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Mysterious death stirs fear, suspicion

An 81-year-old man was found stabbed, thousands of dollars missing. Deputies serve a search warrant, and neighbors point fingers.

By THOMAS LAKE
Published June 7, 2006

SHADY HILLS - Hours after the killing of Gilbert Wood, as detectives pulled clues and women wept, Daniel Boyle stood near the crime scene and spoke ill of the dead.

Everyone else said Wood, 81, was harmless and benevolent. He had no criminal record in Florida. But here was Boyle, his neighbor from across the street, describing Wood's double-wide as a drug-dealing haven.

"Hate to say it," said Boyle, 42, "but he probably got what he f---in' deserved."

On that day, May 26, the comments could have been dismissed as idle slander. But a search warrant that the St. Petersburg Times obtained a copy of on Monday put them in new perspective. The Sheriff's Office said it found what appeared to be bloodstains on the seat of Boyle's silver Toyota pickup, as well as a crescent wrench wrapped in a moist towel that seemed to match a wound on Wood's head.

Boyle remained free Tuesday morning, however, and he told a Times reporter the warrant was meaningless.

"Pasco County sheriff's department," he said, "can kiss my a--."

He said his wrench never struck Wood, and he maintained that tests would show the blood in his truck was his own - a casualty of yard work.

"I'll show you the plant I cut it on," he said, pointing east along his barbed-wire fence. "The damn cactus right there at the end."

Boyle said he served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, and his 1.2-acre Rockledge Avenue compound resembles a fortress. State records show that he has lived in Florida since at least 1989 and has never been charged with a crime.

His jungle-like yard brims with bamboo and saw palmetto. Rusty nails point skyward on his fence posts, and a metal gate blocks his driveway. Boyle said the neighborhood is rife with drug dealers. So did his next-door neighbor to the east, Kathleen Jordan, the woman who found Wood's body.

That is one of the few things they agree upon. Jordan told the Times she took Wood to the bank a few days before he died. He withdrew several thousand dollars for a down payment on a new home. When he went to pay Boyle for digging up his palm trees, according to Jordan, Wood accidentally showed him the envelope thick with cash.

Later, according to Jordan, Boyle told her this:

"Man, it'd be so easy to break in the back door and bop him over the head and take it all."

She said she thought he was joking. But on May 26, she found Wood on the floor of his house, covered in stab wounds. The money was gone.

Wood never made it off Rockledge Avenue. But Jordan said she will. She said she is selling her house. She said she is afraid to live next to Boyle. She said his yard is full of booby traps.

She pointed across the fence onto his property, where a homemade wooden watch tower stands in the back yard, crowned with a black flag to commemorate prisoners of war. She said he likes to sit up there, looking down at her swimming pool. She said her husband called Tuesday morning and told her to go somewhere safe.

It was nearly noon when Jordan loaded two young children into a dusty pickup truck and drove west on Rockledge Avenue.

She passed the barbed-wire fence, the blade-sharp vegetation. Boyle was in there somewhere. She did not slow down. The engine roared as she vanished over the hill.

Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245.

[Last modified June 7, 2006, 11:03:21]