Pod Insights Park Predators The Boat Ramp About this episode In 1980 when two violent crime scenes erupted near a popular boat ramp on Anna Maria Island, Florida the small island community was tossed into chaos. As time ticked by, leads were few and the case developed a sense of mystery unlike anything residents had seen before.
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0:30 Speaker 01 Hi, park enthusiasts. It's Delia. If you listen to Park Predators, you already know that sometimes the most beautiful places can hide the darkest secrets. But what happens when the danger isn't miles from civilization? It's in your community, and sometimes even in your own backyard. On Crime Junkie, hosts Ashley and Britt dive into real cases every week, from missing persons to unsolved murders, breaking down what we know, what we don't, and the details that still don't sit right. If you care about the stories behind the headlines and the victims at the center of them, you'll want to check out Crime Junkie. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
1:10 Speaker 01 Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia Diambra. And the story I'm going to tell you today takes place on a sliver of land off the west coast of Florida called Anna Maria Island. This geographic area isn't a national park or state park, per se, but it is a premier destination for tourists, boaters, vacationers, and beachcombers. The website for Anna Maria Island's Chamber of Commerce describes it as "a piece of paradise" and was once one of the Sunshine State's best-kept secrets. It's covered in white sand beaches, tropical plants, beautiful natural wildlife, as well as restaurants, rental houses, and condos.
1:51 Speaker 01 But the reason I picked this case for this show is because, in my opinion, it's less about the recreation space and more about the recreationalists who are at the center of it. People like you and me. They were wrapping up a day of being in the great outdoors when the unthinkable happened. An amenity the victims in this story used and so many other island visitors use is the Kingfish Boat Ramp, which is located in the city of Holmes Beach. The Anna Maria Islander reported that for a long time, the boat ramp was actually just part of unincorporated Manatee County. But the city police department regularly patrolled it anyways to, I presume, make sure people weren't parking their vehicles and trailers there overnight or getting into trouble.
2:36 Speaker 01 Today, it is actually part of the city of Holmes Beach. The ramp bears the name “Kingfish” as an ode to the species of mackerel that can be caught off its coastline. According to the website visitflorida.com, “Kingfish are a prize game fish that prefer warmer waters. And if you’re lucky enough to snag one of them, you’ll notice right away that they have a habit of spinning, leaping, and making explosive movements in the water to try and get away.” The same thing could be said about the perpetrator in today’s story, who, in quite an explosive and violent fashion, managed to outmaneuver a popular recreation space crawling with
3:16 Speaker 01 witnesses, as well as generations of law enforcement investigators. This is Park Predators.
4:05 Speaker 01 Shortly before 5:00 PM on Friday, August 1, 1980, an 18-year-old named Annie Barrows was driving back from a fried chicken restaurant in Bradenton, Florida, while vacationing with her family and cousins on Anna Maria Island. With her was her younger teenage cousin, Anna DuMoi. As the pair made their way into the city of Holmes Beach, they passed by the Kingfish Boat Ramp, which was just a short distance away from the rental home that their families had been sharing for about two weeks. While passing by, Annie and Anna looked over and saw Anna's father, Juan Dumas, and Anna's two younger brothers, Eric and Mark, putting Juan's boat on a trailer and getting ready to leave.
4:46 Speaker 01 Alongside the Dumas family was Annie's father, Raymond Barrows. As the girls passed, Annie honked the car horn and waved to the group before continuing on toward the rental house. That particular weekend marked the final few days of the two families' joint vacation. And according to what Annie told me, the boys taking the boat out on that Friday was the last full day they were going to be able to have on the water. So, they were soaking in every last second they could. When Annie and her cousin got home after passing by the boat ramp, they unloaded the fried chicken they'd picked up for dinner and bumped into their moms, who were already in their bathing suits and heading out to a nearby beach. The plan was for the girls to get their suits on and join their moms at the beach, and then when the guys got home, everyone would meet up and hang out before having dinner
5:31 Speaker 01 together. Unexpectedly, though, not long after Anna and Annie's moms left for the beach, the girls heard a knock at the door. But they were wary enough not to answer it while home alone. So after the person who knocked walked away and got into a vehicle, Annie opened the door and went outside. Right as she was doing that, she saw a neighbor who informed her that there had been an accident involving her cousins, uncle, and father. The neighbor said that the family needed to get to Blake Memorial Hospital in Bradenton as soon as possible. Concerned by the news, Annie and Anna immediately ran to the beach to tell their mothers what was going on. And a short while later, all the girls piled into the car and headed out towards Bradenton.
6:15 Speaker 01 The street they had to turn onto, though, to get off the island was Manatee Avenue, which was the main thoroughfare that everyone used to enter or exit the mainland. Not long after turning onto Manatee Ave., the group came to a screeching halt when they saw Juan's station wagon and boat trailer were jackknifed and crashed on the side of the road. A few bystanders and police officers from Holmes Beach Police Department were gathered around the scene. And there was blood visible in the car, and crime scene tape was wound around the entire perimeter, and there was blood visible in the car. In our interview, Annie described the site to me as having all the hallmarks of an active crime scene investigation.
6:57 Speaker 01 When she got out to see what was going on, Annie told me that she asked a police officer if everyone inside the station wagon was okay, to which the officer didn't really give her a straight answer. Annie said he just spoke into his radio and notified another officer that family members had arrived on scene. Then, he told Annie to leave and go straight to the hospital in Bradenton. By that point, Juan Dumas, his two younger sons, and Annie's dad Raymond, had already been transported, so they weren't physically still on scene. When the girls and their mothers arrived at the hospital, they were quickly ushered into a conference room and told that 46-year-old Juan, 13-year-old Eric, and 9-year-old Mark
7:40 Speaker 01 and Raymond had all been shot in the head. Unfortunately, only 52-year-old Raymond would manage to survive the attack. He'd been shot in the back of his neck, but miraculously, the bullet had not severed any major organs or arteries. It was still lodged in his neck, though, and the surgeons decided to just leave it alone versus try to remove it because they were worried if they did try to take it out, Raymond could become paralyzed. The news of the crime was both horrifying and confusing to Annie and her family members because she had literally just laid eyes on all the guys minutes before whatever happened to them went down. She recounted for me in our interview that trying to make sense of someone murdering
8:22 Speaker 01 her uncle and two of her young cousins and almost killing her father was impossible to do at that moment. And if all of that wasn't shocking enough, the hits just kept coming when Annie and the rest of her family members learned that a man who lived at a condominium complex near the crime scene had also been attacked and killed, reportedly by the same gunman.
8:47 Speaker 01 According to the coverage in this case, and my interview with Annie, when paramedics and police officers arrived on scene shortly after the crash, they saw the Dumois boat trailer and station wagon jackknifed on the north side of Manatee Avenue. First responders immediately observed a man behind the steering wheel with a fatal gunshot wound to his head, two young boys in the backseat who'd also been shot in their heads, and numerous bystanders gathered around the vehicles caring for a man on the ground who was also bleeding from the back of his head. A short distance away from the crash scene, there was another scene in a nearby Foodway grocery store parking lot that was swarming with bystanders who were tending to a 60-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the back of his head.
9:31 Speaker 01 Police quickly identified the fifth victim at the second crime scene as Home Speech resident Robert Matsky. Robert was a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who lived at a condo across from where the Dumois station wagon and boat had jackknifed. According to what his relatives told authorities and later the press, Robert had witnessed the crash while doing yard work and immediately gone inside to tell his wife Mary to dial 911. After that, he'd stepped back outside and saw a guy emerge from the crashed station wagon, grab a bike out of the boat, and take off toward the Foodway parking lot. Concerned by the sight and likely wondering why someone would leave the scene of an accident, Robert got into his convertible and followed the stranger to confront him.
10:16 Speaker 01 A woman who'd been shopping at the Foodway told police that Robert and the unknown man had a brief exchange of words before the assailant pulled out a gun and shot the 60-year-old in the back of his head while he was still sitting in the driver's seat of his convertible. After that, the stranger got into another vehicle that was already parked in the grocery store's lot and drove off.
10:37 Speaker 01 To get a better grasp of what they were dealing with and to try and get some answers, detectives worked the two crime scenes as best as they could, collecting bullet fragments and dusting for fingerprints. They were up against some challenges, though, because reportedly, there was no murder weapon found at either scene. And when the Dumois station wagon and boat trailer jackknifed, it had come to rest right in the middle of some sprinklers and gotten coated in water and mud. So, forensically, those were not ideal conditions for fingerprinting the exteriors. Authorities ultimately ended up towing the station wagon and Robert's car to the city's garage for further evaluation. There, they were able to pull several latent fingerprints from those items of evidence,
11:20 Speaker 01 which they hoped to eventually compare against prints from other police agencies. Some of the source material states that the fingerprints collected came from the Dumois station wagon and boat, but from what specific areas in or on those vehicles is a bit hard to pin down. Annie told me that her family had always been told that police couldn't find any usable prints from inside the station wagon due to too much contamination at the crime scene. But that explanation never made sense to her because she remembered from being at the crime scene herself that the way the station wagon had jackknifed against the boat trailer, one of the back passenger doors had been pinned against the family's boat and trailer, which only left one rear passenger door that the assailant could have escaped
12:04 Speaker 01 from. She pointed out during our interview that in order for the killer to get out of the backseat of the car, he had to have touched the inside door handle lever to open the door. She thinks that the rear door handle would probably have been a key area that law enforcement checked for forensic evidence, like a fingerprint. But the only source I read that mentioned if police got prints from inside the station wagon was an article by the Bradenton Herald, which was published well after the crime. And it didn't specify if the rear door handle on the inside was where any prints were found. Anyway, in addition to police processing the victims' cars for clues,
12:44 Speaker 01 detectives also interviewed about a dozen or so witnesses who'd seen parts of the incident unfold. The initial description of the shooter those folks provided was that he was a clean-shaven, slender, white male with wavy, dark-colored hair. He was between 30 and 40 years old, weighed about 160 pounds, and stood roughly six feet tall. He was also seen wearing white shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt. He'd been spotted leaving the Foodway crime scene in either a late-'70s or new-model Chrysler Cordoba or a Ford LTD. His vehicle reportedly had either a tan or light-colored vinyl body and a dark-colored top, or rusty-brown body or tan vinyl top. Between all the witness accounts, it seems there were some discrepancies on the make,
13:29 Speaker 01 model, and color details of the suspect's vehicle, which is really unfortunate. But, all that aside, naturally, the one person police really wanted to speak with as soon as possible was Raymond Barrows, the sole survivor of the attack. So, on Saturday, August 2nd, they visited him at the hospital to get an interview. According to news coverage, archive audio of Raymond's interview with police, and my interview with his daughter, Annie, his account of what happened went like this. "As he, Juan, and the boys were leaving the gravel parking lot at the boat ramp, a man pushing a bicycle approached their station wagon and asked for a ride to some nearby apartments. Apparently, where the guy wanted to go was very close to the boat ramp,
14:14 Speaker 01 but he explained that he'd injured his ankle while riding his bike, and he couldn't make it there unless he got a ride from someone. Annie told me that her dad said the apartments the guy wanted to go to were less than a quarter mile from the boat ramp, and you could actually see the buildings from the ramp's parking lot. So, she believes that's why, despite her Uncle Juan normally not being the kind of person who would pick up hitchhikers, decided to do so in this instance. Annie explained that she thinks because her uncle was a physician by trade, he probably felt more inclined to help the stranger since the guy claimed he had an injured ankle. Also, Juan's eldest son, who was also named Juan, was an avid cyclist at the time. So, it seems that perhaps for those reasons,
14:58 Speaker 01 plus the fact that the area was busy with activity and visitors, Juan felt more comfortable letting the guy with the bike and the bum ankle into the family's car." Anyway, right before leaving the boat ramp, Raymond said that he and Juan placed the hitchhiker's bike into the boat and then directed the guy to slide into the backseat of the station wagon next to Eric and Mark. Raymond remained in the front passenger seat, and Juan got behind the steering wheel. Then, the group pulled onto Manatee Avenue. But just moments later, Raymond said he felt a sudden jolt, almost like they'd gotten rear-ended by another vehicle. But then his thoughts quickly changed when he saw blood dripping down Juan's neck and soaking into his shirt. Annie said Raymond then lost consciousness, but quickly came to a moment later
15:43 Speaker 01 and looked over and saw Juan turning toward the backseat to holler at someone, "Why did you shoot them?"
15:51 Speaker 01 Based on everything I gathered, Raymond's memory of the events was somewhat hazy because he was going in and out of consciousness at the time. But police believe the stranger in the backseat had displayed a 22-caliber handgun before the shooting. Based on Raymond's pieced-together recollection, authorities felt confident that the order of the shooting was that he'd been hit first, then Eric and Mark, and finally Juan. Though I did see some later coverage that had the order of victims as Raymond, and then Juan, and then the boys. All in fairly quick succession. After being shot, Raymond said he'd passed out again, and the next thing he remembered was waking up laying on the grass outside of the station wagon with paramedics hovering over him. When police detectives asked Raymond
16:35 Speaker 01 if he recognized the shooter who'd attacked him in the Dumas, he stated he'd never seen the man before in his life. Thankfully, though, Raymond was able to remember his facial features, which allowed authorities to develop a composite sketch. And as soon as that image was completed, they pushed it out to the public. I'll be honest, the image itself isn't the most detailed sketch I've ever seen, but there are some aspects of it that stand out. For example, the shape of the guy's hair, his slender face, the shape of his mouth, and so forth. I've included a picture of the sketch in the blog post for this episode, so you guys let me know what you think. From the start, Raymond and the surviving members of the Dumois family couldn't think of anyone who'd want to harm them.
17:20 Speaker 01 Juan was a Cuban immigrant and well-liked pediatrician in Tampa, and Raymond was a longtime bell captain at the Key Biscayne Hotel in Miami. Neither man had any prior arrests or criminal history. And Robert Matsky, it appeared, had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to be a good citizen. A day or so into the investigation, the Home Beach Police Department began to take some flak for allegedly not acting quickly enough and issuing an all-points bulletin for the suspect. An article by the Bradenton Herald stated that the police didn't put out a bulletin until 5:39 PM, nearly 40 minutes after the murders. The drawbridges for the island had also not been sealed off after the crime, but the
18:03 Speaker 01 police department's response to that pointed criticism was that their agency didn't have the authority to secure the bridges. That was something solely controlled by the US Coast Guard. And at that time, that agency wouldn't just shut down key access points to the island at a moment's notice. But to me, this whole "the bridges stayed open" thing is such a critical detail because it's very possible that was how the killer fled so quickly after the crime. There's really no other way on or off Anna Maria Island unless you get onto a boat, which I don't think anyone who's commented on this crime suspects was the case. The whole incident, from the way Raymond and Juan were approached at the boat ramp, to them all being shot in the head, to the fact that the killer seemed to have a getaway
18:47 Speaker 01 car waiting at the Foodway Grocery Store, it all prompted law enforcement to wonder if perhaps the killings were less of a freak coincidence, but rather something more intentional, like a hit job. So they began digging into Juan and Raymond's lives, tearing into their backgrounds to see if there were any enemies or secrets that no one knew about. Anything that pointed to a motive for murder.
19:19 Speaker 01 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene. A dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks. The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
19:39 Speaker 02 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
19:47 Speaker 01 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
19:54 Speaker 03 Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
19:57 Speaker 04 That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
20:02 Speaker 05 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
20:07 Speaker 01 I'm Eva Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts. What investigators learned early on was that the Dumas and Barrows would regularly take vacations together. Annie's mother, Dora, was Dr. Juan Dumas's sister, so the families being together was not unusual at all. During this particular trip to Anna Maria Island, though, the Dumas's eldest son, who was also named Juan, didn't join the family. He was a college student at the time, studying for a future medical career.
20:49 Speaker 01 He'd stayed behind in Tampa that weekend to work at his father's pediatric office. He wasn't as into fishing as his younger brothers, Eric and Mark. So normally, whenever boating activities were on the schedule, his dad would just take Eric and Mark out since they were more into fishing. Annie's older brother, Ray, also hadn't been on vacation with the group. He'd remained at home in Miami, where the Barrows lived. Maria Dumois would later tell WFTS how horrific the crime was to everyone from both families. She said there was a point where she wasn't even sure she'd be able to keep her sanity because her grief and pain were just too intense. But that didn't stop authorities from fairly publicly taking a hard look into the victim's lives and reputations.
21:34 Speaker 01 For example, investigators went through all of Juan's patient records to determine if there were any former or current patients who'd lodged complaints against him or put out any issues with his practice or medical care. But there wasn't a single person who'd complained about his business. Investigators also looked into whether Juan's Cuban heritage or any potential connections he might have had with folks affiliated with anti-Fidel Castro activities could be to blame. But there was absolutely nothing there either in terms of motive. Next, they delved into Raymond Barrow's life, and just like they had with Juan, they focused on the fact that he was also of Cuban descent. They also scrutinized his activities as a bell captain for the Key Biscayne Hotel in Miami.
22:18 Speaker 01 Because during the 1960s, when he'd started working there, the hotel was known as a hotspot for celebrities and influential figures. In 1980, the year of the murders, there was a lot of notoriety swirling around the establishment, and at the time Miami was battling a serious crime wave that mostly involved elements of organized crime, drug trafficking, and people involved in all sorts of sketchy business. So investigators explored whether Raymond was involved in some kind of illegal activity that had caused him to become a target. However, he denied such accusations, and there was never anything found that tied him to illegal bad actors. Meanwhile, authorities used divers to search the waters around the boat ramp and an aircraft
23:00 Speaker 01 to fly over the Kingfish Boat Ramp parking lot, looking for any sign of the murder weapon or vehicles that resembled the suspect's getaway car. Also around that time, commissioners in Manatee County approved a $10,000 reward for information that could lead to an arrest in the case. But those funds didn't seem to really move the needle. Law enforcement was also fielding lots of tips and phone calls from people who claimed to know someone who looked like the man in the composite sketch. The whole weekend after the crime, investigators' phones were ringing with folks from all over claiming they knew who the guy might be or that they'd seen him previously.
23:38 Speaker 01 One of those calls came from a couple in Hyde Park, Florida, near downtown Tampa, who said they'd seen the composite sketch in the newspaper and believed they'd been housing a guy who closely resembled the suspect. That man's name was Richard Lee Whitley. And when authorities got ahold of the 34-year-old, they quickly learned he had an extensive criminal record for offenses including assault, larceny, sodomy, and, most importantly, he was currently on the run from Virginia authorities and wanted for murder. According to coverage by the Bradenton Herald, Richard was suspected of killing a 63-year-old woman in Fairfax County, Virginia, in late July 1980, just days before the boat ramp murders.
24:22 Speaker 01 Afterwards, he'd stolen her credit cards and car and fled to Florida to evade capture. The FBI had chased Richard to the Sunshine State, but were unable to pinpoint his location until the couple from Hyde Park called. A Tampa police detective interviewed Richard and asked him if he was involved in the Kingfish boat ramp killings, but Richard denied being the perpetrator. He admitted to the murder he'd committed in Virginia, but was adamant he had nothing to do with the situation in Holmes Beach. He claimed his alibi for August 1st was that he'd been at a mission for unhoused people in Tampa during the timeframe of the murders. When investigators went to verify that story, they learned that Richard had, in fact, been at the facility in Tampa at 6:00 PM on August 1st. He'd signed the registry book for the mission,
25:07 Speaker 01 and there were witnesses that worked for the facility who remembered seeing him in the food line as early as 5:05 PM. That information was kind of all the proof authorities needed to be confident to clear him, since he couldn't have had enough time to commit the crime in Holmes Beach shortly after 5:00 PM and then gotten back to the mission in Tampa in order to be seen in the food line at 5:00 after 5:00 o'clock. In addition to having a solid alibi, Richard's fingerprints didn't match some of the prints authorities had managed to pull from the crime scene. So shortly after he came on law enforcement's radar, he was formally cleared as a suspect in the Boat Ramp case. But he was later extradited back to Virginia to face the murder case against him there.
25:50 Speaker 01 Annie, Raymond Barrow's daughter, told me in our interview that despite what authorities initially told the press back in 1980, which was that her dad said Richard had similar features as the shooter, she said that when Raymond actually saw Richard's picture on television after the crime, he'd immediately uttered that he was not the guy who was responsible. So with Richard off the board, investigators refocused their efforts on pursuing other leads that had come in. According to reporting by WFTS, there were about two dozen additional persons of interest that were looked into. Within a week of the crime, the Dumois family made funeral arrangements. Carol Jenkins reported for the Tampa Tribune that Juan, Mark, and Eric were all laid
26:32 Speaker 01 to rest in a joint funeral service at a Catholic church in Tampa. Around 500 people attended, including families of patients that Juan had treated over the years as a pediatrician. About four months into the investigation, law enforcement's case was at a standstill. Leads had dried up, and witnesses from the crime scenes were unable to remember any additional details about the suspect, despite undergoing hypnosis at law enforcement's request. The hypnosis sessions, though, did contribute to a second suspect sketch being made. About a month after the second sketch came out, a third one was created, which was even more unique than the first two. That third image came as a result of Raymond Barrow's undergoing hypnosis, and he dictated
27:15 Speaker 01 his recollection of the assailant's appearance. But according to Raymond's daughter Annie, that image was a bit more intense-looking. The suspect had very bushy eyebrows and more accentuated hair texture. She believes that the ongoing nightmares her dad was experiencing after the crime caused him to provide an exaggerated description of the perpetrator's features. She personally doesn't think the later sketch her dad helped with is as accurate as the first or second one, simply because her dad's memory was likely sharper and less tainted at the start of the investigation versus several months later. I've posted a link of all the suspect sketches in the blog post for this episode, so take a look, because you'll see what I mean about them all kind of looking a little bit different.
27:59 Speaker 01 For the creation of the third sketch, the victim's family members had hired a private investigator from Tampa to help Raymond develop the image. It wasn't a sketch that law enforcement had requested be done or that the police department felt was even very accurate. The then-police chief of Holmes Beach actually told Bradenton Herald writer Christine Wolf that he thought the third sketch might actually hurt the case more than help if a perpetrator ever was caught. He said, quote, "We've got the star witness giving us two completely different pictures of the killer. It would be a strong point for the defense. We, police agencies, all agreed to leave that man, Barrows, alone after the initial interviews so as not to taint him as a state witness." End quote.
28:43 Speaker 01 It seemed that the chief didn't really feel comfortable distributing the third sketch because he believed the second one was the most accurate. Tension between the police department and the family's investigator went on like this for a while. The P.I. lamented to the press that the authorities had refused to cooperate with his staff and check out people they'd found who looked like the sketches. And the police claimed that they had looked into the people the P.I. and his team suggested, but they'd cleared them. According to my interview with Annie, authorities had also held on to the Dumas station wagon and boat for a while as part of the investigation. But then, several months after the crime, detectives released the vehicles back to the family. Why they did this is a question I'd love to know the answer to,
29:26 Speaker 01 but no one, not even Annie, knows why. Shortly after the one-year anniversary, the case was cold and only growing colder. So, an agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who joined the investigation requested Raymond to undergo a polygraph. He passed with flying colors, which it seems that's what ended, once and for all, any suspicion by anyone that he knew more than he was saying. He told writer Christine Wolf for an anniversary piece that he carried a lot of pain, both physically and emotionally, as a result of the attack. He returned to work at the Key Biscayne Hotel in Miami, but life was far from the same without his youngest nephews and brother-in-law. Robert Matsky's wife told reporter Joanne Lehman
30:08 Speaker 01 that she refused to let what happened to her late husband make her bitter. During the first year of the investigation, she'd remained living at the condo her and Robert shared, and she'd gotten involved in lots of activities with friends and family. She regularly gathered with her and Robert's adult children and shared memories of his life. She'd also met with Maria Dumois, Juan's widow, and shared stories of all the good times they'd had with their respective families on Anna Maria Island before the crime. Two months after the one-year anniversary, in October 1981, the Manatee County School Board voted to name a newly-built transportation center in Robert's honor. Before his death, he'd worked as the director of the district's custodial, maintenance, and transportation departments,
30:50 Speaker 01 so dedicating the space in his memory was certainly fitting. By the beginning of May 1982, the case was almost two years old and still languishing. And things were about to get even more challenging when investigator star witness Raymond Barrows breathed his last.
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31:44 Speaker 01 One day last year, detectives knocked on the door of a multimillion-dollar mansion in Los Angeles County. Inside, they found a strange scene: a dining area converted into classrooms with children and toddlers seated at rows of desks.
32:01 Speaker 03 The couple that lived there had 21 kids.
32:04 Speaker 02 It's a house that looks like a castle, but it's under investigation for being a possible factory, a baby factory.
32:11 Speaker 03 Where had these children come from? Almost all of them were born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. Me and my coworker, we named her the surrogate pimp.
32:22 Speaker 04 That's the one time that we called the cops because she was screaming. And then he pulled out a gun.
32:27 Speaker 05 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
32:32 Speaker 03 I'm Eva Kaufman. "The Journey" is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
32:49 Speaker 01 According to Raymond's daughter, Annie, and reporting by the Bradenton Herald, on May 6, 1982, Raymond abruptly died from a heart attack. After he passed, his family made sure he underwent an autopsy. During that exam, the doctor removed the bullet that had been lodged in his neck since the day of the murders and gave it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. And I presume they did this because it was likely still considered an important piece of physical evidence in the case. Around that same time, an investigator with FDLE told reporter Christopher Clark that authorities were looking into whether the head of a known hit squad, who is in Fort Lauderdale, could be linked to the unsolved murders. But it doesn't appear that lead went anywhere. This hit squad leader, though,
33:32 Speaker 01 was believed to have ordered more than 100 professional killings. And when he was arrested in June of 1982 in an unrelated situation in Broward County, that's when investigators decided maybe they should give him a closer look. But obviously, trying to navigate the claims of a self-professed hit squad leader was tricky for authorities. I mean, I guess there's only so much credibility you can give to a person like that. But the theory that the boat ramp murders were the result of some kind of mob hit seemed to endure over the years. The only problem was there were several aspects of the crime that didn't totally make sense with that theory. Back in the early days of the investigation, a detective sergeant with the Manatee County Sheriff's Department told the Bradenton Herald
34:16 Speaker 01 it was possible a hitman was behind the incident, considering the fact that the killer had seemed to use a ruse and had a vehicle ready and waiting for him. He'd also used a small caliber .22 handgun, which was often viewed as a go-to weapon for hitmen. Investigative reports from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement echoed the same observations. But a glaring detail that investigators didn't think pointed to a professional killer was the fact that the suspect had shot Juan while the family's station wagon was still in motion. The detective sergeant from the sheriff's department stated, "Why would he, a hitman, shoot the driver of a moving vehicle when he's riding in it? And I can't believe a hitman would leave on a bicycle
34:57 Speaker 01 or shoot in broad daylight in heavy traffic with lots of witnesses." Once again, this opinion was also reiterated by other investigators, too. A neighbor who spoke to the Bradenton Herald shortly after the murders stated that they hadn't noticed anyone lurking around the Dumois or Barrow's rental cottage while they were in town, nor had neighbors seen anyone on bikes or in suspicious cars parked nearby. Which, to me, feels like all the kind of stuff you'd expect to notice if a hitman had been trying to time the perfect opportunity to target someone in the family. Another law enforcement official commented to the Bradenton Herald that he believed the crime was likely committed by a random stranger who may have been experiencing mental health issues. He stated,
35:42 Speaker 01 "I lean toward the bizarre. I don't think there was any Machiavellian intent in this. In other words, I don't think it was planned. It was probably a crazy person who just did it on the spur of the moment." But Annie, Raymond Barrow's daughter, told me she has never been able to get on board with that suggestion. She believes the murders were a hit of some kind, but just on the wrong targets. She explained that even if a hit had been taken out on her dad, she's convinced there would have been so many other opportunities for a contract killer to get her father other than while he was on vacation across the state with relatives. She said he usually traveled to and from his job at the Key Biscayne Hotel around the same time every day, by himself.
36:27 Speaker 01 And there were even some nights he would leave the hotel late. In her opinion, if a hitman wanted to take out her dad without any witnesses or complications, they would have done so when he was more vulnerable, not while he was randomly boating with his brother-in-law and nephews on Anna Maria Island. She thinks the same thing with regards to a scenario where Juan could have been a potential target. She said that her uncle had a regular routine and would often tend to patients at his local hospital at night, so if a killer had wanted to take him out for whatever reason, she thinks they would have struck at another time and not involved Eric and Mark. She told me that, all things considered, the murder seemed very well-planned, likely not the act of a roaming serial killer or something like that.
37:11 Speaker 01 She's convinced that whoever the killer was looking for was not one of her family members. What makes the most sense to her is that the entire crime was a tragic case of mistaken identity. On the five-year anniversary of the crime, authorities were still no closer to finding the suspect or solving the case. Maria Dumois told writer Joseph Palmer that she was still haunted by the murders of her husband and two youngest sons, but she was at a place where she could at least talk about them more often. She expressed that for the sake of her two surviving children, she no longer wanted to live life as a shattered woman. She shared that she was extremely proud of her eldest son, Juan Jr., who was following in his father's footsteps and pursued a career as a doctor.
37:54 Speaker 01 As far as where the murder investigation stood at that point in time, there wasn't much authorities were very proud of. A three-part series by WFTS and coverage by the Bradenton Herald reported that none of the latent fingerprints that were found at the crime scene had been identified. Blood was found and tested, but it was later confirmed to only belong to all the victims. Evidence in the form of fibers had also been vacuumed off the station wagon, but it's unclear what the results of that evidence collection were or if anything pointed toward a particular suspect. According to Annie, as far as her family was told, in 1980, the Foodway Grocery Store didn't have surveillance cameras at the time, or if they did, they didn't capture anything useful.
38:37 Speaker 01 And to make matters worse, a police source told the Bradenton Herald, it was undisputed that the Holmes Beach PD had not done a great job preserving the crime scene from the outset. Now, this isn't a diss to those officers specifically. They were up against a lot of contamination issues because so many bystanders and first responding officers had touched the Dumars station wagon, pulled Raymond and the boys' bodies out, and so on. But something police probably could have done better was separate the individual eyewitnesses at the scene, likely so that they couldn't inadvertently influence one another's accounts of what happened. Another potential mishap by police was that investigators failed to get ink impressions of Eric and Mark's fingerprints prior to their burials.
39:21 Speaker 01 They also didn't fingerprint Robert Matsky before he was laid to rest, but it was reported that copies of his prints were later found on file with the military. And wands had been taken when he'd immigrated from Cuba in the 1960s, but obtaining fingerprints for the boys was impossible, aside from exhuming their bodies, which did not happen. By the time the ninth anniversary of the crime came and went, things were still at a standstill, and fewer of the victim's surviving family members opted to talk to the press about the crime. According to WFTS's three-part series, several years later, an investigator with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office learned that a convicted mobster named Donald Francoz had published a book about contract killings.
40:04 Speaker 01 The novel was presented as a tell-all account of various murder-for-hire jobs that Francoz had knowledge of. One of the stories detailed in the book was about a hitman who'd faked an injury and ended up killing a victim before riding away on a bicycle. Because that specific scenario very much mirrored the circumstances of the Boat Ramp Murders case, a Manatee County investigator wrote to Donald Francoz in prison, and he actually agreed to an interview.
40:33 Speaker 01 Franco's claimed that the Boat Ramp Killer was one of his former cellmates, who'd held a high position in a drug-dealing operation. According to him, his former cellmate had issued a $15,000 contract for Raymond Barrows' shooting in 1980 because Raymond had allegedly stolen 55 kilos of cocaine from him. Franco said that another man had taken the job and gone through with the actual hit. Unfortunately, though, the Manatee County investigator never found any evidence to support Franco's claims. And the two men who, he said, were involved were never formally interviewed about the Holmes Beach case, despite the fact that authorities had their names and information and they were sentenced to serve time in prison for unrelated offenses.
41:17 Speaker 01 Eventually, the 20-year anniversary passed, and then the 30th. And during that time, Donald Franco's died in prison, Raymond's widow Dora died, several former investigators died or fell into poor health. And authorities were still basically at square one. In 2010, Bradenton Herald reporter Beth Berger wrote a long piece for the 30th anniversary, which recapped everything that had previously been covered in the case, as well as a bunch of new details that authorities had never shared before. For example, investigators revealed that a man driving by the original crime scene in August 1980 had snapped several pictures of the Dumas' crashed station wagon. Those images showed the suspected killer walking away from the crime scene.
42:00 Speaker 01 But the camera settings for autofocus weren't set properly, so the images ended up being too blurry to make out who the suspect was. I know, talk about being the luckiest killer in the world. In 2019, a Holmes Beach police detective shared even more inside information about the case when he permitted a reporter for the Anna Maria Islander inside the department's evidence room. He showed the reporter old crime scene photos and bags of evidence, including a preserved 22-caliber bullet that investigators back in 1980 had found at Robert Matsky's crime scene. In 2022, a podcast called "Down and Away" chronicled the case in a seven-part series. And in 2025, a local author published a book about the crime.
42:44 Speaker 01 But to this day, no one knows who committed the murders. And maybe, just as important, why?
42:52 Speaker 01 The answer to that question may never be found. Raymond's daughter Annie told me that her cousin Juan went on to become a pediatrician and still helps families in the Tampa Bay area. In more recent years, Maria Dumois relocated to live with her daughter Anna, and periodically they still take trips to Florida to spend time together. As of this recording, the Kingfish Boat Ramp murders are still unsolved. I know it's been a very long time, but we can't forget that there are still people out there who may know something that could help bring the victims' families' closure. Annie told me that she doesn't even really want anything from law enforcement anymore because she's come to terms with the fact that the killer might very well already be dead.
43:33 Speaker 01 But still, it would be nice to know that someone still cares to find answers. I reached out to the Holmes Beach Police Department for this episode, but didn't hear back. If you think you might have information that could help them, contact their office on their website, or consider reaching out to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Links to those agencies are posted on the blog post for this episode and the show notes.
44:01 Speaker 01 Park Predators is an AudioChuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. You can also follow Park Predators on Instagram, @parkpredators.
44:20 Speaker 01 I think Chuck would approve.
44:26 Speaker 01 In the dark, even the most familiar trail can feel like it leads somewhere else. Every rustle becomes a warning, every shadow, a doorway. In Full Body Chills, those doorways open into worlds pulled straight from your nightmares. This spooky season classic returns with chilling new tales, immersive sound, and no promise that you'll find your way back. So step off the familiar path if you dare. Listen to new episodes of Full Body Chills every week, wherever you get your podcasts.
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