Cold Case Assessment Team

By Matthew Pleasant

THE LEDGER

Published: Saturday, December 31, 2011 at 9:57 p.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, December 31, 2011 at 9:57 p.m.

LAKELAND | Linda Thames brushed a broom across the gravestone.

Gospel music boomed from her car and across an empty cemetery. She hummed as she cleaned, sweeping in short, quick strokes until dust cleared from a name etched in the granite.

Eric Teron Cook.

Ten years ago, Cook, her only child, pulled his Cadillac next to a Harden Boulevard gas station. A group of men approached, bandanas over their faces. One fired a gun, hitting Cook, and the group pulled him from the car. Lakeland police have said it appears the group randomly chose the 30-year-old for a carjacking.

Thames isn’t so sure. She said her son might have been set up and that someone with information about the killing is keeping quiet.

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By Matthew Pleasant & Rick Rousos

THE LEDGER

Published: Monday, December 12, 2011 at 2:00 p.m.

Last Modified: Monday, December 12, 2011 at 2:47 p.m.

LAKELAND | Anthony Jackson dialed 911 Saturday night and asked an officer to meet him on a Tampa street corner.

He had to unburden his soul.

A preacher had given out Bibles and urged tenants of a homeless shelter where Jackson stayed to confess their sins. The load Jackson, 47, lifted from his conscience that night was the answer to a pair of cold case killings left unsolved for 27 years, according to the Lakeland Police Department.

Jackson calmly described to detectives how he tried to rob William Clark Ford Jr., 62, in September 1984 and fatally shot him, police said. He also detailed the night he shot and killed Cheryl Boyce, 16, in her family’s apartment in March 1985.]

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Robert Strako

But by the 1970s, the Haven’s best days were history. It was still an adequate hotel, but it had opened some of its space for the rehabilitation of alcohol and drug abusers. The building at 235 Sixth St. N.W now houses upscale condominiums.

On April 9, 1977, the Haven Hotel was far from a crown jewel. It was the scene of a bloodbath.

In the wee hours that day, John Kennedy, the 74-year-old overnight clerk, was found dead near the men’s room in the lobby. He was covered in blood and had been stabbed more than 60 times with a Phillips screwdriver.

Now, 34 years later, there’s good news and bad for Winter Haven police.

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The Winter Haven Police Department is seeking information concerning the Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007, shooting death of eighteen year old Torey James Smith.  At approximately 2:47 a.m., Smith was shot in the back in the 200 block of Avenue T NE while fleeing from an unknown assailant.  At the time of the shooting he was walking to a relative’s house after having attended a church function.  Anyone with information concerning this shooting is asked to contact the Winter Haven Police Department at (863) 291-5858.  Information can also be given anonymously by calling 1-800-226-TIPS.  A reward of up to $2,000.00 is available for information leading to an arrest.

Torey James Smith

By Jeremy Maready
The Ledger
 
Published: Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 1:29 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 4:21 p.m.

BARTOW | The boyfriend of a Lake Wales woman missing since 2001 has been arrested and charged with killing her, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said.

Dion Kaseta, 50, was indicted by a Polk County grand jury on Wednesday for second-degree murder. He is currently in jail in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Kimberly Bumbalough Mimmovich, who was 37 at the time of her disappearance, went missing Dec. 8, 2001 in Deerfield Beach after telling Kaseta she wanted to see the sun rise over the beach in the quiet of a Sunday morning, police said at the time.

Kaseta told police he last saw her walking near the water in Deerfield Beach.

Her disappearance baffled police and left her mother, her daughter and other members of her Polk County family in anguish.

Detectives in Polk and Broward counties told her mother, Dorothy Bumbalough, that her disappearance was suspicious.

At the time of her disappearance, Mimmovich and Kaseta had been dating for about four months. They had met at Gator Promotions in Winter Haven where they both worked.

The couple had driven to Deerfield Beach on Dec. 8, 2001 where Kaseta’s sister lived.

Kaseta showed Mimmovich his sister’s house so she could find her way there, dropped her off at the beach then drove back to his sister’s home. The two were supposed to meet later that day, but Mimmovich never arrived, police said.

Kaseta told police he searched the beach for several hours and then filed a missing person’s report with the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

October 4, 2009
By Suzie Schottelkotte

THE LEDGER

FORT MEADE | More than 20 years after Fort Meade native Vickie Davis vanished from her Florida Panhandle home, state investigators are taking another stab at determining her fate.

Joseph Baker beside the grave of his sister Joy Nicholas and her son Steven at the Lakeside Memorial Park in Winter Haven. Joy Nicholas was murdered with her 4-year-old son, Steven, in 1984 at a Winter Haven lumber yard.

A cold-case team is taking a new look at the disappearance, an FDLE investigator said last week.

Police and her family always have suspected Davis, who was 20 at the time, didn’t just walk out on her 21-year-old husband, Douglas, and 2-year-old daughter Melissa.

That’s in part because of who Douglas Davis is. Twenty-five years ago, he was accused of beating a co-worker and her 4-year-old son to death with a board at a Bartow lumberyard.

A jury acquitted him of murder charges in June 1986, though investigators maintain they had the right man.

Doug Davis, now remarried and living in Arkansas, said last week he would welcome closure in the disappearance of his former wife, saying he’ll have one question for her if she is found.

“I’d like to ask her why” she left, he said when contacted at his home in Lincoln, Ark.

But her parents say Vickie Davis won’t be able to answer. Jimmy and Barbara Bryant of Fort Meade said they think their daughter is dead, and they want to know what happened.

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The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), Department of Corrections (DC), the Attorney General’s Office, and the Florida Association of Crime Stoppers again teamed up with Florida sheriffs and police chiefs to create a new deck of statewide cold case playing cards. The third edition features 52 of Florida’s unsolved homicide and missing person cases. Beginning today, the decks will be distributed to inmates in all 67 county jails and to supervised offenders reporting in through the state’s 156 probation offices. Each card features a photograph of the victim and factual information about the case.

“This is a creative and well-crafted approach to investigating some of Florida’s toughest cases,” said FDLE Commissioner Gerald Bailey. “I’m proud of the collaboration between law enforcement agencies to put this program in place. It’s worked before and we’re betting it will work again.”

There are approximately 65,000 inmates in the state’s county jails and 141,000 supervised offenders serving on state probation. By distributing the cold case playing cards to offenders, law enforcement will reach thousands of potential sources who may be able to provide critical information about an unsolved case. Printing for the third edition deck was funded through federal grant monies.

Read FDLE Press Release

By DANA WILLHOIT
The Ledger
September 4, 2006

Tim and Jeff Slaten stare at the apartment where their mother was killed in 1981. They added $8,000 of their own to the reward for information leading to a conviction in the case.

Tim Slaten holds the Crime Stoppers card that bears the face of his mother and the details of her slaying outside the apartment where she was killed in 1981 in Lakeland.

Jeff didn’t know what was happening, but Tim glanced into his mother’s bedroom, and what he saw nearly knocked him over. His mother, 31-year-old Linda Slaten, was dead, a metal coat hanger twisted around her neck.

“It was brutal,” Tim said.

Police say Slaten was raped and murdered while her two sons slept. To this day, her killer has not been caught.

In an effort to bring attention to the case, and in the hopes of getting someone with information about the crime to come forward, the two have added $8,000 to the $2,000 reward already being offered by Crime Stoppers for information leading to a conviction in the case.

It was an idea the two men came up with several months ago, as the anniversary of their mother’s murder approached.

Jeff, who was 15 when his mother died, worked overtime shifts at his job as a truck driver. Tim, who was 12 when his mother died, recently sold his house, and used some money from the sale toward the reward.

“Anything that will help, it’s worth a try,” Jeff Slaten said. Friday afternoon, he and his brother came to the apartment complex at 303 Brunell Parkway, where their mother was murdered, to talk about the case.

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By JULIA CROUSE
The Ledger