Never Let Them See You Cry (31 page)

Z placed a small bouquet on his wife's coffin. The card said,
I love you
.

At the funeral, the son said, his father explained that he saw Jane Mathis on the eve of the murder to tell her he “was going to have to quit seeing her.”

The day after the murder, Metro detectives arrived at the prison. They wanted to know about Major Z and Jane Mathis. They wanted to examine all the handguns at the prison. The killer had used a .38-caliber weapon. Were any weapons missing? Could anyone have removed a gun, used it and replaced it undetected?

Most prison weapons are stored in a double-locked arsenal. A small number, usually four to six, are kept in the prison control room, in a wooden gun case. None was missing.

Detectives took more than thirty weapons to the crime lab for ballistics tests. Police eventually returned all but one, the murder weapon, a Model 15 Smith and Wesson .38-caliber revolver with a four-inch barrel, serial number 8K4S391.

It had cost the taxpayers $93.02 seven years earlier.

Police and the state attorney's office refused to discuss the gun or even publicly acknowledge that they had found the murder weapon. Prison officials talked about it uncomfortably.

“It's embarrassing to the institution,” said a former assistant superintendent. “It's a very traumatic thing. We were trying to keep it low-key.”

The assistant superintendent said he thought the gun came from the control room at the rear of the main lobby. Sergeant Jane Mathis worked there every day, four
P.M
. to midnight. Major Z had access to the control room. So did about ten other employees. The guns are inventoried when the shift changes. No one reported any discrepancies. Sergeant Mathis worked until midnight Saturday, January 19.

She was off on Super Bowl Sunday and on Monday, the day of the murder.

Major Z had reported to work Monday morning—before his St. Petersburg trip. He logged out of the prison at 12:52
P.M
. Tousley went to pick up a cooler of sandwiches and soft drinks. The two men arranged to meet in fifteen or twenty minutes, near Homestead First National Bank. The bank is six-tenths of a mile—a two-minute drive—from the home of Jane Mathis.

Tousley said he found Z waiting at the intersection. He followed Z for 13.7 miles—to the Carvel shop, where he dropped off a car borrowed from his daughter, Lisa.

Tousley recalled little of their talk during the auto trip across state to St. Petersburg, but he said Z “mentioned something about some keys.”

The murder took place that afternoon, presumably while Z was on the road with co-worker Tousley, but the precise time of death is uncertain. Joy last saw her mother about 1:10
P.M
. Lisa telephoned at about 1:50
P.M
.—and got no answer.

Could Major Z and Sergeant Mathis have seen each other that day—after he left the prison? Major Z denied it.

On the day of the murder Sergeant Mathis walked into the prison about three
P.M
. She did not belong there. It was her day off. She was not in uniform. She wore a sweater and blue jeans. She said she was there to write a check for $9.80, a monthly premium, to an HMO medical plan. The matter was not urgent. “I had told her to bring in a check sometime that week,” said Maribel Ortiz in the personnel office. While she was there, prison officials say, Sergeant Mathis stopped in the control room.

St. Pete hotel records show that Z telephoned Jane Mathis that evening.

“Right from the damn hotel,” Z says. “I had nothing to hide.” He was worried, he said, about Jane's health. “She had a chest cold—congestion. We discussed the weather.”

She cut short the conversation, he said. “She told me she had spilled some paint and had to clean it up.” Z said he also tried to call home that evening, but the line was busy. “I hung up and watched TV a little.”

Jane Mathis failed to report for work at the prison the next day—or the next. On the third day of her unexplained absence, personnel director Kril Jackson spoke to her mother. “She said her daughter had been questioned by the police and was under a doctor's care for nervousness and strain.”

He dispatched an aide to her home with resignation papers. Jane Mathis signed.

Z never worked a day at the prison again either. His boss took a typed resignation to his home.

Z signed.

The first time the family was allowed to return to the house after the murder, Z searched “frantically for his keys,” son-in-law Jason said. “He said he found them under the dishwasher.”

Z said he never spoke to Jane Mathis after the murder. He would drive by her house but did not stop. To do so, he said, would “bring hellfire, damnation and police down all over her.”

Life after his wife's death was not easy, Z said. Intruders broke into his house, and strangers chased his car and shot out a window. He changed the locks and disconnected the telephone. He was denied unemployment compensation.

The insurance company withheld payment of the hundred thousand dollars. “I'll have to sue the damn insurance companies,” Z said. Eventually they paid but not to him.

The money was divided among the dead woman's children.

Z always acknowledged that he and his former lover are the prime suspects. Of himself, he says, “It's not every day you are a murder suspect after an impeccable life: two traffic tickets in fifty-two years. I am innocent. I've seen enough of prison that I don't want to get involved in murder. I've walked down Death Row and seen the electric chair. Murder is not my bag. You have two innocent people here. I have no idea who killed my wife. It wasn't Jane Mathis.”

Jane Mathis would not discuss the case. “As far as we're concerned,” her lawyer said, “the matter is over. There is no case, absolutely no evidence whatsoever. She wants to go on with her life.”

Z said there was no case against anyone: “Just between you and me and the old deep blue sea, I feel that most of what they have is circumstantial evidence.”

The state attorney's office agreed.

No one was charged.

The people who loved Mrs. Z never stopped hoping for justice. I grew to know Tia and Lisa and their husbands, Terry and Jason. Joy postponed her wedding after the murder. Eventually she married her fiancé, and they moved to Atlanta. They are all good and wholesome young people.

Tia, the oldest girl, vibrant and levelheaded, often speaks for all of “us kids.” Estranged from their father since the murder, they have, in effect, lost both parents.

No murder victim's family has done more to seek justice. Eighteen months after her murder, Mrs. Z's children, grandchildren, sisters, nieces, cousins and other relatives traveled to Miami from Alabama, Georgia, Fort Lauderdale and Leisure City to try to learn why there was no prosecution. Carrying homemade placards and wearing black armbands, they picketed the office of state attorney Janet Reno.

They also picketed the prison—or tried to.

WHO WAS ON DUTY IN THE CONTROL ROOM JAN
. 21, 1985? One homemade sign asked.

GUN CONTROL OUT OF CONTROL AT DADE CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
, said another.

Prison guards denied them access to a road leading to the prison. They promised that an official would come out to talk to them. None ever did—only prison employees, grimly shooting video-camera pictures of the marchers with their signs.

The family also marched on the state capitol, pleading for justice.

They were ignored.

Detectives told them the night of the murder that the case was all but wrapped up, say the children of Mrs. Z, that the killer was known. But prosecutors refuse to press a circumstantial case.

The family even filed a civil suit, against the prison and the state, for not carefully screening employees and for allowing a state-owned weapon to fall into the hands of their mother's murderer. A day in court, they hoped, might bring to light evidence that would help a criminal prosecution, but the state stymied their lawyer.

Tia and I talked often. She missed her mom—still does. In a small way, I may have been a substitute, someone for her to turn to. The two blond boys in the pictures are Tia's. They were Mrs. Z's only grandchildren at the time of her death.

She has seven now. One is Amanda, Tia's third child.

Z rented out the family home. His children drive by from time to time. “It will always be my mom's house to us,” Tia says.

Many “unsolved cases” are solved in the minds of police who believe they know the guilty party. They want to make an arrest—but prosecutors, ever aware of their conviction records, refuse the case. They insist on more evidence first. Sometimes there is no more.

The most dangerous killers do not commit murder in front of witnesses. They do not wait for police, smoking guns in hand, or sign confessions. It seems unfair not to let a jury decide.

In the dead of winter 1988, nearly three years after the murder, an
Oprah
producer called. A show on unsolved murders was planned, and she asked if I knew of any nagging cases.

First person I called was Tia.

She was suffering from postpartum depression. Amanda had been born on Christmas Eve, and Tia's mom had not been there, as she had been when the boys were born. Her sons' paternal grandfather was near death from cancer. But no blues or bad news could extinguish the spark of hope. The family conferred and concurred. They would do anything to further the case.

I took with me the details of two other murder cases I believed national television exposure could solve. Lisa and Jason also flew to Chicago, at their own expense, to provide moral support. They boarded an earlier flight. By the time we arrived at the Miami airport, with tickets sent by
Oprah
, it was snowing in Chicago and flights were being canceled. Ours was one of them. The show would be taped at nine
A.M
. next morning. We had to fly out that night to make it in time.

Eastern said nobody was flying into Chicago. Luckily we did not take their word for it and found a Midway flight As much as I fear and loathe flying, especially through ice and snow, I was relieved. This was a mission.

Tia looked beautiful and was wonderful on the show. Oprah was super. Guests included the parents of a missing girl believed to be a victim of Seattle's Green River killer, a former New York cop whose eleven-year-old daughter was murdered, and the twin brother of a Chicago lawyer who was ambushed by a sniper—all unsolved cases.

Tia talked about her mother's murder, and I spoke about two perplexing mysteries: a small boy found cemented into an apartment-house closet and a dismembered couple found floating. I was eager for network exposure of the three unidentified corpses from Miami. Identifying the victims would be a giant step toward solving their murders. Oprah knew none of us, yet remembered all our names, all the stories, all the people and places, and had read my book, to boot. She never once stumbled or missed a beat.

Parts of the dismembered couple had surfaced in waters all over Dade County, in April 1985. The man had the letters LR tattooed on his right shoulder and a scar across his back. The woman was brown-haired and petite, with a Caesarean scar.

Somebody out there in America's living rooms had to know their names.

The little boy nobody knew was found by workmen readying an apartment for a new tenant in October 1983. As they removed a cinderblock and concrete cubicle from a closet it crumbled, exposing the body of a child.

He appeared to be age six or seven and dead for about two years. He had lost two baby teeth, and his second teeth, barely through the gum, had begun to grow in crooked. He would have had a gap-toothed grin.

The former tenant swore he had never seen the child, dead or alive. A man in his sixties, he often allowed friends and acquaintances to use his place and did not specifically recall when the concrete cubicle appeared. He assumed some houseguest had stored belongings inside. Strange as his story seemed, he passed a polygraph test.

Metro Detective John Butchko had contacted the national clearinghouse for missing children, interviewed more than a hundred people and had an expert rebuild the child's face. I took pictures with me.

Somebody had to remember this little boy.

In the case of Mrs. Z, we hoped national coverage would either bring forward new evidence or give police and prosecutors the courage to take action.

We went directly from the TV studio to the airport, all of us lugging Amanda's baggage. Babies do not travel light. The show had aired live in Chicago, and as we boarded, other passengers recognized us. A good omen, I hoped. Excited, I could not wait to reach the newsroom the next day.

Messages were stacked like gifts on Christmas morning. Long computer printouts, names and numbers, people calling from everywhere. What a heady feeling to know that somewhere among them were the answers to these mysteries.

Wrong again.

A young Texas woman wanted me to look into the unsolved murder of her mother, slain when she and her brother were children.

A distraught Michigan couple asked me to investigate the homicide of their daughter, a San Diego, California, business woman. There was a suspect, they said, but detectives had done nothing.

Vermont police wanted help in the search for missing newly-weds who had disappeared on their honeymoon.

A tearful Los Angeles widow hoped I could help prove murder and a cover-up in the mysterious death of her husband, killed on the job.

My spirits sank as I returned call after call. No one was offering to help identify
our
victims. All these people, hundreds of them, needed help. There was a world full of pain, tragedy and unfinished business out there. What could I do? I am only a reporter—with enough unsolved murders to keep me busy for life in Miami. No way would my editors sanction time spent on cases outside
The Miami Herald
circulation area, stories with no Florida connection. All the Chicago mission had accomplished was to briefly instill futile hope in the hearts of people in pain.