Decades of corruption, murder, and high-level cover-ups, from an unsuspecting widow’s death to the assassination of a heroic Tampa police sergeant, are finally revealed.
On October 23, 1975, former Tampa Police Sgt. Richard Cloud was shot to death in his home. Five decades later, the story of the shocking crime has been told many times. It has been the subject of outstanding investigative journalism.
However, the whole story of the surrounding circumstances and linked crimes has never been known or told. Few people are aware that the assassination was related to other major crimes, and that had a wave of murder and corruption been stopped in Miami a decade earlier, a criminal network operating throughout Florida would have been terminated rather than enabled and protected.
Among the significant findings from investigations conducted by our Miami-based volunteer cold case team are the links we discovered in major Florida crimes between the 1950s and the 1980s. New investigation, discovery, and analysis of connections, people, and events have revealed information about hidden substantial activities of organized crime. The consequences of the partnership between crime and corruption in the past continue to reverberate today.
Our investigation has uncovered many long-hidden facts in connected cases, and our findings and reports and being released. There still is more to the story, for future revelations, because there are still volumes of official investigation records that remain hidden behind questionable claims of exemption from mandatory public disclosure.
An illuminating case is that of the homicide of Estelle Oddo in 1966. 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 prosperous 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 open a window to other crimes and show that had this information been earnestly acted upon back then, lives would have been saved.
It could have, and should have, happened that way. However, corruption interfered and created blocks to derail the Oddo case. Organized crime had influence and power, both internally and externally throughout numerous official agencies.
Investigating detectives of the Dade Sheriff’s Office were deceived by the “upper echelon” of their own agency, their own superiors. Within the Sheriff’s Office, local police agencies, and the courts, compromised and corrupt officials conspired to prevent certain arrests, convictions, and public awareness. In the Oddo case, 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 October 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. Deputies responding to her apartment found her door locked, but with a key obtained from the building manager, entered and found Mrs. Oddo deceased on her bed. She was bound, gagged, and bruised from a scuffle. She had suffocated on the gag and her dentures.
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 Oddo homicide 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 Dade County Sheriff’s Office detectives who within months of the crime, 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. Moreover, a criminal network could have been smashed and future victims’ lives would have been saved. The opportunity was there and then.
In the apartment two doors down from Estelle Oddo lived George DeFeis and his alleged wife Shirley. However, Shirley was actually Shirley Cacciatore, also known as Shirley Poveromo, mother of Anita Poveromo.
A year and a half later, 18-year-old Anita would also be deceased – officially categorized as an addict who died from a heroin overdose. Joseph Cacciatore claimed to be Anita’s father and letters from him were found at her bedside in Miami.
We believe that Anita was not a heroin addict and that her death was not an accidental overdose. The official determination was based upon superficial evidence and swift, convenient conclusions. A deeper look into it all has found evidence that contradicts those conclusions. Anyone reading this who knew Anita or Shirley should contact us.
Anita had friends and family in Miami and Tampa, and if they would contact us now, we can help to end the inaccurate history ascribed to Anita’s death. Let’s talk about the truth, about “Red” Panzaveccia, retribution hits, and the people in various roles at that time.
While George and Shirley DeFeis were being questioned by Sheriff’s Office detectives in their apartment, Joseph Cacciatore walked in – he had a key. Joe, George, and Shirley knew of Estelle’s jewelry – they were neighbors and Shirley had often been in Estelle’s apartment. They knew that Estelle had family in the jewelry business.
Joe Cacciatore was known in Miami as “Chicken Cacciatore” and for being a jewel thief. He was known in Tampa as “Radio Mouth”. The extent of his criminal activities or relationships were not known or understood in Miami in 1966.
Joe Cacciatore was a first cousin of Santo Trafficante, Jr., and they had grown up together. They had been pallbearers together at a famous funeral years before. Trafficante rose to a much higher level in organized crime but their activities continued to be connected in Tampa and Miami. In the 1960, both were active in Miami.
On March 28, 1966, George Defeis kidnapped teenager Daniel Goldman from his home in Surfside, Florida. Defeis and Cacciatore, and others, were involved in a conspiracy that resulted in the murder of Goldman, who was killed as retribution by organized crime against the kid’s father. Our volunteer team solved that case and achieved official case closure after it had been unsolved and derailed for 55 years. Defeis and Cacciatore continued on and just months after Goldman was taken and killed, Oddo was found dead in her apartment about 10 minutes away.
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, while George Defeis was being treated at a nearby hospital, Shirley showed detectives a pistol she brought out from under the couch. It was a Beretta .32 auto.
The missing Oddo pistol?
Did Cacciatore shoot Defeis in the hand as punishment, a lesson, for making a phone call? As it turns out after examining the history of everyone involved, this was not the only time that a call was made to alert police to a victim and it was not the only time that George Defeis suffered a gunshot wound to his hand.
The anonymous call to the police that led to finding Mrs. Oddo’s body was recorded on tape by the deputy working the desk. Detective Robert James and his supervisor, Sgt. Louis Diecedue, acting on information developed by James, later called George Defeis from that same desk phone and recorded the conversation.
Sgt. Lou Diecedue, who earned an outstanding reputation in Dade County law enforcement, was closely related to Frank Diecedue, right-hand man and “underboss” of Santo Trafficante, Jr. Lou went on to become a law enforcement leader while Frank became an organized crime leader.
Detective James’ skill had produced potentially crucial 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 for voice identification analysis. 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’s Office that the anonymous caller was George Defeis. The voice prints on the two separate 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 retired Detective Robert James. “Had I known that then, I would have arrested George Defeis for first-degree murder,” said James.
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. The Sheriff, the Chief of Detectives, and the Chief of Intelligence were all active participants in organized crime.
James is now unfortunately deceased, but his verifications have been preserved. Our volunteer team deeply appreciates the active participation in our work by retired long-term officials of the Dade County Sheriff’s Office and its successor agencies, including Bob Hoelscher, Bob James, and Marshall Frank. At that time in Miami, just as in Tampa, there were incorruptible detectives who spent every moment on duty and off duty knowing that they were in the minority, and in danger.
Hoelscher and James are deceased now. Both will forever be true heroes of their agencies and the State of Florida. Both had served in federal, state and local capacities. The surviving people who knew them are personally aware of their incredible service. Other retired detectives and agents continue now to share invaluable experience and first-hand memories, encouraging a renewed look into decades of deception, corruption, and criminality.
In the 1960s, the Sheriff’s Office was run by Sheriff Talmadge Buchanan and his Chief of Detectives, Manson Hill. Both were associates of organized crime. Both knew much, too much – they had participated and profited from it and covered its tracks when necessary.
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 doubts about the accuracy and truth of those conclusions, based upon evidence and information we have discovered. Indications are that they became victims themselves of orchestrated and effective intentional actions.
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: rear sliding glass doors.
George Defeis and his associates may not have wanted to cause serious physical harm in binding and gagging Sally Goldman, or Gertrude Henschel, or Estelle Oddo. They were primarily thieves in many cases. In some, though, murder was the mission. Danny Goldman was kidnapped and murdered as retribution for his father’s role in exposing fraud at a bank that had been taken over by organized crime. The Goldman case investigation had been taken over by the same corrupt partners of organized crime, using their lofty positions in law enforcement to help ensure that the crime went cold and unsolved until we solved it 55 years later.
We found that George Defeis was also involved in many Trafficante-related criminal activities. Cocaine, heroin, counterfeit cash, burglary, murder. We have ample reason to conclude that there was a remarkable, shaded immunity from accountability.
No one was ever arrested or prosecuted for the murder of Estelle Oddo. Same for the other cases noted. George Defeis was involved at the core of all of these crimes. He even had a role in a conspiracy that included the assassination of a law enforcement hero. Some people involved in that Tampa assassination were arrested and convicted. Some were not.
Tampa Police Sgt. Richard Cloud was a courageous policeman who vigorously fought organized crime. He had assembled a team of trusted officers, and they were effectively producing arrests leading to felony convictions. Soon his superiors who authorized his work departed. He was then forced out of the Police Department. He continued working with federal agents investigating organized crime. Cloud had developed information on high-level criminals and was going to offer his testimony against them.
On October 23, 1975, nine years after the separate 1966 murders of Estelle Oddo and Daniel Goldman, a car pulled up in front of the Cloud family house in Seminole Heights. Cloud, 33, was home alone.
Two men were in the car. 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 Frank Diecidue. There was a 1975 hit list, and Cloud was on it. The assassination 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.
Eleven men were convicted for roles in Sgt. Cloud’s murder. The highest man in the chain was untouched as always.
Cloud, a hero renowned posthumously as an inspirational figure, is among those whose lives might have been saved if the 1960s Miami wave of major crimes and homicides had been stopped then and there.
The same is apparently true of the April 1955 beating death of Charlie Wall in his Tampa home. The wave could have ended then, also. Wall’s murder, eliminating the former head of organized crime in Tampa at the time, also became a cold case. Wall’s top two lieutenants, Eddie Virella and Tito Rubio, had been murdered years before. Those responsible for these murders had taken over the Florida mob.
The criminal network was in danger of being put out of commission. Instead, it continued to flourish, despite rare convictions of mostly lower-level mobsters. Those at the very top were invariably safe and protected regardless of the circumstances. Their partnerships with local, state, and federal agencies constructed a secret immunity.
There are surviving tentacles that remain active today. The greater the knowledge about what has happened before and may still be afoot, the better equipped we all are to deter or stop future waves of crime and corruption partnerships.
What was true decades ago apparently is still true today – Florida is a prime target for high-level organized crime and systemic abuse. Many bodies and huge costs have been left the wake of this timeless threat to public safety and official integrity. Technology and methodology changes, names change, dates change, but imperfections in human nature and the draws of greed and corruption: not so much.
About The Author
Paul D. Novack is an Attorney at Law in Miami. He leads a volunteer cold case team that has tackled Florida’s oldest and coldest organized crime homicide cases. Their investigations have been credited with solving the 1961 murder of Joseph Dimare of North Miami, and the 1966 kidnapping and murder of Daniel Goldman of Surfside. Currently, they have dozens of cases under active investigation and continue to discover information that produces long-elusive answers. During the last decade, they have provided various levels of assistance to numerous law enforcement agencies in cooperative and collaborative efforts.
Novack has also served in several official capacities, including six terms as Mayor of the Town of Surfside. He has served on a State Oversight Board for the Miami-Dade School System, and on the Miami-Dade County Economic Development Committee. He currently serves on the Advisory Council of the Florida Highway Patrol. Novack is a graduate of the Nova Southeastern Law School and the University of Miami.
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