Several informants say Nathan Ramirez told them how he committed the 1995 murder.
By RICHARD RAEKE
Published September 25, 2003
NEW PORT RICHEY - Julius Griffin said he needed no encouragement to testify for the prosecution in the murder trial of his former cellmate, Nathan Ramirez.
"I believed what was done was wrong, regardless of Mr. Ramirez. If it was a relative of mine, I wouldn't want it to go unpunished," he said.
Griffin testified Wednesday that while they shared a cell at the Pasco County Jail, Ramirez gave a detailed description of the rape and murder of Mildred Boroski and said he planned on beating the rap.
In a day of testimony from jailhouse informants, Griffin might have proven the most credible.
Defense attorneys could do little to impeach Griffin's account. He no is longer an inmate and could not be portrayed as brokering a deal with the State Attorney's Office in exchange for his testimony.
James Poff, also a former county jail inmate, testified that Ramirez told him the same story.
"He said had killed some b---- and was going to get away with it on a technicality," Poff said.
Prosecutors say that Ramirez and his friend Johnathan Grimshaw broke into Mildred Boroski's Veteran's Village home on the night of March 10, 1995. After killing her dog with a crowbar and raping the 71-year-old widow, they drove her to a nearby field and shot her twice in the head.
In 1996, Ramirez was convicted and sentenced to death row for his part in the crime. The Florida Supreme Court said in 1999 that deputies from the Pasco County Sheriff's Office coerced his confession, forcing a new trial.
Lacking the confession, Assistant State Attorney Michael Halkitis used Ramirez's jailhouse confessions, calling some less-than-ideal witnesses to build his case.
Wesley E. Brown III, a prisoner sporting a tattoo on the back of his shaved head of a raised middle finger and the phrase "Rehabilitation This," said he hoped his testimony would help him receive favorable conditions for his probation. While in county jail in 1995, he said he beat Ramirez because of Boroski's murder.
Other jailhouse informants told similar stories but varied on some of the details, such as the type of gun Ramirez said he used and how he shot Boroski.
Ramirez's stepmother, Joel Christine Ramirez, testified that she found a revolver in his room the morning after Boroski's killing.
His high school girlfriend, Cristie Gibson, said that along roses, candy and stuffed teddy bears, Ramirez gave her handcuffs, a police blackjack and a ring soon after the murder.
Boroski's daughter, Susan Carter, said those items, and a .38 Colt revolver, once belonged to her father, a former small-town police chief in Ohio.
Mike Hall, a ballistics expert with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said that .38 Colt fired the bullets that killed Boroski.
But Billie Shumway, a forensics expert with FDLE, said no blood or semen was found that could link Ramirez to the crime scene.
Halkitis plans to have the medical examiner testify today before resting his case.
