A Largo man is found dead in his apartment. Police have fingerprints, and a neighbor saw someone leave the building. What would it take to catch the killer?
By CHRIS TISCH
Published October 17, 2004
[Photos courtesy of the Largo Police Department]
A palm print left on a closet doorjamb became a crucial piece of evidence in the slaying of William Cosco.
William Cosco had lived in Pinellas County about six months before he was killed in his apartment on June 30, 1986, the same date as his parents’ wedding anniversary. He was 38.
COMING MONDAY Closing in on the truth
Advances in forensic science give detectives new hope.
They heard the banging first, then the yelling.
It was June 30, 1986. The place: the Laguna Vista apartment complex on Belcher Road in Largo. Neighbors on either side of unit J-203, a second floor apartment, heard the commotion. One, Thomas Hessler, heard someone yell: "Stop it, damn it, stop it!"
Another, Susan Regulski, later told police that it sounded "like someone was raped or hurt."
The yelling and thumping were followed by moaning, whimpering and crying.
Hessler was so concerned about the noises that he scribbled the time in his black vinyl notebook. They started at 7:02 p.m., his notes say.
"I wrote down notes on all that occurred in case it became serious," he later told police.
This was an act of monumental prescience, but a fleeting one. Hessler couldn't imagine how serious those moans and whimpers would become, how they would echo in the minds of detectives for decades, how answers would await scientific advances then undreamed of. On June 30, 1986, this was just a quarrel down the hall.
At 7:08 p.m., Hessler went to check on Regulski, passing by J-203 on the way. Seeing that she was fine, he returned to his unit. He turned off his air-conditioner and opened his windows so he could hear what happened next.
Neither he nor Regulski knocked on the door to J-203. They didn't call the police, either.
A minute later, Hessler heard someone gallop down the outside staircase. His view partially blocked by a tree, he looked outside and saw a man in a white T-shirt walking briskly in the parking lot. The man was tan and unshaven and had blond, bushy hair that fell to his collar. He got into a brown Pontiac Sunbird with New York plates and drove away.
For the next three days, neighbors noticed no activity in or around J-203. They talked about the ruckus they had heard, but, still, no one called police.
Neighbors didn't know the man who lived in J-203 very well. His name was William Cosco, and he had lived in the apartment about six months since moving from New York. He was 38 years old.
A couple of Cosco's friends were getting worried. Timothy Jankowski and Alfred Jaramillo had tried many times to call him, only to get a busy signal. They called the phone company and asked an operator to tap into the line. The operator told them that no one was talking on the phone, so it was probably off the hook.
Jankowski and Jaramillo went to Cosco's apartment and knocked. Getting no answer, they left and went out. Several hours later, just before 2 a.m. on July 3, they returned and tried the door. It was open. They stepped inside.
The lights were on. So was the rabbit-eared television, though the sound was turned all the way down. The phone lay on the floor, the cord severed.
The cushions on the couch had been tossed about. The coffee table in front of the couch was askew. A white coffee cup, three packs of Vantage cigarettes, an ashtray, a comb and Cosco's eyeglasses were on the table.
A pool of dark liquid had soaked the carpet in the dining area.
Jaramillo walked across the burnt-orange carpet to the bedroom door. It was closed. He tried to push it open, but something was blocking it.
* * *
Detective John Carroll was asleep at home when his phone rang about 2:30 a.m., effectively ending his Fourth of July weekend before it had begun. It was his sergeant, who told Carroll to get to Laguna Vista apartments.
At the time, Carroll was a six-year police veteran who had spent four years as a detective and had a number of murder investigations under his belt. He would stay in detectives for another four years, the adolescent period of a career that would eventually see him become second-in-command of the Largo Police Department, the job he has today.
Carroll has never forgotten what he saw in apartment J-203 that night. Every Fourth of July since, through the firecrackers and the cookouts, he has thought of William Cosco.
Cosco had been stabbed six times in the face, chest, neck and back. The pool of blood in the dining area indicated that the violence had started there, then moved to the bedroom, spattering blood on the dining room table, an ironing board and walls along the way. When Jaramillo had tried to open the bedroom door, it had struck Cosco's body.
Cosco's hands were sliced seven times, defensive wounds that suggested Cosco had tried to fend off the killer.
Cosco was shirtless and wore cutoff blue jeans. His hands were tied behind his back with a cord from his Remington electric razor. A yellow fitted sheet from his bed was tied over his wrists. The killer had then knotted the other end of the sheet to a leg of the bed.
The bedroom wall was smeared with blood stains that arched toward the door, meaning Cosco had tried to get up and out of the bedroom. Because he was tethered to the bed, he had fallen just short of the doorway. His carotid artery severed, he bled to death on the floor.
The killer had washed his hands in the bathroom sink and left.
Carroll wondered why the killer had left Cosco alive and tied to the bed. Perhaps the killer had wanted Cosco to die slowly but didn't want to risk the chance he would escape. Whatever the reason, the murder was brutal enough that if a killer was caught, prosecutors most likely would seek the death penalty.
But the killer wasn't caught - not that night, and not for years after. For 18 years, the William Cosco murder remained unsolved in the files of the Largo P.D. Carroll was merely the first detective to take it on. Many others would pick it up, rethink it, wrestle with it, dream about it.
They were after two things: the killer and some kind of justice for William Cosco's family. They spent what felt like a lifetime trying to get them.
* * *
From what investigators could tell, Cosco had been dead between 24 and 72 hours.
Jankowski and Jaramillo, Cosco's friends, told investigators that Cosco's brown Sunbird was missing. Cosco's car keys couldn't be found in the apartment. His wallet also was gone.
Carroll believed that the killer was the man Hessler, the neighbor, had seen leaving the apartment in Cosco's car three days earlier. He put out an alert to other police departments to keep an eye out for the brown Sunbird with New York plates.
Inside the apartment, forensic technicians culled 49 fingerprints from the walls and furniture. Nine of them couldn't be matched to Cosco or any of his friends.
Carroll suspected that some of those prints could be the killer's.
But the most promising piece of evidence was a bloody palm print left on the door jamb of the bedroom closet. The print, which was in Cosco's blood, could have been left only by the killer.
Carroll just needed to find someone to match it.
* * *
William Cosco grew up in the ground-floor unit of a townhouse in Utica, N.Y. His father was a television repairman, his mother a secretary. His birth was met with great excitement by his parents, who felt blessed to finally have a second child - and a boy at that - eight years after their daughter was born.
His mom and dad called him Billy.
Though the Coscos would have only the two children, their extended family was large and close. Brothers and sisters lived up and down their street, raising families of their own and giving Billy a large network of cousins. Billy and his cousins often crammed into the car with his father to head to Canada on fishing trips.
Billy attended McGill University in Montreal, where he studied psychology. A bright student who enjoyed the arts and literature, Billy next moved to New York City, where he worked in publishing and theater for several years.
Though Billy liked the big city, he had visited Pinellas, where his parents spent the winter after they retired, and liked the slower pace and nice weather. He moved to Largo in the winter of 1986. Two of his cousins also lived in Pinellas County.
His sister, Barbara, who still lived in Utica, came to visit him in June of that year. They went to Disney World.
"I feel like I'm in paradise," Billy told her. "It's beautiful down here."
On the Fourth of July, Billy was invited to a family get-together.
That morning, his cousin Robert Palmiero opened his newspaper and saw an article about a murder at Laguna Vista Apartments. The article said the victim had not been identified but had lived in Unit J-203.
Palmiero recognized it as Billy's apartment. He called the Largo Police Department to report his worry.
He was told to talk to John Carroll.
* * *
It didn't take long for Carroll to form a theory about how William Cosco had crossed paths with a killer.
Cosco, who was gay, liked to bring men home to his apartment, his friends told investigators. He sometimes even brought home hitchhikers or drifters. Once, a visitor beat him up. His friends cautioned him, but he continued to invite strangers home with him.
He met many of these men at gay bars in Dunedin and Clearwater.
The morning Cosco's body was found, Carroll stayed at the apartment overseeing forensic efforts until dawn, then went to the autopsy. That evening, Carroll and his sergeant visited four gay bars in Clearwater and Dunedin.
They flashed a photo of Cosco they had taken from his apartment. Employees and customers at all four bars recognized him as a regular. No one initially remembered seeing him there three days before.
Carroll went to work tracing Cosco's final days. He learned that on June 30, Cosco had gone fishing in the morning on Clearwater Beach, where he got a parking ticket. He went to the bank that afternoon and took out a money order, then went to his cousin's business.
From there, Cosco stopped at a clothing store at Countryside Mall. Carroll learned that Cosco may have been accompanied by another man, but nobody could remember what the guy looked like.
From there, the trail went cold.
Three mornings after Cosco's body was found, Carroll again was awakened at home by an early call from his sergeant.
A Clearwater police officer had found Cosco's car abandoned in front of a drapery store on S Belcher Road, about a mile from Laguna Vista. The curious officer had run the car's tags because it was sitting in the parking lot with its windows down in a rainstorm. The keys dangled in the ignition.
Dispatch informed the officer that the car was stolen and should be treated as a crime scene.
The car was towed to a lab in Tampa. Analysts found a bloody jackknife under the seat. They also found Cosco's wallet stuffed in the glove box, the money missing. Strangely, no fingerprints were found in the car or on the knife.
Carroll kept returning to Cosco's favorite bars, and his persistence paid off.
A bartender remembered seeing Cosco with a drunk, obnoxious man on the day of the murder. Patrons also recalled the man, who was easy to remember because he had had a gauze bandage on his right elbow. He told other patrons he had suffered fish poisoning while working on a boat in Tarpon Springs.
Carroll finally had his first hot lead.
Using the witnesses' accounts, a police artist sketched the man with the bandage. The patrons and bartender said he had dirty blond, bushy, collar-length hair. He was very tan, wore a tank top and appeared to be new to the area. That sounded a lot like the man who had been seen leaving Cosco's apartment.
Patrons said he drank grapefruit juice and vodka. He smoked nonmenthol cigarettes and was slightly dirty.
They said he looked like a drifter.
* * *
Carroll headed to Tarpon Springs to look for Mr. Bandage.
On a hunch, he started at the Police Department. Sure enough, a detective said he had seen the man wandering the streets a few weeks before. The detective had taken the man to a hospital, where his arm was bandaged. The detective hadn't asked the man's name but told him to head to Quest Inn, a Clearwater homeless shelter.
Carroll got more good news at the inn. The front desk clerk recognized the man but said he had been kicked out for drunkenness on July 3 - the day Cosco's body was found.
When he left, he had forgotten a pair of work boots and a shirt. Carroll took them with him. They had no obvious blood stains, but the detective knew that even the tiniest spit of blood could link the man to Cosco's murder. He sent them to the lab.
Best of all, the clerk gave him Mr. Bandage's name: William Tracy Skillman. Carroll rushed back to the police station and ran Skillman's name through national crime records.
Skillman, 33, had a long arrest record in Arizona, New Jersey and California. The charges included burglary, assault and shoplifting. The most recent arrest had come four months earlier in Covina, Calif. Carroll called that Police Department and asked for the fingerprints and photographs taken after that arrest.
With the photos, Carroll could confirm that Skillman was the man who had been seen with Cosco the day of Cosco's death. And if the fingerprints matched the unknown prints that had been found in the apartment, Carroll probably had his man.
When Carroll showed the California photos to patrons at Cosco's favorite bars, they said Skillman was definitely the bandaged man. Carroll sent Skillman's prints to the lab to be compared with all the unknown prints found in Cosco's apartment.
Carroll also learned that Skillman was still in the area. He was working on a grounds crew at Clearwater Country Club and living in the greenskeeper's shack. Carroll kept him under surveillance while the lab did its work.
But just as quickly as Skillman had become a solid suspect, the case against him dissolved.
The lab called to say that no blood or other evidence had been found on the boots and shirt Skillman had left behind at Quest Inn. And his fingerprints didn't match any of the unidentified ones found in Cosco's apartment.
With the investigation flagging, Carroll confronted Skillman at the golf course. The detective knew right away that Skillman wasn't his guy.
Skillman was too cool and calm. He admitted being at the gay bar. He said he recognized Cosco and drank with him. He said he never went to his apartment.
When Carroll asked Skillman if they could take his palm print to compare with the bloody print found on the door jamb, Skillman said sure, no problem.
Days later, the lab said it was not Skillman's palm that left the bloody print on Cosco's closet door.
Carroll's only suspect was now eliminated.
Suddenly, he had nothing to go on. As the months and years rolled past, Carroll did what he could. He entered information into an FBI database of murders in hopes of finding similar cases. He found a few in which gay male victims had been stabbed and bound, including one in St. Petersburg, but none appeared to be linked to the Cosco case.
The lack of answers was frustrating for Carroll, who is from a family of several police officers, including his grandfather, who fought crime in New York on horseback. The open investigation made Carroll feel inadequate and frustrated.
A strong advocate for victims, Carroll also felt deeply for Cosco's family, whose New York hometown is about 85 miles southeast from the city where Carroll was born.
"It's terrible. It's nagging," Carroll said. "You know there's a family that has no closure and always will be left to wonder what happened to their loved one."
Cosco was murdered on his parents' wedding anniversary, their 52nd. Over the years, the day became more haunted than special.
Cosco's father, who also is named William, came to visit Carroll once. He called a few times to check on the investigation but never nagged.
"I could just tell he was devastated," Carroll said.
The Coscos returned to their winter home in Florida once or twice after their son's murder. After that, they could not come back.
"It brought back too many sad memories," said Robert Palmiero, Cosco's cousin, who saw the bloody mess inside the apartment when he was asked to pack up his cousin's things.
In 1990, almost four years after Cosco was murdered, Carroll was promoted and transferred to road patrol. When he left the detective division, his colleagues gave him a plaque commending him for his good work. But with typical cop black humor, they teased him about his open cases by listing the names of the two people whose killers he could not find.
One of those names was William Cosco.
Carroll hung the plaque in his living room, next to his Army commendation and honorable discharge, along with all his police medals and decorations. Whenever he looked at that plaque, he would be reminded of that awful, bloody, unsolved murder, the one that always spoiled his Fourth of July.
But Carroll, who would later supervise the detective division, and the investigators who succeeded him would not give up.
Said Carroll: "The case is never closed."
Back in Utica, family members found their gazes lingering on people who looked like Billy. His mother, Josephine, took it particularly hard.
"She never got over grieving for him," said Cosco's sister, Barbara Gotte.
For several years, Cosco's mother set a place at the table for her son during holiday gatherings.
"I'm not crazy," Mrs. Cosco told her daughter. "But maybe he'll come."
MONDAY: Advances in forensic science give detectives new hope.
