When two well-known fishermen are gunned down in a secluded state park in Florida, authorities are stumped for clues, but then a theory emerges that leads them to yet another victim of foul play in the same tight-knit fishing community.If you have information that can help solve this case, please contact the Cold Case Unit at 941-575-5361 or after hours call 941-639-2101. You can email the Unit at [email protected]. You can also contact SWFL Crime Stoppers at 1-800-780-TIPS. All callers will remain anonymous and will be eligible for a cash reward of up to $5,000. Tips may also be made online at www.southwestfloridacrimestoppers.com or on the P3 Tips mobile app.View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-boat/Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators | /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck
Chapter 1: What unsolved crime is being discussed in this episode?
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra. And the story I have for you today is a crime that still needs to be solved. This October marks the 35-year anniversary, and for many of you listening, it might be your first and only time you're hearing about this case.
There was very little original source material still out there when I dove into researching it, which can sometimes make covering stories like this challenging. But thankfully, I was able to interview former and current law enforcement investigators, as well as one of the victim's daughters. And it was through those conversations that a lot of new information came to light.
Chapter 2: How is the crime scene connected to the host?
There's also something else you should know going into this episode, and that's the crime scene, Don Pedro Island, Florida, which is home to Don Pedro Island State Park, literally butts up next to some property my husband and I bought a few years ago. So to say this crime happened in my backyard is an understatement, but it was 30 years before we came into the picture, so there's that.
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Chapter 3: What happened on the day of the murders?
Around nine o'clock in the morning on Tuesday, October 9th, 1990, a worker inside Don Pedro Island State Park in Florida was going about their morning duties when they heard what sounded like gunshots.
Now, to give you a better sense of where the state park is, it's sort of split between the mainland of Cape Haze, Florida, and the barrier island of Don Pedro Island, which can only be accessed by ferry, kayak, or private boat. On one side of the island is the Gulf of Mexico, and on the other side is what's known as the Intracoastal Waterway.
According to my interviews with law enforcement, the worker who heard the gunshots was on the barrier island portion of the park, so surrounded by water, and in a section that was near a popular fishing cove known as Rambler Hole.
Right around the same time the park employee heard the gunshots, a group of people in a pontoon boat cruising into Rambler's Hole came upon another boat that was just floating freely. There seemingly was no anchor or people around. It appeared to drift and getting closer and closer to the mangrove trees that encompassed the cove.
As the people in the pontoon boat got closer, they realized the floating vessel was a red mullet boat, which was a type of watercraft that local commercial fishermen used. Mullet boats are a common site on the Intracoastal Waterway, which is the main waterway that Rambler Hole connects to.
Like I said in the intro, I've personally ventured through this area myself, and if you check out the blog post for this episode, there's a map I've created to help you understand what I'm describing.
Mullet boats, which are historically flat on the bottom, are made of mostly wood and are great for getting into shallow bodies of water, like Rambler Hole, which kind of acts as a dead end for mullet fish once they've swam in there. Every year between August and November in Florida, mullet run in massive schools and end up in warmer waters. And these kinds of inlets are good places to catch them.
Anyway, when the group of people in the pontoon boat got close enough to cruise by the adrift mullet boat, they saw something disturbing. A person's foot was sticking up in the air and it was clear that something bad had happened. A short distance away from the vessel, the witnesses also discovered something orange floating beneath the surface of the water that looked suspicious.
So I imagine not wanting to waste time and having no idea what exactly they just stumbled upon. The group of people immediately alerted workers at the state park, and by 10.30 a.m., a deputy with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office Marine Unit arrived. Shortly afterwards, he was followed by more investigators from the Sheriff's Office.
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Chapter 4: What were the findings from the autopsies?
At some point on that Tuesday, staff from the sheriff's office covered Harry's fishing boat with tarps and transported it along with both victims' bodies to the shore.
Melanie Scott Fowler, Harry's daughter, who was 16 years old at the time, told me during her interview that because her dad was such a large man, some 440 pounds, the sheriff's office had to use a crane to lift his body and get it safely onto dry land. Lori Windham reported for the Fort Myers news press that their autopsies were scheduled for the following day.
By that point, word had spread that two fishermen had been found dead, and local newspapers were all over the story. The sheriff's office confirmed to reporters that foul play was suspected in the case.
Both victims' autopsies were done the next day, Wednesday, October 10th, and though I wasn't able to get a copy of those reports for myself, Jim Kenville and current Charlotte County Sheriff's Office cold case detective Mike Vogel filled me in on the important details, some of which have never been shared publicly until now.
Jim and Mike said that the medical examiner determined both victims had been shot, and it was clear that Harry had suffered far more violence than Stanley. He'd been shot at least five times, four in his body, and at least once in the back of his head. The shooter or shooters had used two different caliber guns, a 9mm and either a .357 or .38.
He'd also been struck over the head multiple times with an object that law enforcement surmised had to have been heavy because there were five fairly deep lacerations on his head. Jim told me that because the assault on Harry seemed to be contained to the front of the boat, that indicated whoever killed him might have boarded the vessel in order to carry out the attack.
It's unclear though from my conversation with him what injuries came first, the blows to Harry's head or the multiple gunshot wounds. Whatever the exact sequence of events though, Jim told me that he's certain of one thing, Harry's murder occurred very quickly.
Mike Vogel told me that one explanation as to why the killer or killers chose to shoot Harry so many times was because, like I mentioned earlier, he was a very large man. His own family was comfortable with me describing him as a man who was overweight, and so law enforcement believed that the four shots to his body were not necessarily fatal due to his large size.
However, the gunshot wound to his head, which entered behind his left ear, seemed to be the fatal shot. I've seen this type of gunshot sometimes referred to as an execution-style wound. The fact that Harry had also been beaten with something was even more interesting to investigators because it seemed like a case of overkill or perhaps evidence that the killer or killers were frustrated with him.
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Chapter 5: What was the significance of the green mullet boat?
The witnesses said that the red-headed man's hair was so unique that, to them, it almost seemed like it was fake or could have been a wig, but they didn't know for sure. When investigators pressed the witnesses for more details about the green mullet boat, they couldn't give them any. No one had managed to catch the vessel's hull number.
The one detail they did clarify, though, was that its paint color was more of a puke green, as opposed to another shade of green like a sea green or hunter green. Which, in my opinion, is actually kind of a good clue, at least in terms of narrowing down shades of green.
Something else the witnesses were sure of was that it was a mullet boat, so flat-bottomed, made mostly of wood, not a fancy speedboat, pontoon boat, or sailboat, which, again, was at least something substantial that authorities could follow up on. Meanwhile, other investigators had impounded Harry's boat at the sheriff's office and begun thoroughly processing it for evidence.
But I don't have a ton of detail about what exactly they found, because the case is still an open homicide. However, Mike Vogel, the current cold case detective for the sheriff's office, told me that deputies did end up finding a round from a bullet lodged in a piece of wood plank on the inside of the vessel.
When I asked him if he thought that round might be a shot that maybe had missed Harry, he said it was either that or a round that went through Harry's body and was then embedded in the boat. He's unsure which exactly, but he told me if he had to guess, he thinks it's most likely a shot that missed Harry.
I'm personally most interested in the fact that it was embedded inside the vessel, because to me that's just another sign that points to the killer or killers being on Harry's boat with him when the shooting happened. I mean, think about it.
If the shooter or shooters started firing while still outside the boat, then you'd expect a round that missed Harry to damage the outside of the vessel, not end up on the inside. I mean, I guess anything is possible, and since I don't have access to the entire case file, there are things I'm certainly missing.
But I shared my observation with Mike Vogel, and he agreed that my theory made sense, and I took that as sort of a wink-wink, you got a good point kind of thing. Anyway, despite not having the clearest picture of what shots were fired when and from what angle, the sheriff's office still had to do their best to find firearm evidence that might lead them in a better direction.
But unfortunately, no weapons or shell casings were found on Harry's boat. And Mike believes that when divers searched the water in the cove back in the day, they also didn't find any firearms or casings. Mike told me that if the shooter or shooters had used a revolver, then the casings not being anywhere at the crime scene makes total sense.
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Chapter 6: Was drug smuggling involved in the case?
Investigators located a few boats that were reportedly similar to it, but in the end, none of those vessels were the right one, and the sheriff's office determined that the watercraft they were looking for was most likely not from the Charlotte County area. And so the big question became, where the heck was it from?
And equally as important, why would the two men seen on it have wanted to kill Harry and Stanley, if in fact those men were the responsible party? Turns out there might have been hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of reasons why someone would want to harm Harry Billy Scott.
It didn't take long after the murders for investigators with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office to begin hearing rumors that Harry was suspected of being tangled up in the drug trade. According to Mike Vogel and Jim Kenville, investigators learned after speaking with staff from the U.S. Department of Customs and Border Protection and the U.S.
Coast Guard that Harry's name had come up in investigations related to offshore drug smuggling. Interviews from those agencies indicated that local fishermen like Harry were suspected of driving their vessels offshore, picking up bundles of illegal drugs from suppliers, and then bringing those parcels back to the mainland. And it wasn't like this was some huge secret either.
Jim told me that as far as Harry's involvement in this kind of activity went, it was almost common knowledge amongst the locals. Melanie, Harry's daughter, told me during her interview that even though her parents divorced at a young age, her dad would always make sure that she and her mom were taken care of. He'd send money, buy Melanie's mom nice cars and so on.
And once Melanie became an adult, she looked back on this kind of thing, did the math, and realized that her father's work as a fisherman probably wasn't the only thing financing those gifts. So with this information as background about Harry, investigators were more suspicious than ever that whoever was responsible for the crime had specifically targeted him.
Perhaps the attack was the result of a vendetta or retribution because Harry had stolen from someone higher up in the drug trade. I think it's also possible they speculated that another local fisherman who was involved in the same illegal activity as Harry might have wanted to eliminate him as competition. Now, I know these theories are specific, but they're not necessarily unfounded.
Mike Vogel and Jim Kenville told me during their interviews that Harry was a boisterous man who at times could come off as obnoxious. He liked to fish in whatever body of water he wanted to, and he didn't like anyone telling him what he could or couldn't do. Apparently, there were several people in his industry who just straight up didn't like him. So the suspect pool was robust, to say the least.
Still, the one thing that stuck out about the crime was the timing of it. If this was a targeted killing, how would the perpetrator or perpetrators known where Harry would be on the morning of the crime? In the first few days of the investigation, the sheriff's office was able to determine Harry and Stanley's movements leading up to their murders.
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Chapter 7: What was the timeline leading up to the murders?
Jim Kimball told me that Rambler Hole was a common place for Harry to fish from mullet, and there would have been a handful of local residents who knew that was one of his usual fishing spots. I guess there's also the possibility that the killer or killers were unfamiliar to Harry's usual routine and could have just followed him and Stanley in there.
But to me, that scenario seems less likely because that would mean the perpetrators would have had to have been watching Harry from the moment he and Stanley left his house in Thunderation Way, then trolled behind his boat through a series of narrow channels all the way to the marina, then up the intercoastal waterway to the cove.
In that scenario, it seems like the suspects would have risked losing the element of surprise if they'd been behind Harry's boat the entire time. I guess anything is possible, but for some reason, the killers followed them the whole time scenario just doesn't land with me. Anyway, something that was established with a bit more certainty was that Stanley most likely wasn't a target of the crime.
According to everyone I spoke with and the documented source material, he was intellectually disabled. Melanie, Harry's daughter, who'd grown up with Stanley, described him as having Down syndrome. One local fisherman told reporter Jim Greenhill that even though Stanley's intellectual functioning was limited, he was very loyal to Harry.
He was physically strong and enjoyed working for him on the mullet boat. Sometimes he'd even work for other fishermen too who needed an extra hand. Melanie said there was nothing Stanley wouldn't do for her father and vice versa. So no one who knew Stanley could think of anyone who'd want him dead.
It's safe to say that the sheriff's office believes he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And because he was a witness, he was taken out as well. Mike Bogle told me and Fox 4 reporter Caitlin Knapp that it's still investigators' belief Stanley was killed for no reason other than he was there and saw what happened to Harry.
Something interesting I learned during my interviews, though, was that usually Harry armed himself with either a shotgun or what Melanie described as a pearl-handled or nickel-plated .45 caliber revolver. She said that her dad always kept that gun in his waistband, but curiously, it was not recovered at the crime scene, and according to her, its whereabouts have never been determined.
She believes that whoever murdered Harry took it from him. According to that piece by Jim Greenhill I mentioned earlier, back in October 1990, Joyce, Harry's girlfriend, said that on the morning of the crime, Harry didn't arm himself, which to her indicated that he wasn't expecting to encounter any sort of threat during that particular fishing trip.
So I think the logic there is if he had anticipated a confrontation with someone or suspected an enemy was going to attack him, he would have prepared himself. Local fishermen emphasized in their interviews with the news press that Harry was not someone to mess with. Even though he was large, they said he was quick and would resort to violence if he needed to.
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