00:00:01
Speaker 1: This show discusses cold case murders and the people who spend their lives fighting for justice. We hope to raise public awareness and invite witnesses to come forward with evidence that could potentially be investigated by law enforcement. We also remind listeners that everyone has pursued innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and that an arrest is not a conviction. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: So as a run, Christmas time and as usual, we're all preparing for what we're going to do, what we're going to buy, what we're going to eat.
00:00:43
Speaker 1: Annabel Herrera still remembers the morning of December twenty two, twenty twelve. It was the first weekend of her kid's Christmas break, but her sixteen year old steps on, Brian, wasn't totally free from schoolwork, not quite yet.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: They always give them a packet of homework to do, so him and his friend, his best friend, they had decided, Okay, I'll go over your house in the morning. We'll get the package done really quick that day, and then we can have the rest of the two weeks to just hang out and play video games, so that was a plan.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: It was a pretty typical Saturday morning for the Jereta family, partly sunny, high in the mid sixties, just another December day in Miami, Florida. Brian's dad, William, was already at work doing construction. His older sister was sleeping, So around eleven am, Brian put on a baseball cap, grabbed his bike and his backpack, and headed over to his friend's place a few blocks away.
00:01:38
Speaker 2: So it was fairly close. A quick ride over and about maybe two and a half blocks later, that's when he was encountered by someone.
00:01:49
Speaker 1: Later that day, Brian's father, William, got a phone call from an unknown number.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: The detective called my husband and he asked him, where are you to speak to you about Brian? Is that your son?
00:02:03
Speaker 1: Yes?
00:02:03
Speaker 2: It is? Is he okay? Is he in trouble? We just need to talk to you. They wouldn't say anything, just said tell me where you are, we'll go to you soon.
00:02:14
Speaker 1: An officer from the City of Miami Police Department arrived at William's job site.
00:02:19
Speaker 2: They showed up there and that's when they told him we found your son. They found him on the street. He told him that they found him dead.
00:02:30
Speaker 1: William was in shock. He called his wife.
00:02:33
Speaker 2: The call was horrible. I replayed over in my head all the time, and it was him just telling me they killed my Brian. They killed my Brian. And that's a phrase that I'll never forget again.
00:02:49
Speaker 1: Their son, Brian, a good kid, a straight a student who loved video games and hanging out with his friends, was dead. It didn't make any sense, but nothing makes sense in those early hours after a tragedy, your numb with shock. The Hereras figured they know more soon. They had no idea how long it would take to Finanswers from School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. This is Cold Case Files Miami. I'm your host Enriques Santos. Around eleven am on Saturday, December twenty second, twenty twelve, the City of Miami Police Department received several nine to one to one calls from neighbors who'd heard gunshots. Someone reported seeing a person on the ground. Minutes later, an officer arrived at the intersection of Northwest eleventh Avenue and thirty ninth Street in the neighborhood of Alapada. Sixteen year old Brian Herera was lying near the street unconscious and bleeding. He was rushed to Miami's main hospital, Jackson Memorial. Doctors tried to save him, but there wasn't much they could do.
00:04:03
Speaker 3: He ended up succumbing to his injuries and he was prononcecist at the hospital.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: That's Sergeant Nikolai Trifanoff. Sergeant Trivinoff has been with MIAMIPD since two thousand and four and he's been heading up the cold case unit since twenty twenty one.
00:04:18
Speaker 3: In cold case, we're really responsible for all open cases that have little to know leads left. The leads have been worked to exhaustion.
00:04:29
Speaker 1: But before he was on the cold case team, Sergeant Trivenoff worked in homicide and one of the cases he worked on was Brian Riras.
00:04:37
Speaker 3: Brian was writing a bike two a friend's house, he was approached by the offender. At that time, there was a struggle between them and Brian was shot in the head.
00:04:48
Speaker 1: In any homicide investigation, there are standard procedures that take place. The crime scene unit arrived to collect evidence, including Brian's backpack which had been left on the ground filled with his draw and schoolwork, and detectives tried to figure out who, if anyone saw something.
00:05:06
Speaker 3: We do neighborhood canvases, knock on doors, tried to identify witnesses, trying to determine how many suspects there are, what type of weapon was used. Obviously, really that's the beginning of it.
00:05:21
Speaker 1: I know Sergeant triffinoff from mutual acquaintances at the Miami Police Department, where he's a full time officer. I worked there as a reserve officer. My full time job is morning radio. I'm a proud Miami and the son of human immigrants, and I host two shows that are broadcast around the United States, the Endriquessanto's Morning Show in Spanish and On the Move with Endrique Santos in English. A lot of people who just know me from the radio are surprised to hear that I am also a cop that had wanted to be one since I was a kid, and after high school I enrolled in the police Academy. In nineteen ninety four, I had started my career with the North Miami Police Department, and about four or five years in a funny thing happened. I call the radio station I was listening to and ended up becoming friends with the guy who picked up the phone. Over the next couple of years, the friendship led to me becoming a DJ, and in two thousand, I traded my police badge for a microphone and started a full time job hosting a morning show. I've been doing that for almost twenty five years now, half my life, and I love working in radio. But listen, those years as a cop taught me a lot. You learn so much you could never get in any university. I don't mean how to solve a crime. I mean the psychological stuff, learning to de escalate violent and dangerous situations, the value of life, and what it means to have a partner watching your back. There's also a lot of firsts. First time you see a dead body, the first time you need to knock on a door and tell a mother that her son's not coming home because he's been shot. Those are very, very tough things to learn on the job. My work as a police officer also taught me that across Miami, most people really care about their neighbors. And their neighbor you want to be safe, and they want their kids to be safe. And when crimes do happen, especially horrible ones like murders, everyone wants them to be solved and the killers to be brought to justice. But in those early hours after Brian's murder, the Herrera family wasn't even thinking about justice. They were still incomplete and utter shock. You just.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: You don't even know if you're living on alternate reality. You don't even know if you're what's going on is real. You're just going through the motions, you're not even thinking.
00:07:35
Speaker 1: It still felt like maybe this was all just a terrible mistake.
00:07:39
Speaker 2: We were expecting him to walk through the door and it was already like seven o'clock at night. My husband kept saying, but are you sure it's him? Maybe it's not him, And I kept saying, babe, but if not, he would be home by now.
00:07:52
Speaker 1: The rest of the day was a blur. The next night, the police called the Hereras with the request they needed them to come in the day to officially identify Brian's body.
00:08:03
Speaker 2: My husband said, I don't want you to go.
00:08:05
Speaker 1: I'm going to go.
00:08:06
Speaker 2: So a friend went with him. It was Christmas Eve and he had to go identify his son's body.
00:08:14
Speaker 3: That was rough.
00:08:16
Speaker 2: He says that they just show you like a picture, and he says he fell, he collapsed, he had no energy. That's when it all came down on him and he just accepted he's gone, and he was just destroyed. We had a little girl at that time, you know, she was only five, so you know, she's still tomorrow. Santa's coming, you know, and we're still like, yeah, Santa's coming, don't worry, Sanna's coming, you know, and we still have to go through with it, knowing that we're just in shambles.
00:08:50
Speaker 1: As the days and weeks passed, the police still didn't have much news to share. No eyewitnesses had come forward, even though Brian had been shot on a Saturday morning and broad daylight. Detectives believed it was likely a robbery, but there were no descriptions of any potential suspects.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: They felt it was something random. He was just chosen for some reason, but that was pretty much about it.
00:09:16
Speaker 1: One of the few leads the police had was an older gentleman who lived in the neighborhood. He told the cops that the morning of Brian's death, he'd been approached by a man in a car who asked him to call nine one one and then drove away before police arrived. The neighbor didn't know much more than that. Still, the Heredras were hoping that he might be willing to talk to them.
00:09:39
Speaker 2: We tried after talking to the elderly man, and we just could never. You know, nobody would open the door to us. We just could never get in contact with him.
00:09:49
Speaker 1: In fact, the Hereras liked the police struggled to speak to anyone who might have seen something.
00:09:55
Speaker 2: Someone told us at the beginning that the house across the street where it happened, somebody was there, that it was a child, and they would look through the window when they heard the bang. We knocked many times there, they never opened the door. I even mailed letters out to every single house there explained their situation that they can contact crime stoppers and they can give their information, and you know, they didn't have to say who they were.
00:10:20
Speaker 1: Nothing.
00:10:21
Speaker 2: We went to that block and we talked to some of the neighbors. Most of the neighbors did not want to talk to us, so, I mean, it was pretty useless for us to even continue to talking to anybody because nobody would talk.
00:10:40
Speaker 1: Annabel came into Brian's world when he was around three years old. She had recently started dating his father, William.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: I met William at the beach. You know, he was walking and I was walking as well, and we just started talking.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: They hit it off almost immediately. He was Venezuelan, she was Cuban. He had children from his previous marriage. Annabel had children too.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: We dated very shortly and moved in quickly. Brian was four years old and he had two older sisters who were I relieve thirteen and fourteen at the time, so they came to live with me and my two children. He was a very sweet, shy child, very quiet. His dad used to call her chru Chito, the poppy. True Chito is just a funny, little Hispanic thing. Chu Chito is like, I don't know, like you would say sweety Daddy's sweetye or something like that, just something cute.
00:11:41
Speaker 1: The family was living in Highlia Gardens, a suburb of Miami. Annabel remembers those years with a lot of fondness and how Brian, as the youngest, was kind of the center of attention.
00:11:52
Speaker 2: Oh he was the baby brother, so you know, his older brother and sisters adored him. We have a lot of sweet memory. I mean, he was a great video game player. Everybody would go outside and play and he would just stay inside and he was really good, and he would teach his two other brothers what to play and know, you got to do this and this is a trick. And so they were always getting pointers for him because even though he was the youngest, he was the best at the games.
00:12:16
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, Bryan's family moved to the neighborhood of Alapada, northwest of downtown Miami. It's an area with families who've lived there for generations, as well as newly arrived transplants and immigrants from all over Latin America and the Caribbean. In two thousand and three, a stretch of Alipada was officially named Little Santo Domingo, and the Dominican influence is clear, from seafood markets to Natine Bakery to the long standing restaurant Glub Dipico Dominicano. Brian lived not too far from Club Tipico, a couple of blocks from the one ninety five Expressway that cuts through the city as it connects drivers from the airport to Miami Beach.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: It's a lower income area where working hard people who just can't afford the higher rents in Miami. That's where they live. They keep their houses really nice and there's a lot of good people.
00:13:11
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, when Brian was there, Alapada also had some of the highest assault and homicide rates in all of Miami Dade County. In fact, from twenty ten to twenty twelve, the homicide rate where Brian lived was nearly five times the county average. But Dieredras didn't know that when they moved in. They just knew it was affordable and the apartment building itself seemed safe.
00:13:33
Speaker 2: The actual building was a gated building, and it was new. It looked like a really nice building, and you know, the rent was affordable and everything looked great. But unfortunately we weren't aware of that area that fall.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: Brian started his sophomore year at Miami Jackson High.
00:13:52
Speaker 2: He was a very good student. He was a straight a student, very smart. His teachers loved him.
00:13:58
Speaker 1: Brian was a specially drawn to science.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: One of our daughters she had a kidney issue and she had robotic surgery. So he was talking a lot with his dad that he would really like to get into robotics. So he really thought that might be something he was interested in pursuing.
00:14:18
Speaker 1: This is the same Brian who didn't come home that one December evening. Brian, the baby brother, the video gamer, the straight a student who wanted to get into robotics to help people, the sweet, shy child his family adored. He was only sixteen when he was murdered, just figuring out who he was and the kind of person he wanted to become. The News of what happened to Brian spread in the days after his death. The Eddas were especially touched when his school organized a walk in his honor.
00:14:50
Speaker 2: We all handed out flyers for hours. It was very moving to see so many people come out for him. Everybody would come up to us and tell us their individual stories, the friendships that they had with him, even the little interactions that they had. Everybody's stories were beautiful and we were just we were crying because it was like, Wow, he made such an impact and we didn't even know.
00:15:16
Speaker 1: Neighbors also reached out to Annabelle and William with condolences.
00:15:20
Speaker 2: We encountered so many good people who came to us, and you know, they brought us food, and everybody invited us to their church. Everybody wanted to, you know, pray for us and pray for Brian, and so we did. We saw a lot of beautiful people in the area, a lot.
00:15:37
Speaker 1: But they also saw people who were scared to talk about Brian's murder and what they may or may not have seen.
00:15:44
Speaker 2: The whole Snitches get stitches. Absolutely, that is very prominent and everybody knows it. We were promoting see something, say something, but they're used to No, you don't say anything, because you say something, your mother gets killed, you say something, your brother gets killed. They say something, they catch you and they shoot you and they kill you.
00:16:04
Speaker 1: The Herenas didn't learn much from the police either, and what they did here changed over time as weeks, months, and even years passed after Brian's killing without him the rest.
00:16:15
Speaker 2: At the beginning, we heard, oh, there was several people involved, several people ran from the scene. Then in the last couple of years, we haven't heard that being said anymore. So we have no idea if it was just one person or it was several people.
00:16:30
Speaker 1: To the Heredras, it seemed like the police couldn't really share much at all.
00:16:35
Speaker 2: It was just very little bits and pieces of information. They couldn't tell us if everything that was in his book pack was there, if they had taken anything. We've never seen the book back again, or the bike or any of the stuff inside. We've asked, can we have the bike back? Nope, it's evidence, you know. Can we know at least what was inside the book back?
00:16:57
Speaker 3: No.
00:16:59
Speaker 1: Annabelle knew Brian and would have had his phone on him, a simple phone his dad bought him to play video games on. It didn't even have service, it only worked over Wi Fi. But had the cops found it, she didn't know. Still, Annabel and the police had a theory about what could have happened.
00:17:16
Speaker 2: I think somebody approached him. We don't know if he was still riding bike, or he was off his bike. Maybe he was looking his phone. I have no idea. Somebody just approached him. There was some kind of altercation, we don't know why, and then somehow in that altercation he was shocked.
00:17:37
Speaker 1: But a theory, especially when without witnesses or even a suspect, wasn't enough to go on. And as the years passed, Annabel stopped receiving any updates on Brian's case.
00:17:48
Speaker 2: So about maybe two years into the investigation, I stopped hearing from the detective. I got really concerned, so I left messages at the homicide department. If I kept messaging and messaging no call back, nobody would message me back.
00:18:05
Speaker 1: By this point, Annabel understood that solving Brian's case wasn't going to be simple, but she wanted to know he hadn't been forgotten.
00:18:14
Speaker 2: We wanted them to call us back, to give us information, even if it's just to say I have no new information, you know, but at least let us know that you're listening to us, that you know we're still here, that you're working on our kid's case. Because a lot of these mothers say, oh, it's been seventy years, I haven't heard from my detective. That wasn't going to happen to me. I was going to keep fighting and I was going to get in their face.
00:18:40
Speaker 1: Frustrated with the lack of response, Annabel turned to the Internet for help.
00:18:44
Speaker 2: I read somewhere find an activist, and so I did.
00:18:49
Speaker 1: Annabel came across an organization called Florida Parents of Murdered Children, which had been founded by a Miami woman named Tangela Sears.
00:18:57
Speaker 2: I called her on the phone and she immediately picked up. She just started, you know, hooking me up. Okay, you need to talk like a you're going to talk to the mayor, A you're going to talk to the chief of police, you're gonna talk to the homicide department. I'm going to get you in with the commander. So little by little, that's what we did.
00:19:14
Speaker 3: I can see very very well. How you know, family members can say, oh, well, nothing's being done in my case. It's just forgotten about.
00:19:22
Speaker 1: Sergeant Triffinoff is sympathetic to Annibal's frustration.
00:19:27
Speaker 3: We tell the families, look, have patience with us. You know, we're doing our best. We're following those leads. We're constantly switching gears. We're constantly let's get that case, let's get this case. Okay, there's something moving on this case, let's go there. But as a family, I can understand after years go by, it's like, are they just blowing smoke? Are they just giving me unwarranted hope? But there are times, you know, like in this case, where we had our hands tied at moments where there just wasn't wasn't anything that was able to go.
00:20:00
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, Sergeant Trivinoff was named lead detective on Brian's case, and he immediately began looking into it.
00:20:09
Speaker 3: I start looking at if there's any DNA on the case, anything that needed to go to the lab, that hadn't been sent to the lab, all these things, and I noticed that there was some evidence on the case that needed to be looked at. We incorporate familial DNA genealogy, additional testing on the DNA. I started looking into it and interview several people, possible suspects, witnesses, stuff like that.
00:20:44
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, none of this new information was enough to make an arrest.
00:20:49
Speaker 3: There were little leads throughout the years. There's always been something that we've been able to work on and look into, but nothing stolid that pointed to a specific individual.
00:21:03
Speaker 1: With all leads exhausted, the department needed an outside tip to move the case along.
00:21:09
Speaker 3: At that point, it's just hoping that somebody that saw something comes forward with whatever they saw, you know, anything they heard, even if they think it's trivial and they didn't really hear or see anything. Any little piece of information is very important for us. We can always use that and it may turn into something bigger and better that we can use.
00:21:31
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, Triffonoff was promoted to sergeant and the case was reassigned to another detective, but Triffonoff never forgot about Brian.
00:21:41
Speaker 3: And I had told annabel when I first met her that will never give up on this. I had an attachment to the case. It was a sixteen year old high school student that was just going to do his homework at a friend's house. So I kept working it even though I had left the unit.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Annabelle was also still fighting for her son. Try to keep focus on his case and gather any information she could. She posted regularly on the Facebook page she'd set up Justice for Brian Rera. She talked to anyone who would listen, the press, the police, the public. She was open to anything that might lead to that much needed tip.
00:22:17
Speaker 4: I need someone to come forward and say what happened that day, say the truth what you saw. This is my child and I want closure. But if this was your child, you would want to know who did this to them. No one deserves this. Let's put this guy away, Let's close this case.
00:22:39
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two, she applied for a grant from Season of Justice, a nonprofit that funds efforts to solve code cases nationwide. With the money she received, she put up a billboard in Alapada, near where Brian was killed. The organization also paid for signs for the family to set up around the area.
00:22:58
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, nothing came out of that. But you got to keep trying until you get something, and we're gonna keep trying. We're gonna keep pushing.
00:23:06
Speaker 1: But by early twenty twenty four, despite everything Annabelle had done, despite the work by the City of Miami police, Bran's case was completely cold.
00:23:15
Speaker 3: We hit a standstill. There were no leads available to us.
00:23:19
Speaker 1: It had been over a decade since Brian's murder, and solving his case felt further away than ever. The emotional toll this had taken on the Heretra family was immense.
00:23:31
Speaker 2: Honestly, there's been certain points in time where I'm like, maybe we should just let it go, because maybe it's tormenting us too much, and maybe we just need to just concentrate on grieving and living and forget about all this justice or revenge or whatever it is you want to call it. Every time I would say, you know, maybe I'm just going to back off, I would ask my husband. I would say, do you want me to stop and just let this go? He was like, no, do you want to stop. I'm like, no, I just want to make sure we want to keep fighting. He's no, I'll go for it, keep fighting. So then I was like, that's it. I'm going to keep fighting.
00:24:12
Speaker 1: And then in December twenty twenty four, a full twelve years after Brian's death, seemingly out of the blue, the Ereras get an update.
00:24:22
Speaker 2: All throughout these years, it's just me following back up with the detectives and they're still working on this and we're working on that, but there's never been a person of interest. There had never been anything. And then that's when we received a phone call that we've been waiting for for a very long time.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: In December twenty twenty four, while we were making this episode, Annabelle and William Herrera received a call from the Miami Police.
00:24:57
Speaker 2: They let us know that there was a witness they came forward and they were going to be arresting someone. We were very emotional, but we really try to hold it together so we can get all the information and not say that there crying. Then once we hung up, as when we you know, we melted down and we started crying and hugging.
00:25:17
Speaker 1: The news came almost twelve years to the day since Brian was killed.
00:25:21
Speaker 2: A murder mystery solved.
00:25:23
Speaker 1: It was the focus of a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
00:25:27
Speaker 5: It no longer remains a cold case, the Miami Dade State Attorney talking about the twenty twelve murder of sixteen year old Brian Herrera and the arrest that was made in the case.
00:25:37
Speaker 2: More than a decade later.
00:25:39
Speaker 1: A suspect had been arrested in Brian's murder. According to police, a tip had come in from a witness, one they had been looking for but hadn't been able to find. It was the man in the car, the man who asked the neighbor to call nine one one.
00:25:55
Speaker 2: The witness. He was driving by and saw the defendant with Brian. He saw like an argument going on, and he started rolling up. He was in his car, and he rolled up slowly next to them, and he told him, come on, guys, it's Christmas. What are we fighting about? And then he saw Brian whisper, I'm being robbed. And he saw that the defendant had a gun in his hand, pointed at Brian, and so he decided to just move forward and go on because he was scared for his life. And then he saw Brian break loose and then he heard a gunshot.
00:26:31
Speaker 1: Here was the evidence to the theory the police and the Hereras had all along. Brian was killed in a robbery over a cell phone. A cell phone that was never found, a cell phone that didn't even work without Wi Fi. That crucial tip had come in just six months earlier, in June twenty twenty four, when he called the driver said he had information on a murder that had happened just before Christmas twenty twelve.
00:26:58
Speaker 3: We were advised of the tip and we followed up on it. We sit down and interview that individual. They're ultimately able to identify the person that they saw robbing our victim of mister Perreira, and sitting with our state Attorney's office and discussing everything, we're able to arrest the offender, whose name is Adrian Grimes.
00:27:24
Speaker 1: Adrian Grimes is now thirty years old. Back in December twenty twelve, when Brian was killed, he'd have just turned eighteen. The witness said he'd known the suspect from the neighborhood and he had a defining characteristic. Grimes only has one eye. He lost it in an unrelated shooting that took place after Brian's murder. After his arrest, a grand jury indicted Adrian Grimes on charges of first degree murder and robbery with a firearm on January twenty second, twenty twenty five. Grimes's lawyer pleaded not guilty on behalf of his client. The prosecutor later told the judge the state would be seeking the death penalty. It's important to remember that an arrest is not a conviction. Eyewitness testimony can be unreliable and it doesn't always stand up in court. Agent Grimes, like everyone else, deserves due process.
00:28:15
Speaker 3: This is not the end of the road here. We still have a long way to go. This is kind of like an ending to a chapter. We've made an arrest, but now we have trial or any type of core proceedings, however they may go.
00:28:32
Speaker 1: It will now be up to a jury to decide if the evidence proves Rhymes killed Brian.
00:28:38
Speaker 3: In any case, even with a great case, you don't have any guarantees that you're going to be able to get a conviction. So it's a very very long journey and it's very unsure Diras understand this well.
00:28:53
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel like justice yet until he's been convicted and then it's not really justice. But at least we can move on with our with our lives without that added issue on our backs that this guy is just out there living his life while ourso lost his.
00:29:10
Speaker 1: Because in the end, nothing can replace what theras lost. It's Brian they miss and Brian they think about.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: We're constantly talking about him and the funny little stories, and he's He's always there.
00:29:26
Speaker 1: You know.
00:29:26
Speaker 2: You wake up every morning, you open your eyes at some point and put time during that day you're thinking about him. It's not always, you know, about the murder. It's more about the cute things he did, the smart things he did, things that he said. I have a lot of times the last time I saw him, you know what he said to me, and the image of him sitting on the couch and he was playing video games on his phone. He's watching TV and scrolling and I can remember, I swear it's like yesterday I was sitting here and he was sitting there and I was black and forth looking at him, and I remember his hair was outgrown, and you know, I told him, you gotta get a haircut. Oh, my girlfriend likes it like this, you know, So those are the little things that every day pop up.
00:30:18
Speaker 1: At a press conference after Grime's arraiement, Miami Police Chief Manny Morales said he remembered how Annabel had told him she'd felt abandoned by the detectives on Brian's case. He said, theredra has lit a fire under his team, and that's exactly what Annabel says. Anyone in her shoes should do.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: Keep fighting that detective doesn't call you, show up at the Hobbitside department as to speak to the commander. If the commander doesn't figure it out, as to speak to the chief of police, make yourself known to them, let them know your face, let them know your name. And every single time I would go to visit someone, I would take them their picture. This picture is for you. I want you to keep Brian's pace. I want you to look at his picture and remember him every single day. And every time I go to their offices, they have his pictures pinned up. That's exactly what I want. I wanted to remember who he is. And that's exactly what all parents have to do. They have to keep fighting, they have to keep pushing.
00:31:22
Speaker 3: On.
00:31:22
Speaker 1: This season of Cold Case Files, Miami we'll be speaking directly to those most deeply involved in this heartbreaking work. We'll hear from the detectives investigating these cases on the ground.
00:31:32
Speaker 2: Once I went back to really take a look at him, to all the statements, reading reports, I realize, Man, I feel like we got a case here.
00:31:41
Speaker 1: From the families of victims desperate for answers.
00:31:45
Speaker 3: If we can concentrate this information throughout the states to hear Mark Crai.
00:31:50
Speaker 2: To know that George's death was not in vague.
00:31:53
Speaker 1: Or searching for justice I said over six hundred emails I did.
00:31:58
Speaker 2: I had to go out to trust the police, but you gotta help make sure there be a held accountable tool.
00:32:05
Speaker 1: And from the prosecutors looking to convict those.
00:32:07
Speaker 5: Responsible, they will do whatever it takes on behalf of these victims to go to court and fight for them, fight for the voiceless and for the powerless.
00:32:17
Speaker 1: I'm Endrique Santos. Join me as we examine some of Miami's cold cases and talk to the people these tragedies affect most. Join us next week for cold case files Miami. Anyone with information regarding the case is asked to call crime Stoppers anonymously at three zero five four seven to one tips that's three zero five four seven one eight four seven seven, or visit the website at Crimestoppers three zero five dot com and select give a tip in case Files. Miami is a production of Iheart's Michael Tura podcast Network and School of Humans. I'm your host, Enbriquasantos. This show was written and researched by Marissa Brown. Our lead producer is Josh Thain. He Delis Perees is our senior producer. Sound design and mixed by Josh Thain, factchecking by Savannah Hugley. Our production manager is Daisy Church. Special thanks to Julia Ramirez from my production team. Our iHeart Radio executive producers including me Endrique Santos, carl Cadel and Arlene Santana, and Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley from School of Humans. For more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: This show discusses cold case murders and the people who spend their lives fighting for justice. We hope to raise public awareness and invite witnesses to come forward with evidence that could potentially be investigated by law enforcement. We also remind listeners that everyone has pursued innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and that an arrest is not a conviction. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: So as a run, Christmas time and as usual, we're all preparing for what we're going to do, what we're going to buy, what we're going to eat.
00:00:43
Speaker 1: Annabel Herrera still remembers the morning of December twenty two, twenty twelve. It was the first weekend of her kid's Christmas break, but her sixteen year old steps on, Brian, wasn't totally free from schoolwork, not quite yet.
00:00:57
Speaker 2: They always give them a packet of homework to do, so him and his friend, his best friend, they had decided, Okay, I'll go over your house in the morning. We'll get the package done really quick that day, and then we can have the rest of the two weeks to just hang out and play video games, so that was a plan.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: It was a pretty typical Saturday morning for the Jereta family, partly sunny, high in the mid sixties, just another December day in Miami, Florida. Brian's dad, William, was already at work doing construction. His older sister was sleeping, So around eleven am, Brian put on a baseball cap, grabbed his bike and his backpack, and headed over to his friend's place a few blocks away.
00:01:38
Speaker 2: So it was fairly close. A quick ride over and about maybe two and a half blocks later, that's when he was encountered by someone.
00:01:49
Speaker 1: Later that day, Brian's father, William, got a phone call from an unknown number.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: The detective called my husband and he asked him, where are you to speak to you about Brian? Is that your son?
00:02:03
Speaker 1: Yes?
00:02:03
Speaker 2: It is? Is he okay? Is he in trouble? We just need to talk to you. They wouldn't say anything, just said tell me where you are, we'll go to you soon.
00:02:14
Speaker 1: An officer from the City of Miami Police Department arrived at William's job site.
00:02:19
Speaker 2: They showed up there and that's when they told him we found your son. They found him on the street. He told him that they found him dead.
00:02:30
Speaker 1: William was in shock. He called his wife.
00:02:33
Speaker 2: The call was horrible. I replayed over in my head all the time, and it was him just telling me they killed my Brian. They killed my Brian. And that's a phrase that I'll never forget again.
00:02:49
Speaker 1: Their son, Brian, a good kid, a straight a student who loved video games and hanging out with his friends, was dead. It didn't make any sense, but nothing makes sense in those early hours after a tragedy, your numb with shock. The Hereras figured they know more soon. They had no idea how long it would take to Finanswers from School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. This is Cold Case Files Miami. I'm your host Enriques Santos. Around eleven am on Saturday, December twenty second, twenty twelve, the City of Miami Police Department received several nine to one to one calls from neighbors who'd heard gunshots. Someone reported seeing a person on the ground. Minutes later, an officer arrived at the intersection of Northwest eleventh Avenue and thirty ninth Street in the neighborhood of Alapada. Sixteen year old Brian Herera was lying near the street unconscious and bleeding. He was rushed to Miami's main hospital, Jackson Memorial. Doctors tried to save him, but there wasn't much they could do.
00:04:03
Speaker 3: He ended up succumbing to his injuries and he was prononcecist at the hospital.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: That's Sergeant Nikolai Trifanoff. Sergeant Trivinoff has been with MIAMIPD since two thousand and four and he's been heading up the cold case unit since twenty twenty one.
00:04:18
Speaker 3: In cold case, we're really responsible for all open cases that have little to know leads left. The leads have been worked to exhaustion.
00:04:29
Speaker 1: But before he was on the cold case team, Sergeant Trivenoff worked in homicide and one of the cases he worked on was Brian Riras.
00:04:37
Speaker 3: Brian was writing a bike two a friend's house, he was approached by the offender. At that time, there was a struggle between them and Brian was shot in the head.
00:04:48
Speaker 1: In any homicide investigation, there are standard procedures that take place. The crime scene unit arrived to collect evidence, including Brian's backpack which had been left on the ground filled with his draw and schoolwork, and detectives tried to figure out who, if anyone saw something.
00:05:06
Speaker 3: We do neighborhood canvases, knock on doors, tried to identify witnesses, trying to determine how many suspects there are, what type of weapon was used. Obviously, really that's the beginning of it.
00:05:21
Speaker 1: I know Sergeant triffinoff from mutual acquaintances at the Miami Police Department, where he's a full time officer. I worked there as a reserve officer. My full time job is morning radio. I'm a proud Miami and the son of human immigrants, and I host two shows that are broadcast around the United States, the Endriquessanto's Morning Show in Spanish and On the Move with Endrique Santos in English. A lot of people who just know me from the radio are surprised to hear that I am also a cop that had wanted to be one since I was a kid, and after high school I enrolled in the police Academy. In nineteen ninety four, I had started my career with the North Miami Police Department, and about four or five years in a funny thing happened. I call the radio station I was listening to and ended up becoming friends with the guy who picked up the phone. Over the next couple of years, the friendship led to me becoming a DJ, and in two thousand, I traded my police badge for a microphone and started a full time job hosting a morning show. I've been doing that for almost twenty five years now, half my life, and I love working in radio. But listen, those years as a cop taught me a lot. You learn so much you could never get in any university. I don't mean how to solve a crime. I mean the psychological stuff, learning to de escalate violent and dangerous situations, the value of life, and what it means to have a partner watching your back. There's also a lot of firsts. First time you see a dead body, the first time you need to knock on a door and tell a mother that her son's not coming home because he's been shot. Those are very, very tough things to learn on the job. My work as a police officer also taught me that across Miami, most people really care about their neighbors. And their neighbor you want to be safe, and they want their kids to be safe. And when crimes do happen, especially horrible ones like murders, everyone wants them to be solved and the killers to be brought to justice. But in those early hours after Brian's murder, the Herrera family wasn't even thinking about justice. They were still incomplete and utter shock. You just.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: You don't even know if you're living on alternate reality. You don't even know if you're what's going on is real. You're just going through the motions, you're not even thinking.
00:07:35
Speaker 1: It still felt like maybe this was all just a terrible mistake.
00:07:39
Speaker 2: We were expecting him to walk through the door and it was already like seven o'clock at night. My husband kept saying, but are you sure it's him? Maybe it's not him, And I kept saying, babe, but if not, he would be home by now.
00:07:52
Speaker 1: The rest of the day was a blur. The next night, the police called the Hereras with the request they needed them to come in the day to officially identify Brian's body.
00:08:03
Speaker 2: My husband said, I don't want you to go.
00:08:05
Speaker 1: I'm going to go.
00:08:06
Speaker 2: So a friend went with him. It was Christmas Eve and he had to go identify his son's body.
00:08:14
Speaker 3: That was rough.
00:08:16
Speaker 2: He says that they just show you like a picture, and he says he fell, he collapsed, he had no energy. That's when it all came down on him and he just accepted he's gone, and he was just destroyed. We had a little girl at that time, you know, she was only five, so you know, she's still tomorrow. Santa's coming, you know, and we're still like, yeah, Santa's coming, don't worry, Sanna's coming, you know, and we still have to go through with it, knowing that we're just in shambles.
00:08:50
Speaker 1: As the days and weeks passed, the police still didn't have much news to share. No eyewitnesses had come forward, even though Brian had been shot on a Saturday morning and broad daylight. Detectives believed it was likely a robbery, but there were no descriptions of any potential suspects.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: They felt it was something random. He was just chosen for some reason, but that was pretty much about it.
00:09:16
Speaker 1: One of the few leads the police had was an older gentleman who lived in the neighborhood. He told the cops that the morning of Brian's death, he'd been approached by a man in a car who asked him to call nine one one and then drove away before police arrived. The neighbor didn't know much more than that. Still, the Heredras were hoping that he might be willing to talk to them.
00:09:39
Speaker 2: We tried after talking to the elderly man, and we just could never. You know, nobody would open the door to us. We just could never get in contact with him.
00:09:49
Speaker 1: In fact, the Hereras liked the police struggled to speak to anyone who might have seen something.
00:09:55
Speaker 2: Someone told us at the beginning that the house across the street where it happened, somebody was there, that it was a child, and they would look through the window when they heard the bang. We knocked many times there, they never opened the door. I even mailed letters out to every single house there explained their situation that they can contact crime stoppers and they can give their information, and you know, they didn't have to say who they were.
00:10:20
Speaker 1: Nothing.
00:10:21
Speaker 2: We went to that block and we talked to some of the neighbors. Most of the neighbors did not want to talk to us, so, I mean, it was pretty useless for us to even continue to talking to anybody because nobody would talk.
00:10:40
Speaker 1: Annabel came into Brian's world when he was around three years old. She had recently started dating his father, William.
00:10:48
Speaker 2: I met William at the beach. You know, he was walking and I was walking as well, and we just started talking.
00:10:55
Speaker 1: They hit it off almost immediately. He was Venezuelan, she was Cuban. He had children from his previous marriage. Annabel had children too.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: We dated very shortly and moved in quickly. Brian was four years old and he had two older sisters who were I relieve thirteen and fourteen at the time, so they came to live with me and my two children. He was a very sweet, shy child, very quiet. His dad used to call her chru Chito, the poppy. True Chito is just a funny, little Hispanic thing. Chu Chito is like, I don't know, like you would say sweety Daddy's sweetye or something like that, just something cute.
00:11:41
Speaker 1: The family was living in Highlia Gardens, a suburb of Miami. Annabel remembers those years with a lot of fondness and how Brian, as the youngest, was kind of the center of attention.
00:11:52
Speaker 2: Oh he was the baby brother, so you know, his older brother and sisters adored him. We have a lot of sweet memory. I mean, he was a great video game player. Everybody would go outside and play and he would just stay inside and he was really good, and he would teach his two other brothers what to play and know, you got to do this and this is a trick. And so they were always getting pointers for him because even though he was the youngest, he was the best at the games.
00:12:16
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, Bryan's family moved to the neighborhood of Alapada, northwest of downtown Miami. It's an area with families who've lived there for generations, as well as newly arrived transplants and immigrants from all over Latin America and the Caribbean. In two thousand and three, a stretch of Alipada was officially named Little Santo Domingo, and the Dominican influence is clear, from seafood markets to Natine Bakery to the long standing restaurant Glub Dipico Dominicano. Brian lived not too far from Club Tipico, a couple of blocks from the one ninety five Expressway that cuts through the city as it connects drivers from the airport to Miami Beach.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: It's a lower income area where working hard people who just can't afford the higher rents in Miami. That's where they live. They keep their houses really nice and there's a lot of good people.
00:13:11
Speaker 1: In twenty twelve, when Brian was there, Alapada also had some of the highest assault and homicide rates in all of Miami Dade County. In fact, from twenty ten to twenty twelve, the homicide rate where Brian lived was nearly five times the county average. But Dieredras didn't know that when they moved in. They just knew it was affordable and the apartment building itself seemed safe.
00:13:33
Speaker 2: The actual building was a gated building, and it was new. It looked like a really nice building, and you know, the rent was affordable and everything looked great. But unfortunately we weren't aware of that area that fall.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: Brian started his sophomore year at Miami Jackson High.
00:13:52
Speaker 2: He was a very good student. He was a straight a student, very smart. His teachers loved him.
00:13:58
Speaker 1: Brian was a specially drawn to science.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: One of our daughters she had a kidney issue and she had robotic surgery. So he was talking a lot with his dad that he would really like to get into robotics. So he really thought that might be something he was interested in pursuing.
00:14:18
Speaker 1: This is the same Brian who didn't come home that one December evening. Brian, the baby brother, the video gamer, the straight a student who wanted to get into robotics to help people, the sweet, shy child his family adored. He was only sixteen when he was murdered, just figuring out who he was and the kind of person he wanted to become. The News of what happened to Brian spread in the days after his death. The Eddas were especially touched when his school organized a walk in his honor.
00:14:50
Speaker 2: We all handed out flyers for hours. It was very moving to see so many people come out for him. Everybody would come up to us and tell us their individual stories, the friendships that they had with him, even the little interactions that they had. Everybody's stories were beautiful and we were just we were crying because it was like, Wow, he made such an impact and we didn't even know.
00:15:16
Speaker 1: Neighbors also reached out to Annabelle and William with condolences.
00:15:20
Speaker 2: We encountered so many good people who came to us, and you know, they brought us food, and everybody invited us to their church. Everybody wanted to, you know, pray for us and pray for Brian, and so we did. We saw a lot of beautiful people in the area, a lot.
00:15:37
Speaker 1: But they also saw people who were scared to talk about Brian's murder and what they may or may not have seen.
00:15:44
Speaker 2: The whole Snitches get stitches. Absolutely, that is very prominent and everybody knows it. We were promoting see something, say something, but they're used to No, you don't say anything, because you say something, your mother gets killed, you say something, your brother gets killed. They say something, they catch you and they shoot you and they kill you.
00:16:04
Speaker 1: The Herenas didn't learn much from the police either, and what they did here changed over time as weeks, months, and even years passed after Brian's killing without him the rest.
00:16:15
Speaker 2: At the beginning, we heard, oh, there was several people involved, several people ran from the scene. Then in the last couple of years, we haven't heard that being said anymore. So we have no idea if it was just one person or it was several people.
00:16:30
Speaker 1: To the Heredras, it seemed like the police couldn't really share much at all.
00:16:35
Speaker 2: It was just very little bits and pieces of information. They couldn't tell us if everything that was in his book pack was there, if they had taken anything. We've never seen the book back again, or the bike or any of the stuff inside. We've asked, can we have the bike back? Nope, it's evidence, you know. Can we know at least what was inside the book back?
00:16:57
Speaker 3: No.
00:16:59
Speaker 1: Annabelle knew Brian and would have had his phone on him, a simple phone his dad bought him to play video games on. It didn't even have service, it only worked over Wi Fi. But had the cops found it, she didn't know. Still, Annabel and the police had a theory about what could have happened.
00:17:16
Speaker 2: I think somebody approached him. We don't know if he was still riding bike, or he was off his bike. Maybe he was looking his phone. I have no idea. Somebody just approached him. There was some kind of altercation, we don't know why, and then somehow in that altercation he was shocked.
00:17:37
Speaker 1: But a theory, especially when without witnesses or even a suspect, wasn't enough to go on. And as the years passed, Annabel stopped receiving any updates on Brian's case.
00:17:48
Speaker 2: So about maybe two years into the investigation, I stopped hearing from the detective. I got really concerned, so I left messages at the homicide department. If I kept messaging and messaging no call back, nobody would message me back.
00:18:05
Speaker 1: By this point, Annabel understood that solving Brian's case wasn't going to be simple, but she wanted to know he hadn't been forgotten.
00:18:14
Speaker 2: We wanted them to call us back, to give us information, even if it's just to say I have no new information, you know, but at least let us know that you're listening to us, that you know we're still here, that you're working on our kid's case. Because a lot of these mothers say, oh, it's been seventy years, I haven't heard from my detective. That wasn't going to happen to me. I was going to keep fighting and I was going to get in their face.
00:18:40
Speaker 1: Frustrated with the lack of response, Annabel turned to the Internet for help.
00:18:44
Speaker 2: I read somewhere find an activist, and so I did.
00:18:49
Speaker 1: Annabel came across an organization called Florida Parents of Murdered Children, which had been founded by a Miami woman named Tangela Sears.
00:18:57
Speaker 2: I called her on the phone and she immediately picked up. She just started, you know, hooking me up. Okay, you need to talk like a you're going to talk to the mayor, A you're going to talk to the chief of police, you're gonna talk to the homicide department. I'm going to get you in with the commander. So little by little, that's what we did.
00:19:14
Speaker 3: I can see very very well. How you know, family members can say, oh, well, nothing's being done in my case. It's just forgotten about.
00:19:22
Speaker 1: Sergeant Triffinoff is sympathetic to Annibal's frustration.
00:19:27
Speaker 3: We tell the families, look, have patience with us. You know, we're doing our best. We're following those leads. We're constantly switching gears. We're constantly let's get that case, let's get this case. Okay, there's something moving on this case, let's go there. But as a family, I can understand after years go by, it's like, are they just blowing smoke? Are they just giving me unwarranted hope? But there are times, you know, like in this case, where we had our hands tied at moments where there just wasn't wasn't anything that was able to go.
00:20:00
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, Sergeant Trivinoff was named lead detective on Brian's case, and he immediately began looking into it.
00:20:09
Speaker 3: I start looking at if there's any DNA on the case, anything that needed to go to the lab, that hadn't been sent to the lab, all these things, and I noticed that there was some evidence on the case that needed to be looked at. We incorporate familial DNA genealogy, additional testing on the DNA. I started looking into it and interview several people, possible suspects, witnesses, stuff like that.
00:20:44
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, none of this new information was enough to make an arrest.
00:20:49
Speaker 3: There were little leads throughout the years. There's always been something that we've been able to work on and look into, but nothing stolid that pointed to a specific individual.
00:21:03
Speaker 1: With all leads exhausted, the department needed an outside tip to move the case along.
00:21:09
Speaker 3: At that point, it's just hoping that somebody that saw something comes forward with whatever they saw, you know, anything they heard, even if they think it's trivial and they didn't really hear or see anything. Any little piece of information is very important for us. We can always use that and it may turn into something bigger and better that we can use.
00:21:31
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, Triffonoff was promoted to sergeant and the case was reassigned to another detective, but Triffonoff never forgot about Brian.
00:21:41
Speaker 3: And I had told annabel when I first met her that will never give up on this. I had an attachment to the case. It was a sixteen year old high school student that was just going to do his homework at a friend's house. So I kept working it even though I had left the unit.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Annabelle was also still fighting for her son. Try to keep focus on his case and gather any information she could. She posted regularly on the Facebook page she'd set up Justice for Brian Rera. She talked to anyone who would listen, the press, the police, the public. She was open to anything that might lead to that much needed tip.
00:22:17
Speaker 4: I need someone to come forward and say what happened that day, say the truth what you saw. This is my child and I want closure. But if this was your child, you would want to know who did this to them. No one deserves this. Let's put this guy away, Let's close this case.
00:22:39
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two, she applied for a grant from Season of Justice, a nonprofit that funds efforts to solve code cases nationwide. With the money she received, she put up a billboard in Alapada, near where Brian was killed. The organization also paid for signs for the family to set up around the area.
00:22:58
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, nothing came out of that. But you got to keep trying until you get something, and we're gonna keep trying. We're gonna keep pushing.
00:23:06
Speaker 1: But by early twenty twenty four, despite everything Annabelle had done, despite the work by the City of Miami police, Bran's case was completely cold.
00:23:15
Speaker 3: We hit a standstill. There were no leads available to us.
00:23:19
Speaker 1: It had been over a decade since Brian's murder, and solving his case felt further away than ever. The emotional toll this had taken on the Heretra family was immense.
00:23:31
Speaker 2: Honestly, there's been certain points in time where I'm like, maybe we should just let it go, because maybe it's tormenting us too much, and maybe we just need to just concentrate on grieving and living and forget about all this justice or revenge or whatever it is you want to call it. Every time I would say, you know, maybe I'm just going to back off, I would ask my husband. I would say, do you want me to stop and just let this go? He was like, no, do you want to stop. I'm like, no, I just want to make sure we want to keep fighting. He's no, I'll go for it, keep fighting. So then I was like, that's it. I'm going to keep fighting.
00:24:12
Speaker 1: And then in December twenty twenty four, a full twelve years after Brian's death, seemingly out of the blue, the Ereras get an update.
00:24:22
Speaker 2: All throughout these years, it's just me following back up with the detectives and they're still working on this and we're working on that, but there's never been a person of interest. There had never been anything. And then that's when we received a phone call that we've been waiting for for a very long time.
00:24:47
Speaker 1: In December twenty twenty four, while we were making this episode, Annabelle and William Herrera received a call from the Miami Police.
00:24:57
Speaker 2: They let us know that there was a witness they came forward and they were going to be arresting someone. We were very emotional, but we really try to hold it together so we can get all the information and not say that there crying. Then once we hung up, as when we you know, we melted down and we started crying and hugging.
00:25:17
Speaker 1: The news came almost twelve years to the day since Brian was killed.
00:25:21
Speaker 2: A murder mystery solved.
00:25:23
Speaker 1: It was the focus of a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
00:25:27
Speaker 5: It no longer remains a cold case, the Miami Dade State Attorney talking about the twenty twelve murder of sixteen year old Brian Herrera and the arrest that was made in the case.
00:25:37
Speaker 2: More than a decade later.
00:25:39
Speaker 1: A suspect had been arrested in Brian's murder. According to police, a tip had come in from a witness, one they had been looking for but hadn't been able to find. It was the man in the car, the man who asked the neighbor to call nine one one.
00:25:55
Speaker 2: The witness. He was driving by and saw the defendant with Brian. He saw like an argument going on, and he started rolling up. He was in his car, and he rolled up slowly next to them, and he told him, come on, guys, it's Christmas. What are we fighting about? And then he saw Brian whisper, I'm being robbed. And he saw that the defendant had a gun in his hand, pointed at Brian, and so he decided to just move forward and go on because he was scared for his life. And then he saw Brian break loose and then he heard a gunshot.
00:26:31
Speaker 1: Here was the evidence to the theory the police and the Hereras had all along. Brian was killed in a robbery over a cell phone. A cell phone that was never found, a cell phone that didn't even work without Wi Fi. That crucial tip had come in just six months earlier, in June twenty twenty four, when he called the driver said he had information on a murder that had happened just before Christmas twenty twelve.
00:26:58
Speaker 3: We were advised of the tip and we followed up on it. We sit down and interview that individual. They're ultimately able to identify the person that they saw robbing our victim of mister Perreira, and sitting with our state Attorney's office and discussing everything, we're able to arrest the offender, whose name is Adrian Grimes.
00:27:24
Speaker 1: Adrian Grimes is now thirty years old. Back in December twenty twelve, when Brian was killed, he'd have just turned eighteen. The witness said he'd known the suspect from the neighborhood and he had a defining characteristic. Grimes only has one eye. He lost it in an unrelated shooting that took place after Brian's murder. After his arrest, a grand jury indicted Adrian Grimes on charges of first degree murder and robbery with a firearm on January twenty second, twenty twenty five. Grimes's lawyer pleaded not guilty on behalf of his client. The prosecutor later told the judge the state would be seeking the death penalty. It's important to remember that an arrest is not a conviction. Eyewitness testimony can be unreliable and it doesn't always stand up in court. Agent Grimes, like everyone else, deserves due process.
00:28:15
Speaker 3: This is not the end of the road here. We still have a long way to go. This is kind of like an ending to a chapter. We've made an arrest, but now we have trial or any type of core proceedings, however they may go.
00:28:32
Speaker 1: It will now be up to a jury to decide if the evidence proves Rhymes killed Brian.
00:28:38
Speaker 3: In any case, even with a great case, you don't have any guarantees that you're going to be able to get a conviction. So it's a very very long journey and it's very unsure Diras understand this well.
00:28:53
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel like justice yet until he's been convicted and then it's not really justice. But at least we can move on with our with our lives without that added issue on our backs that this guy is just out there living his life while ourso lost his.
00:29:10
Speaker 1: Because in the end, nothing can replace what theras lost. It's Brian they miss and Brian they think about.
00:29:20
Speaker 2: We're constantly talking about him and the funny little stories, and he's He's always there.
00:29:26
Speaker 1: You know.
00:29:26
Speaker 2: You wake up every morning, you open your eyes at some point and put time during that day you're thinking about him. It's not always, you know, about the murder. It's more about the cute things he did, the smart things he did, things that he said. I have a lot of times the last time I saw him, you know what he said to me, and the image of him sitting on the couch and he was playing video games on his phone. He's watching TV and scrolling and I can remember, I swear it's like yesterday I was sitting here and he was sitting there and I was black and forth looking at him, and I remember his hair was outgrown, and you know, I told him, you gotta get a haircut. Oh, my girlfriend likes it like this, you know, So those are the little things that every day pop up.
00:30:18
Speaker 1: At a press conference after Grime's arraiement, Miami Police Chief Manny Morales said he remembered how Annabel had told him she'd felt abandoned by the detectives on Brian's case. He said, theredra has lit a fire under his team, and that's exactly what Annabel says. Anyone in her shoes should do.
00:30:36
Speaker 2: Keep fighting that detective doesn't call you, show up at the Hobbitside department as to speak to the commander. If the commander doesn't figure it out, as to speak to the chief of police, make yourself known to them, let them know your face, let them know your name. And every single time I would go to visit someone, I would take them their picture. This picture is for you. I want you to keep Brian's pace. I want you to look at his picture and remember him every single day. And every time I go to their offices, they have his pictures pinned up. That's exactly what I want. I wanted to remember who he is. And that's exactly what all parents have to do. They have to keep fighting, they have to keep pushing.
00:31:22
Speaker 3: On.
00:31:22
Speaker 1: This season of Cold Case Files, Miami we'll be speaking directly to those most deeply involved in this heartbreaking work. We'll hear from the detectives investigating these cases on the ground.
00:31:32
Speaker 2: Once I went back to really take a look at him, to all the statements, reading reports, I realize, Man, I feel like we got a case here.
00:31:41
Speaker 1: From the families of victims desperate for answers.
00:31:45
Speaker 3: If we can concentrate this information throughout the states to hear Mark Crai.
00:31:50
Speaker 2: To know that George's death was not in vague.
00:31:53
Speaker 1: Or searching for justice I said over six hundred emails I did.
00:31:58
Speaker 2: I had to go out to trust the police, but you gotta help make sure there be a held accountable tool.
00:32:05
Speaker 1: And from the prosecutors looking to convict those.
00:32:07
Speaker 5: Responsible, they will do whatever it takes on behalf of these victims to go to court and fight for them, fight for the voiceless and for the powerless.
00:32:17
Speaker 1: I'm Endrique Santos. Join me as we examine some of Miami's cold cases and talk to the people these tragedies affect most. Join us next week for cold case files Miami. Anyone with information regarding the case is asked to call crime Stoppers anonymously at three zero five four seven to one tips that's three zero five four seven one eight four seven seven, or visit the website at Crimestoppers three zero five dot com and select give a tip in case Files. Miami is a production of Iheart's Michael Tura podcast Network and School of Humans. I'm your host, Enbriquasantos. This show was written and researched by Marissa Brown. Our lead producer is Josh Thain. He Delis Perees is our senior producer. Sound design and mixed by Josh Thain, factchecking by Savannah Hugley. Our production manager is Daisy Church. Special thanks to Julia Ramirez from my production team. Our iHeart Radio executive producers including me Endrique Santos, carl Cadel and Arlene Santana, and Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr and Elsie Crowley from School of Humans. For more podcasts, listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
