William Halpern's case has been cleared but it’s not yet closed and police are urging anyone with information to contact them.
Florida police say they have solved the cold case murder of a firefighter and body builder who had his throat slit “from ear to ear” in Florida 37 years ago has been cleared, detectives have announced.
William Halpern, 28, was discovered by his girlfriend, who saw her beau’s body beaten, stabbed, strangled, and had this throat slit in his home in Miramar on Oct. 21, 1986, The Independent reported.
Police believe Halpern was killed because he inadvertently learned information that someone did not want to be released.
Now, 37 years later, detectives have announced who they believe killed the firefighter.
Over the last year-and-a-half, Miramar Cold Case Homicide detectives revisited Halpern’s case and solved the brutal mystery. On Tuesday, Miramar Police Detective Danny Smith identified Harry Collier as one of the men who killed Halpern.
Collier was killed in a murder just months after Halpern’s death, cops said.
“We feel confident that if Collier were alive today we would be charging him with murder and he would stand trial,” Det. Smith said Tuesday at a press conference.
According to police, Collier was connected to two other murders, including Halpern’s, which surrounded a former gym.
Det. Smith said Collier’s fingerprint at the scene of a separate double homicide in the nearby town of Tamarac had similarities with that of the Halpern murder.
"In both of those scenes we had no forced entry, we had a use of a sharp-edged weapon,” he said at the press conference. “We had, the method of binding all three victims was very similar and it was unique in the sense that the way that their hands were bound together and the fact that black electrical tape was used to bind them really painted a picture as to modus operandi, so the way that the murder scene in Tamarac was laid out, very similar if not exact to the Halpern murder scene.”
Halpern worked out at the Apollo gym in Hollywood, Florida. His killing has been tied to a string of other murders in the 1980s that have since been linked with the gym, The Independent reported.
The gym’s owner, Hubert "Bert" Christie, and a former Miami-Dade police officer, Gilbert Fernandez, were arrested and later convicted in the murders of three other people, according to police.
Fernandez, now 70, is still serving his life sentence while Christie died in custody in 2000, according to police.
Officials said Fernandez, who had been a suspect in Halpern’s killing since the 1980s, had been excluded through DNA.
Det. Smith said Halpern had not been involved in the drug rings, home invasions, or other crimes the people at the gym were linked to, however, the body building firefighter most likely had information on other crimes and murders.
"Definitely at the gym, he heard certain things about certain crimes and the idea is that he just wouldn’t play ball, he was not going to keep quiet about it, he was really a loose end for those that could potentially be held responsible for their crimes as a result of what Billy may say," Det. Smith said. "He knew something that he just shouldn’t have known and he heard something he shouldn’t have heard."
The Halpern case has been cleared but it’s not yet closed.
Det. Smith believes there were others involved with Halpern’s murder, and the public is encouraged to contact police with any further information.
“We’re looking for people that were there. We’re looking for individuals that may have ordered this murder. People that were complicit,” Smith said. “We’re not going to stop.”
If you have any information on this crime, call Broward County Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS. Remember, you can always remain anonymous, and you may be eligible for a reward of up to $5,000.
"We're still looking and that's kind of the reason that we wanted to speak to you guys and the public we wanted people to look at Harry Collier's picture, we wanted people to hear the name Harry Collier and hopefully get some kind of an idea, maybe jog their memory and come forward with information that may assist us in finding the additional perpetrators in Billy Halpern’s murder," Det. Smith added.
