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Hot on the trail of clues to thaw out cold cases

Real cold murder case work may not be as exciting as on TV but can be just as rewarding.

By Alexandra Zayas Times Staff Writer
Published October 26, 2007

All he needs is a glance at another man's hands.

Eric Houston has read the report so many times, he remembers the 2005 slaying as if he witnessed it:

The struggle in the car.

The bullet that tore through the killer's hand before ripping into the victim's head.

The body of 18-year-old Isaiah Brooks, found dead in a field on Nebraska Avenue.

No suspect. Shady witnesses.

Then, a man nicknamed "Rodger Dodger" told someone he pulled the trigger. Street contacts led Houston to a man on probation with the same initials.

That's how he ended up here, in a sterile probation office in Temple Terrace, wondering if the man about to walk through the door has a scar on his hand.

If not, Houston will just walk away, move on to all the other tips waiting to be explored in his eight-hour shift. But he brought his DNA-collecting kit, just in case.

"They're just here to talk to you," the man's caseworker tells him as they walk into the room. "You're not in trouble or anything."

The door shuts.

A few minutes later, Houston emerges from the room, poker-faced.

- - -

The 46-year-old cold case detective wears a tie, a moustache and his hair slicked back. He walks slowly, smiles sparingly and speaks in a Southern drawl.

Eighteen years ago, he decided law enforcement "looked like a good thing to do." He climbed from street patrol to public housing to narcotics to homicide, his dream beat.

He lives in Riverview but works in Tampa.

Two years ago, when the city Police Department assembled a cold case unit, Houston signed up. As he rides to the next stop in a day of pursuing leads, he sums up the thrill of his job.

"People think they can get away with something," Houston says. "And then you show up on their doorstep."

Working in the past is tedious. Evidence disappears. Or gets thrown out. Or Houston realizes crucial samples were never taken.

But sometimes the years work on his side. Couples break up and exes talk. Confessions become bargaining tools for inmates.

It's amazing how long people can hold onto secrets, Houston says.All they need is someone to ask.

When the police put the profile of a 2000 killing in a local newspaper, a woman in jail saw it. She referred Houston to another woman in jail, who pointed him to a man in jail, who helped bury the body.

When Houston approached him, the man said: "I've been waiting for you guys."

- - -

Houston puts the Brooks file away and resurrects that of Antoinette Martin, a 23-year-old thrown out of a car to her death in 1989.

"She was killed just north of here," Houston says, as the unmarked cruiser rounds a corner in East Tampa. Someone in a gold and yellow Grand Prix picked her up at N 30th and E Emma streets. Witnesses heard screams before she was thrown from the car. They saw the killer drag her across the street.

The car's owner couldn't have killed Martin - he was in jail at the time. But the man who borrowed the car lives just blocks from the crime scene.

He was never arrested.

These days, detectives can use the DNA scraped under Martin's fingernails to identify a suspect.

Armed with a search warrant, Houston and fellow detective John Columbia pull up to the man's home. Houston knocks on the rotted wood door frame. Columbia raps on each of the windows. No answer.

They'll have to return later.

Houston scribbles the license plate of the boxy Lincoln in the yard and passes a pile of empty Natural Light beer cans littered over a rusted, overturned grill.

"Nice beer," Houston says, walking away.

More knocks follow. One witness doesn't remember the Martin slaying. No one answers another door that looks like it's been sprayed with bullets. Someone else tells the detective a fellow witness is dead.

Houston shakes his head.

"And that was a good witness."

- - -

A day spent riding around with Houston is like taking a Tampa tour of old crime scenes.

He stands at the corner of E Lake Avenue and N 29th Street and starts pointing - this way, that way.

"I shot a guy and killed him right there," Houston says, looking down the street. That was 1996. The man stole an officer's gun.

To your right, he says, pointing to a Kmart parking lot on Waters and Florida, a guy was found dead. He made it look like a murder, but Houston says he really committed suicide. And just ahead, someone dropped a dead friend off at a Shell station.

His wife, LaJoyce, is a narcotics detective but hasn't become hardened by her job, Houston says. He has.

Houston sifts through murder scene pictures at his office clinically, methodically. He looks past the naked, mutilated woman in the foreground, focusing instead on blood stains on the bathtub. Meat cleavers create splatters, he says. Guns produce high-velocity blood spray.

"If you go to a scene of a murder and get all broke up and fall apart," he says, "you're not worth a damn on a murder case."

- - -

Describing his drive to outsmart killers, Houston recaps his favorite scene in the 1986 film Manhunter, when the detective decodes a note.

"Oh, so sly," Houston quotes. "But so am I."

Victims' families keep him going, like Brooks' mother, who founded Advocates for Safer Communities after her son's death. Houston keeps her informed of big breaks in his case - but only if he's sure they'll pan out.

"I don't get people's hopes up for nothing," Houston says. Definitely not his own.

Sometimes the State Attorney's Office won't think there's enough evidence to prosecute. Or DNA labs will get backed up with fresh cases. Or even a mysterious bullet wound won't lead to a killer.

He's hoping that won't happen in the Brooks case. The elevator doors open to the third floor of the Tampa Police Department headquarters downtown and Houston walks out, clutching a white envelope containing the DNA of the man that could be "Rodger Dodger." Back at the Temple Terrace probation office, Houston had seen a scar.

"If it matches," he says, "he's got a lot of explaining to do."

It'll take a few months to get the results. Until then, a morgue full of cold case files awaits, dating back to 1949. He's helped solve a few cases in the past two years, a small taste of what's ahead.

Ten down so far, 290 to go.

Alexandra Zayas can be reached at azayas@sptimes.com or 226-3354.

Fast Facts:

Cold case updates

On the Antoinette Martin case: Houston tracked down the man who was driving the car that night, and collected his DNA. Houston hopes for results in a few months.

On the Isaiah Brooks case: Houston told Brooks' mother about the "Rodger Dodger" lead.

[Last modified October 25, 2007, 07:26:42]