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Drugs played a role in slayings

Not surprisingly, drugs were an issue in high-profile homicide cases in Pasco County during 2005.

By STEVE THOMPSON
Published December 31, 2005

When it comes to crime, Pasco County kept a low profile this year. But detectives still had the burden of about a dozen homicides, a fairly typical number for a single year.

Investigators did not have long to wait for the county's first slaying. As the calendar turned over to 2005, a double homicide already awaited them. On Jan. 4, police in Zephyrhills found Craig Thomas, 54, and his girlfriend slain in their mobile home. The bodies had been there since the final days of 2004.

Thomas' troubled, heroin-addicted 27-year-old son, Kyle Thomas, was charged in the killings and awaits trial.

Drugs. It's no surprise they turned up in many of the year's killings.

In June, 46-year-old John Faulkner died in a drug-related robbery at the West Side Efficiency Motel in Hudson. Four 19-year-olds and a 21-year-old were indicted on first-degree murder charges, though only one person pulled the trigger. Officials say two of the suspects - one of whom has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge - never left the getaway car. If you run with the pack, authorities say, you share in the kill.

But not always.

In September, three men were present, authorities say, when 37-year-old John Jason Benjamin was beaten and had his throat slashed over a drug debt. Daniel Parbel and Christopher Wright have been charged with murder. But not Yusef Wilson, who said he even returned with the others as they used gasoline to burn Benjamin's body. He is so far a witness, not a defendant. So is Sherry Harris, who admitted it was to her the drug debt was due.

And there are killings from 2005 that have yet to be solved.

Notably, that of Andrea White. Her body was found in July by the side of a Trinity cul-de-sac. Her husband, David White, had left town with their two girls, ages 4 and 6, raising alarm over the children's fates. But detectives soon found father and daughters in Wilson, N.Y., staying with his sister. No one has been arrested.

About two months later, in another unsolved case, deputies discovered 79-year-old Beverly Bobrick in the bedroom of her Port Richey home. She had blunt-force head wounds. Someone, or perhaps more than one person, ransacked the house and killed her dog, sheriff's officials said, then left through the back door. No one has been arrested, though investigators collected about 1,000 pieces of evidence from the home and have released a sketch of one of two "persons of interest."

And if any persons of interest have to be chased on foot next year, Sheriff Bob White hopes his deputies may soon be in better shape to do it.

In September, he reintroduced mandatory fitness tests. Two days after becoming sheriff in 2001, he killed an earlier testing program, which had caused trouble because so many deputies flunked.

In the newer, gentler version, White has imposed no minimum requirements, asking only for good-faith effort. In 2006, we will see how the crime fighters shape up.

[Last modified December 31, 2005, 00:47:16]