Who is the anonymous caller that witnessed the murder of a young woman?

CASE DETAILS

On May 1, 1991, a man called 911 and told a Miami police operator that he had just witnessed a horrible crime in the town of Belle Glade, 80 miles to the south. In a rushed, nervous voice, the caller said he was hunting illegally in a sugar cane field, when he heard a car in the distance. The man said that as he ran to hide, a blue Ford Bronco pulled up with two men and a women inside. One man appeared to be Cuban, and the other Mexican, by the way he spoke. The woman, who was black, called one of the men Ricardito. They argued about what appeared to be drugs and money. When she told them she could not give them the money, they killed her with a machete. The eyewitness told the 911 operator that the Bronco’s license plate number contained the numbers seven and two.

Perhaps fearing for his safety, the eyewitness had waited more than a week before contacting police. He never revealed his identity, but he provided them with enough clues to begin their investigation. The caller said that the sugar cane field was behind a building shaped like a giant ice cream cone. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department sent Detective Duane Mayo to investigate:

“As I was passing along the tree line in my vehicle, I saw a small brown object in the tall grass area. I stopped the car, got out and walked over to the bushes. After I got there, I realized it was the body of a female, but the body was in a state which, at that time, I could not determine which race it was.”

Crime scene investigator Sergeant Detective Mark Lewis was called to the scene:

“It was a very heinous crime, very violent. I believed that the killer had a lot of disregard for human life. She had been lying there for approximately a week, maybe a few days longer. She had passed the decomposition stage and had started to enter mummification. Her right thumbprint was the only print left. The majority of her fingers had already turned to skeleton. But with that right thumbprint, we were able to make an identification and prove that she was, in fact, Rebecca Young.”

Rebecca Young was a 21 year-old resident of Belle Glade. In a terrible coincidence, her mother had also been murdered when Rebecca was just 12 years-old. At that time, she went to live with her aunt, Lucille Williams:

“Rebecca was a very quiet, shy girl. She was the type who would do anything she possibly could for anybody. She was the type of child I would give anything to have over again.”

Police looked into Rebecca’s background and discovered she had become involved with a man known to be a petty criminal. According to Det. Mayo:

“She had hooked up with a person who had gotten her into a different type of life than she was accustomed to. He started introducing her to the drug scene and prostitution and things of that nature. He had beat her up on more than occasion and had intimidated her and threatened her into that type of lifestyle.”

Police determined that the man was not a suspect in Rebecca’s murder, but believed that his activities may have led to her death. On May 14, 1991, three weeks after Rebecca’s murder, the sheriff’s department arrested a possible suspect. He was a local man who reportedly told a prostitute that he had killed a black woman. When police pulled him over, they suspected that he was drunk or stoned. Det. Mayo interviewed him:

“He told me that I wanted to talk to him about a murder. And when I told him no, I wanted to talk to him about the prostitute he had been out with, he said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you. I want an attorney.’ At that point we didn’t have any further evidence that he was involved, and I had to release him.”

Even though the suspect was released, police believed he was somehow involved in Rebecca’s murder. But they needed proof, so they searched for the eyewitness who originally called to report the crime. Not much was known about the man, except that his name was Antonio and he said he called from a pay phone because he didn’t have a line at home. Judging from Antonio’s accent, police believed he was born in Cuba.

This crime remains unsolved and the authorities hope Antonio, or any other witnesses, will come forward with more information.

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season five with Robert Stack and in season seven with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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