Suspects living in Trinidad, New York

ORLANDO: POLICE are pursing investigations into a drug-related murder in Lake County with suspects living in Trinidad and New York. It started out nearly two years ago as a simple call about a vehicle burning in the woods in south Lake County. A week later, it became a murder investigation. It took months and the help of a forensic sculptor before they could even identify a victim. The case was chilling, according to the Orlando Sentinel: A person had been executed in a clay pit near Montverde. Detective Clay Watkins hung onto the case through months of slow puzzle-piecing. What he found was a brutal crime involving an Orange County drug ring with suspects, witnesses and clues spreading from the West Indies to New York. “This is one of those types of cases that really tests an investigator’s skills,” said Linda Green, supervisor of the four homicide detectives with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s easy to stay focused in the first 72 hours of a case, but it’s difficult to remain focused over time, when leads run out.”

Detectives’ work is fodder for intrigue and novels. They often work in secret, chasing the smallest of clues. Dead ends and dead witnesses may foster frustration, but the best are tenacious, staying with it till the end. Cases that start to turn cold spark feverish intensity, and unanswered questions demand answers. One Central Florida case has a bit of it all.

The victim
The first call in the case, on Aug 11, 2002, appeared innocuous. Someone reported seeing a Jeep on fire in the woods near an abandoned clay pit off Old Highway 50, close to Montverde. Firefighters and deputies responded, doused the blaze and towed the Jeep away. Eight days later, a second phone call came: You found the Jeep, but you missed the body, the anonymous caller said. Investigators returned to the woods near the clay pit and found what the caller said was there. The person had been shot several times and the body was badly decomposed. Investigators could not even tell if it was a man or a woman, let alone the person’s identity. The first mission for detectives was finding out who was dead. They tracked down the owner of the 1998 Jeep, but it offered little help, Watkins said. “The owner is not a suspect in the case,” he added. More tips came in by phone, but no one was saying who was killed.

In October, about six weeks after the slaying, they called in Lucy Ross, a forensic sculptor with the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office. She built a clay model of the victim’s head based on bone structure. Ross used information from the Human Identification Laboratory in Gainesville and about five pounds of clay to reconstruct the man’s head. She has built ten reconstructed heads in the past decade. Six of those victims have been identified. The department allowed the media to photograph the clay head in hopes that someone would recognise the victim.

No luck
Then Watkins struck gold. An address where the dead man supposedly lived in Orlando turned up. He went to the Sunchase of Orlando North apartment complex on Woodlake Drive and learned the man’s identity: Caesar Escavarria, age 26. Dental records confirmed it.

The killers
Now it was time to find his killers. Bit by bit, Watkins thinks, he unraveled the mystery: Escavarria and a friend, both originally from Puerto Rico, stole money from a group of drug dealers. The drug dealers, who used several different apartments and homes throughout Orange County, sought revenge and found Escavarria. They drove him to the clay pit and shot him several times. Then the Jeep the killers drove got stuck in the clay pit, so they walked to a nearby convenience store and called for a friend to pick them up. They returned to the clay pit, doused the embedded Jeep with gasoline and set it ablaze.

“They were trying to cover up the crime,” Watkins said. The killers never found Escavarria’s friend, he said. Neither did investigators. Eventually, Watkins learned the names of most of the suspects. He said at least five people are involved in the crime. Watkins keeps making calls. He has talked with Escavarria’s relatives in Puerto Rico, acquaintances of  suspects in Trinidad, and relatives of suspects in New York. The drug dealers, who were selling in Orlando, turned on each other when one stole from another, Watkins said. So far, two arrest warrants have been issued in the case. The first arrest came a little more than a month ago. On April 29, Clement Scantlebury was arrested in Leon County on an arson warrant in connection with the Jeep fire.

Watkins says he later learned that Scantlebury, 21, and another unnamed suspect were burned so badly in the Jeep fire that they required medical treatment. Scantlebury was transferred to the Lake County Jail on May 7 and has since posted $20,000 bail and was released. Watkins had also obtained a first-degree murder warrant for Courtney Christopher Yeates. On May 6, Yeates, 25, was stopped in a car in Georgia and is being held without bail in the Chatham County Jail in Savannah. “He’s fighting extradition,” Watkins said.

Not over yet
Watkins’ fight to find the others involved in the crime continues. His persistence has drawn praise from his colleagues and supervisor. “I have to admire his tenacity,” said Dan Conlee, another detective in the violent crimes unit. “He won’t let it go.” Green, the detectives’ supervisor, agreed. “He’s got the tenacity of a bulldog,” she said. Even more impressive, Green said, is how Watkins has kept the case “hot” despite being swamped with hundreds of other crimes in the past two years. Records show Watkins has responded to more than 500 other cases — from armed robberies to family disputes — since Escavarria’s slaying, she said.