiles. Yes, I'm telling you today. Truly, clothes are deep in our hearts. Yes, really. And um, thank you very much everyone. I am very grateful. I am very grateful thanks to the St. Petersburg Police Department. Thank you so much. Damn disclosure. Thank you. We will make them available. One last thing I would like to do is and Wally and the detective worked on How are you? but both worked on both cases. I'm going to mention all three of them real quick because you might have some questions about how they used to do things in the '60s. uh, but they all used to do things today, so they're the face of the cold case today and uh, thanks Paul , thanks Andy Allen, this is the new OK, in the 60s we had a kind of Touch and Go. police agency This wasn't a real professional police agency at the time, but today, because all this is done, it's notable that these guys were doing what I wish I had done years ago before I retired, but I'm going to pick their brains when we're done, just my mind is spinning here, I'm sure they'll pick your brain too, oh yeah, well, I don't have much left, you know, but closure isn't quite, just when, when.
The boss came and knocked on my door and said, Oh, we finally found you and I said Oh my God, what do I do now, but he said, Do you remember the lady in the trunk? I told him yes, he said she had been positively identified and I think she used it. I used the words "you've got to be kidding me" but it may have been a little different, but it was a real surprise to me and I can't get over it, I just can't get over it after all this. years, I am a little sorry for the obstacles you faced with technology and the investigation of these cases.
Okay, technology was who I could communicate with by phone and who I could communicate with through paperwork. The media picked up the story at the time, but it didn't happen that way. There's not much to offer because we didn't have much to offer them. There's no DNA, none of that, nothing technical, we sent flowers to every major law enforcement agency in the country and I wish I'd heard from Arizona back then, but we did. It just didn't go anywhere, everything we tried to do went nowhere and that's very frustrating, but then it went on and on, Nancy came up with a story that we had nothing, we had nothing but ourselves and there were very few of us. to work on these cases and We were overwhelmed because when you started this case, here comes another case.
You know, we only had four detectives at that time and in the homicide unit, so I think these guys and I thank the city of Saint Peterborough for finally getting a professional team and I look forward to working with them as much as I can, maybe in some other cases. I also have other open cases. They called me. I was called to the scene to investigate the detective and, yes, I remember the trunk well when he was, but yes, I was the first detective, the second detective on the scene. Sorry, Sergeant Carlisle was there first and he called me and I went there and we started our investigation from that moment for all the years. the fact that she was never identified you know that's the basis on which you could identify you have something you can work with but you have nothing when you have nothing and that's very frustrating to talk about identification this case has been known for decades as the Trump girl Mrs.
Trump and now we have a name what kind of relief because this was a victim here and now she has that name that we already refer to as the trunk lady, but this case may actually have a name. very happy that she has the name that they have identified her with, my God, who would have thought this, you know, never, 53 years old, screw you, you get on with life, you know, you don't back down too much unless something calls you attention and boy. this caught attention right here, it's great. I have a real sense of relief for the work that these guys did and what the conclusion was between 1958 and 1978, you were born then, well, thank you very much, that's all, thank you, d-r-o-l-e-t, thank you. thank you well thank you yes great and if you have any questions

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