Before I met Gil in the jail, I wanted to get a more objective look at the Fernandez case. Although his family was helpful, they were anything but objective. The jail lockdown actually helped me because it gave me time before I met with Gil to meet with Billy Venturi, the investigator hired by John Howes. Venturi was a tall, bearded swashbuckling private investigator who had achieved the rank of homicide investigator by the time he retired from the Metro-Dade Police. He seemed perfect for this Metro-Dade triple-murder case, except that his fees were enormous.
One thousand dollars of my initial fee went to Venturi in exchange for just a few hours of his time and complete copies of his files. At that rate, I'd have gone back to the poor house if he stayed on the case. But his files were important. They were extensive and therefore extremely helpful in providing the backdrop for why BSO thought they had their guy.
My new investigator Cary Kultau also was a veteran detective, and was formerly with the Pompano Beach Police Department. Cary and I soon discovered that the Apollo Gym was once a hangout for police officers who liked to pump iron. Over time, however, the gym picked up a more sinister reputation. It also was rumored to be a front for drug deals, extortion and small-time gambling operations.
Hubert “Bert” Christie, a bodybuilder 20 years Gil's senior, owned the gym on and off over the years. It didn't take long after Gil met Bert for the senior bodybuilder to become Gil's mentor. Gil saw Bert as a father figure in the netherworld of bodybuilding. Some say Bert introduced Gil to the steroids that helped him achieve the massive 275-pound body he had when he was arrested.
According to police reports we obtained, Bert also had a reputation for consorting with organized crime figures. He was alleged to be the boss of a ring of violent bodybuilders who collected from loan sharking and gambling deadbeats. Supposedly, the ring eventually branched out into a new business. Police reports stated that ring members shot up the homes of drug dealers and then tried to sell them protection. Detectives said these bodybuilder enforcers also deceived smugglers into phony buys, stole their cocaine and threatened them with machine guns if they complained.
Supposedly, Christie's ties to organized crime ran deep. He was suspected of carrying out three contract killings for the Mafia between 1980 and 1982. This information came from a federally protected witness who told police he worked for the Colombo crime family. Christie also had a reputation as a debt collector for Joseph “Joey Flowers” Rotunno, a supposed Colombo crime family associate who allegedly ran a gambling ring from Al's Florist, his flower shop in Hollywood.
According to law enforcement, Christie hired the muscle for his collections business directly from the gym. Police say Christie first signed up Gil and then recruited Tommy Felts, a bodybuilding champion and hot-tempered cocaine dealer from Hollywood. Felts drove a flashy red Porsche, which made him conspicuous around town. He also had a catchy nickname: He was known as “No Fingers” due to the loss of a few fingers in an accident.
No Fingers, who was murdered in 1985, had been a fixture at the Apollo Gym and was reputed to have participated in the crimes for which Gil was just arrested. Police obviously couldn't arrest a dead man, but they could arrest Bert Christie, whom they believed masterminded the murders. By all accounts, the case against Christie was razor thin. But it didn't stop his indictment.
From our research, we could see that law enforcement had been slowly, quietly building a case against Gil and Bert for the 1983 murder of three people. By 1987, word got around the police community that Gil was a suspect in these multiple murders. As a reference to the fact that Gil, Bert Christie and Tommy Felts were all connected to the Apollo Gym, the police called the investigation “Operation Muscle.”
The pressure on Gil mounted as local newspapers quoted law enforcement personnel saying damaging things about him. Gil's former work buddy and arresting officer, Miami-Dade homicide detective Pat Diaz, was quoted in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper, saying, “I would classify him as one of the most dangerous individuals we've had to deal with.”
Eventually, Gil's reputation became so bad that Hollywood Police Chief Richard Witt told his officers to find another gym. Gil was so angry when he found out; he called Witt and asked why he ordered the officers to stop working out there.
“Because you have a bad reputation,” was Witt's blunt reply.
Cops weren't the only ones who steered clear of the gym. In 1987, defensive end John Bosa wanted to keep his 265-pound body in shape while waiting to sign a $225,000 contract to play with the Miami Dolphins. Bosa shopped around Broward County for a serious bodybuilding gym and decided on the Apollo. Dolphin team management, including Coach Don Shula, found out about it and warned the 23-year-old to stay away from the gym. Bosa followed their orders and never went back.
Bosa wasn't the gym's only brush with a famous person. On one of its walls was a picture of Reve Walsh, the wife of John Walsh, who later became the host of America's Most Wanted. Reve placed third in the 1981 Mrs. Florida body sculpting competition and had formerly been a fixture at the Apollo. Her husband sometimes accompanied her during her workouts.
Reve never returned to the gym after the disappearance of her son in 1981 and the subsequent discovery of his head in a South Florida canal. Although the sensationalized, nationally covered Walsh case had nothing to do with the allegations against Gil and Bert, it was ironic that a photo of the wife of one of the country's foremost crime hunters hung in the same place where so much illegal activity was alleged to have originated.
Eventually, the allegations swirling around Gil were enough to unnerve him. Especially when BSO detectives Joe Damiano and Sergeant Tom Carney confronted him at another gym where he taught aerobics. One of the police reports detailed the conversation in which Gil gave the detectives a piece of his mind: “I don't like what I'm hearing from my friends,” Fernandez said angrily. “How could you tell people I'm responsible for these murders? Why weren't you men enough to come and see me in person when this first happened? Do you think I would be speaking to you if I did these crimes? Look at me. I drive a ‘76 piece of junk. I'm an aerobics instructor and have bills coming out my a**.”
“Why don't you come down to the station and talk with us then, Gil? Give us a statement and clear this whole thing up,” replied Sergeant Carney. “Here's my card and phone number. You going to call?”
“Yeah, I'll call you next week and we'll sit down,” Gil responded.
Damiano looked surprised. But Carney wasn't. He knew Gil wouldn't call.
Damiano and Carney were convinced of his guilt, and the investigation reached fever pitch as Damiano and fellow detective Mike Kallman teamed up to openly approach anyone who ever had dealings with Gil. They asked gym members what they knew about Gil and how they knew him, along with a lot of other questions that made the target of their investigation obvious.
The detectives also asked everyone they questioned whether they knew Walter “Wally” Leahy, Jr., age 25; Richard “Dickie” Robertson, age 26; and Alfred “Al” Tringali, age 31, who were the murder victims named in the current indictment. The inquiries, however, didn't stop at the door of this indictment. The detectives also did everything they could to elicit details about the murders of at least eight other victims—men and women they suspected were dead because they had crossed the paths of Gil Fernandez and Bert Christie.
Carney, Damiano and Kallman, who by now were hip-deep in the investigation, originally came to the case after being hand-picked to work for the sheriff's pet project: the BSO Organized Crime Division, known as OCD. Although seven years had elapsed since the murders, the sheriff directed Carney, Damiano, Kallman and a host of other detectives to do everything they could to indict and arrest Fernandez and Christie. In spite of this aggressive pursuit, the list of murder victims kept growing at an unprecedented pace. With each new victim, the level of frustration felt by this elite group of law enforcement guys increased. That frustration was only exacerbated by the fact that some of the victims had been eliminated right after detectives came around asking questions about them.
That would have been enough to turn even the most well-intentioned, veteran detective into a rogue and anything-goes Robocop overnight. They could hardly keep up with these new unsolved homicides and the unrelenting pressure it created within the BSO. Since the detectives and the sheriff were convinced that Gil Fernandez was the common denominator in this homicidal quagmire, they weren't about to stop until he was indicted. Obviously, they weren't impressed with the “Free Gil Fernandez” T-shirts sold at the gym to raise funds for the Gil Fernandez defense fund. And they certainly didn't buy any.
According to police and the press, this black-belt karate instructor, kick-boxer, and former Mr. Florida and Mr. Gold Coast bodybuilding champion was more than qualified to be a skilled murderer. Unfortunately, he also looked every bit the part of a hit man and mob enforcer. He stood over six feet and weighed 275 pounds, a virtual wall of solid muscle. In case anyone doubted his dominance, he had the boastful words “Incredible Hulk” tattooed on his left upper arm.
Mitch Palermo, a young BSO jail guard who coincidentally worked out at the Apollo Gym, also could vouch that Gil had an attitude. “The first time I saw a bodybuilding contest, Gil was competing,” Palermo said. “I thought Gil was a jerk, because he wouldn't get off the stage when he lost. But then I looked at someone like that and saw how gutsy he was, and being a kid, I actually looked up to him.”
And Palermo wasn't the only one who admired him. Gil had a high opinion of himself, too. According to Palermo, “Gil would show off to us in the gym. He'd flex in the mirror. He'd look at himself and smile, saying, ‘It's good to be God.’”
Adding fuel to this fire of infamy, Gil also was a notorious former Metro-Dade police officer and firearms expert. A 1979 article from the now-defunct Miami News called him “Miami's meanest cop.” The title was well deserved, according to most who knew him.
It was alleged that Gil actually bragged to his friends about forcing handcuffed detainees to eat cigarette butts that had been left in the cruiser ashtray by cops on previous shifts. One of his friends even told us that Gil occasionally forced prisoners to do unspeakable things to each other at gunpoint. These stories were repeated among all his friends, apparently for their comic value.
By Gil's own admission, he was intolerant of criminals and had a mean streak in those days. He admitted to sitting on the hood of a moving police vehicle during the 1980 McDuffie riots in Miami as he threw gasoline grenades at people in the crowd. He also acknowledged that if someone ran from him on the job, he got a beating when Gil caught up to him.
Several complaints were on file with Internal Affairs because he beat people after handcuffing them. A high school student alleged that Gil “charged and cursed at him” for jaywalking. Not surprisingly, personnel reports described him as having “an aggressive personality.” Sergeant Chester Butler wrote, “Officer Fernandez is without a doubt the most aggressive officer on his squad.”
Eventually, the brutality complaints caught up with Gil. He was taken off the street and moved to the complaint desk. Later, he was relegated to working the property room. Both of these positions were considered bottom-of-the-barrel assignments for a cop.
Law enforcement also had gathered evidence of Gil's steroid use. In fact, this is the only crime Gil ever admitted committing while being an officer. We obtained a police report in which Gil was quoted, saying, “The only thing I was guilty of doing when I was a cop was steroids. When you're in a bodybuilding competition, the judges want you to be freaks and have incredible bodies. In order to win, you had to use steroids.”
Most observers wouldn't have had difficulty guessing this from looking at his Herculean physique at the time of his championship bodybuilding victories. Steroids are known to cause aggressive and violent behavior, and Gil's behavior was no exception to that rule. As just one example of this, two people said they saw Gil knock the teeth out of the winner of the 1983 Mr. Florida contest.
Had Gil combined cocaine with those steroids, it would have been a powerful mix. One and one don't equal two when simultaneously ingesting narcotics; there was the potential for them to equal 10. The potential for disaster—perhaps even murder—could be increased exponentially with the ingestion of these synergistic drugs.
It seemed like everything we read or heard about Fernandez from police or the media was negative. Of course, his family said nice things about him, but that was to be expected. Seeking another perspective on this guy, I called Vince Forzano, a friend of Gil's that Neli recommended. I was going to see Gil that afternoon and I wanted to squeeze in the visit with Vince first. “It would be great if he had anything to say that would actually help the defense,” I thought as I dialed the phone. Vince answered and said he had some time in about an hour, so I arranged to meet him at the coffee shop below my office. When I got downstairs, I saw Vince drinking a tall glass of iced tea at a table on the sidewalk. After exchanging the usual pleasantries, I got right to the point.
“What can you tell me about Gil or the case?” I asked him.
“I love him. That's the most important thing. I want you to know the real Gil. You can't believe everything the papers are printing,” Forzano replied.
“OK,” I responded, disappointed that he didn't have some smoking gun to help with the facts of the case. He went into a narrative and it was immediately obvious that he loved Gil like a brother. I just let him go as I ordered my usual from the waitress: a big cup of black coffee.
“I remember the first day I met Gil at Tracy's Karate Studio. He was 19 years old and around 225 pounds. He was tall and powerful. It was obvious that he was an athlete. He signed up for karate because he wanted the discipline that comes from the martial arts. He noticed me one day when I was cleaning the studio and asked what I was doing. I told him I was working in exchange for lessons. I'll never forget what he said: ‘You'll appreciate them more if you earn each lesson through hard work.’
“You OK about me telling you all this?” he asked politely.
“Sure, go ahead,” I said, not realizing how much longer he'd go on.
“Each day after that I saw Gil working diligently on his techniques in the studio. He never tired of his practice. He would often encourage me to train with him. Within a short period, he became a big brother to me, the best friend I had ever had.
“I was small and in my teens. I only weighed 145 pounds, so bullies in the karate studio often confronted me. But Gil protected me. He eventually trained me until I won tournament after tournament. He was winning, too, so the front of the karate studio was soon filled with our trophies. Eventually we both became full-contact karate fighters. Gil was always there to cheer me on. He never let me down or disappointed me when I needed him. He always encouraged me to be the best at what I did, no matter what I chose to do.”
“I'm glad you're telling me all this Vince, because you're right, the newspapers would probably never print that nice stuff. It doesn't sell newspapers.”
“Oh, and let me tell you this,” he said quickly, noticing I was looking at my watch. “Gil's family and mine were one and the same. My mother and father loved him like a son. My parents felt he was a good role model for me and never questioned when I was with him. When my father needed help around the house and I would complain about doing it, Gil would make me do it. And then he would help me. He said that working around the house was a good way to pay my parents back for the sacrifices they made for me. He helped me paint my house one day and made me laugh the whole time we did it.”
“Thanks for telling me all this, Vince…” I said, not knowing he wasn't done.
“When Gil's son was born, that was one of the greatest days of Gil's life. To watch him play with little Gillie brought tears to my eyes. He never once yelled at him and always took him wherever he went. I asked him why he would take an infant to a movie and he said, ‘because time with my baby is so precious and I don't want to miss a minute of it.’ Gillie never cried at the movie or anywhere else, as I remember. He just loved being with his dad.”
In a way, I wished this guy Forzano wasn't telling me all this good stuff about my new client. I was about to meet Gil for the first time in the jail. The last thing I needed was more pressure on me. I was hoping that all this thinking about what a good daddy he was and all that other great stuff wouldn't affect me or make me feel too much for the guy. Maybe that's why Forzano wanted to talk to me, to get me hooked emotionally. If that was his motive, it was working.
“Thanks again, Vince for…” I said before he interrupted me.
“Then in 1980, I left Florida to train in classical dance at the New York Conservatory. I had gone to the top of my game in karate and found that ballet lessons would help me become a better fighter. I fell in love with ballet and gave my best effort to learn this beautiful art form. I thought for sure that Gil would laugh at me but once again he encouraged me to do it.”
“I've got to go see Gil, Vince,” I said while getting up. I had already finished my coffee.
“Just let me tell you about the last time I saw him and I'll be done, really. I was in New York for two years. When I got back, Gil welcomed me home. While I was gone, Gil became involved with bodybuilding. When I saw him again, he resembled Michelangelo's David, as his first wife Pam used to say. The transformation was amazing. He had developed every muscle in his body to perfection. He was now winning bodybuilding tournaments and making a name for himself in a new profession.”
“I've got to go see Gil in the jail now, Vince. I have to go; I really do. Otherwise, I'll run into the shift change and won't be able to see him for a couple more hours. But if it's OK with you, I'd like to tell him about our meeting and about all the nice things you've said about him, OK?”
“Yes, please tell him I love him and I'm praying for him, OK?”
“I promise I will. Gil is blessed to have a friend like you.”
“I'm the one who's blessed, John, just to call him my friend. He's more than a friend—he's my brother.”