15 years later, man in jail in killing

The man who initially got probation is incarcerated only after the identity of the victim formerly known as Jane Doe is established.

By RICHARD DANIELSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 1, 1999

TAMPA -- If Vincent R. Quevedo had gone to prison for manslaughter in 1984, he probably would have finished his sentence by now. Instead, he's just starting it.

Quevedo, a 34-year-old computer technician, was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday for violating a sentence of probation in the 1983 death of a girl long known only as Jane Doe.

"I think if she had had a name, he would have gotten some time in prison (in 1984)," Sharron Hawkins said Wednesday of her sister, Vickey Renee Newton. "But because she didn't have a name, she was like an old dead dog: Throw a blanket over her and bury her. She's dead."

Now, with Quevedo headed to prison, Mrs. Hawkins said, "I feel like she can rest. And I can rest."

The case began in July 1983 with the discovery of the nude body of an unknown blond teenager. She had been suffocated, covered by a green blanket and dumped behind the Burger King near Floriland Mall.

Newton had disappeared from her home in Texas in 1982 after calling her grandmother one day to say that she was taking a trip to Arkansas and Florida with two bikers. Just 17, she had been married briefly, but relatives described her as sweet and naive. Her call was the last time her family ever heard from her.

A few weeks after the discovery of her body, a tip led police to Quevedo, a 19-year-old who sometimes lived in his car because his relationship with his family was so strained. Tracked down in California, he agreed to get on a bus and return to Tampa, where he initially denied any involvement in the crime.

Then he said he had picked up a woman for sex and that she had stopped breathing after taking two Valium. He said he didn't know her name.

Detective R.J. Reynolds didn't believe him. Reynolds said that at one point during an interview, Quevedo's older brother, Frank, interrupted to tell his brother, "the Valium story's not working."

Eventually, Quevedo told Reynolds that he and the woman were having sex in his car when she told him to stop and began slapping him. He put his hand over her mouth to silence her and smothered her. He told police he threw away her clothes, took cash from her purse and threw the handbag in the Hillsborough River.

Since there was no physical evidence tying Quevedo to the crime, and police weren't sure he meant to kill her, they charged him with second-degree murder instead of first-degree. The day after Vincent Quevedo was charged, Frank Quevedo strangled his girlfriend with a belt then killed himself with a shotgun. He had been a key witness against his brother.

"We were devastated," Reynolds said Wednesday.

With such a thin case, prosecutors let Quevedo plead guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter. Harry Lee Coe, a circuit judge at the time, sentenced him to seven years of probation.

Almost immediately, Quevedo violated his probation and moved to California. During Wednesday's hearing, he testified that he left because he couldn't find a decent job in Tampa and had trouble staying away from a bad crowd. He said he could feel himself heading back to jail.

"I knew I'd be going around in a circle," he said. "I'd be going in and coming back out, going in and coming back out."

He went to California and got a job in construction. He took computer software, electronics and accounting courses and eventually earned an associate's degree in electronics. He was married briefly, always used his real name and didn't try to hide.

Moreover, Quevedo said California police arrested him on a violation of probation warrant from Florida in 1986. After a few days in jail, a guard unlocked his cell door, and Quevedo asked if he was going back to Florida. No, the guard told him, Florida officials didn't want to extradite him. He was being released.

Quevedo said he heard nothing more until April, when a detective contacted his father about an old arrest warrant. By then, Quevedo had returned to Tampa and found a job installing computer hardware and software. He turned himself in the same day.

"I'm a changed person," he said Wednesday. He said he didn't understand why prosecutors wanted him in prison now when the state let him go in 1986. "What's the difference between 1986 and now, other than (that) I've got a better chance of being productive with my life?"

But while Quevedo was building a new life, Mrs. Hawkins was wondering what had happened to her sister.

She finally learned in January this year. She was looking at the Web site for the Missing Children Help Center and saw an old Tampa Police Department drawing of a Jane Doe found in Floriland Mall's parking lot in July 1983. The bulletin said the young woman's body had burn scars on the hands and thighs -- injuries that matched Newton's scars from a childhood accident.

By coincidence, Mrs. Hawkins contacted Florida authorities shortly after Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies began looking for Quevedo. Since his arrest, Newton's family has put a new tombstone on what had long been an unmarked grave in Tampa and has pressed to make sure Quevedo spent time behind bars.

"Fifteen, 16 years ago, the justice system just sort of discarded Vickey," said Jeff Hawkins, Sharron Hawkins' husband. Quevedo's prison term, he said, "was what we were looking for."

After hearing both sides, Circuit Judge Cynthia Holloway said she understood the balance she was being asked to achieve. While she couldn't second-guess what prosecutors or another judge did in 1984, she said it was almost beyond belief that someone could get probation after killing another person.

"I have no doubt that you are a different person today," she said. But she added that one of the aims of the criminal justice system is punishment. In this case, she said, "the punishment has never been paid."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.