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EXCLUSIVE: CAA will be shopping Cold Blooded: The Apollo Gym Murders, based on a 10-episode podcast by Scott Weinberger about the 40-year old cold case murder of a Florida bodybuilder, bound with his throat slashed in his townhouse in Miramar.
Framed around a decade of drug trafficking and steroid-fueled scary guys who shook down drug dealers, the podcast paints a picture of a series of brutal murders of members of a hardcore bodybuilder gym. The gym was a front for crime, and one of its owners had mob ties, and the other was an ex-police officer once called the meanest cop in Florida, with a long string of arrests and allegations of police brutality. The gym was a front for unsavory criminal activity and strong-arming, much of it perpetrated by the gym members who lifted heavy weights and competed in local bodybuilding competitions.
These colorful musclebound characters frame an ‘80s-set fact-based narrative that plays like one part Miami Vice and one part Goodfellas. It’s reminiscent of the latter in the part when Robert De Niro’s Jimmy the Gent character begins bumping off accomplices in the Lufthansa Heist to eliminate loose ends.
An intriguing element of Cold Blooded is how the cold case was cracked after a police detective teamed up with a former lawman-turned Emmy-winning investigative reporter. The unusual partnership was formed between Detective Danny Smith and podcaster Scott Weinberger, as they painstakingly followed leads, some of which seemed promising but turned into dead ends, before the trail finally delivered definitive evidence that brought closure this year to the family of Billy Halpern, the former firefighter and gym member found brutally murdered. Halpern, who hung around the gym, dealt art, coins and possibly illegal drugs, was extremely cautious who he would open the door for, and whose life ended when he likely let in a familiar face, only to be rushed by several other men who bound Halpern and slashed his throat and nearly decapitated him.
The suspicion initially fell on Gil Fernandez, the ex-cop with a quick temper and a hulking physique who would later be arrested and charged with several other murders and is still behind bars (the owner with mob ties died in prison). The man who was finally linked to the killing through DNA evidence was himself murdered, execution style, along with another gym member and possible accomplice. Fernandez was charged in those crimes. There were indications that the ex-cop was helped by getting inside info — one man said he was going to the police to tell what he knew about the murders, and wound up killed the following day. There was another crushing blow when they learned of a hair gathered at the scene of the murder, preserved in an evidence envelope that could shed light on the perpetrator. When the envelope was opened, it was empty.
Weinberger has used skills honed while in law enforcement to find success as a true-crime journalist, but being an arm for an overworked detective with a case load full of unsolved crimes, that doesn’t happen often.
“On the scale of being unusual, it’s highly unusual,” Weinberger told Deadline. “I don’t think it’s happened before. We have had journalists who have done podcasts that have gotten people released who were wrongfully convicted. There have been podcasts which have rekindled interest in a cold case that had law enforcement say, unfortunately, the media’s talking about it. And if the media’s talking about it, they’re going to be talking about us not doing anything about it. So perhaps we should do something about it. But to actually have somebody with the background to have the access that I had to be able to be alongside detectives making some critical decisions within the investigation hasn’t happened before. And I think the reason why it became apparent is because of the willingness of this detective to be open-minded with having another set of eyes.
“So as they always say, looking with a fresh pair of eyes, having two sets of eyes may be even more beneficial. And my approach from Danny is not dissimilar, but it is different in my expansive investigative experience, not only covering things as a cop, but seeing how the justice system works. Not from a macro level like he does in one small city, in one small area. My justice system experience is nationwide, and my outreach of assets is nationwide. And that’s the perspective that I brought into the episodes.”
Working directly with a detective on a cold case was something that Weinberger thought would be a better match for the skills he honed during a law enforcement career spent in uniform patrol, investigations, K-9 units, and a detail with the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force. He learned to follow the clues in everything from street narcotics cases and many other criminal cases. What kind of difference might he make in bringing closure to relatives of unsolved murder victims, if he were investigating rather than just reporting out true-crime cases as a journalist? Aside from his law enforcement days, Weinberger also spent time working closely and traveling with Muhammad Ali, the former heavyweight champion and political activist.
“I have an existing show that has really brought out the best of me in a sense before this came along,” he said. “Each week I get a chance to look at a different case, anywhere across the country where murder occurs, and I’m flexing those investigative muscles that I haven’t really done on the law enforcement side for 30-some odd years. It gave me the bug, the nag in my brain to say, maybe there’s more than I can do. Maybe I can help law enforcement open cold cases. Maybe I can bring attention through the podcast or through another potential podcast in order to light a fire under an agency to do something about a cold case where families may not be getting justice.”
That led him back to Florida, where he was a cop.
“It was really sort of one day that I thought, could you imagine if there was actually an agency in this nation that would allow a former cop to come in and actually be hands-on, not only in gathering the materials, but helping formulate the plans based on my experience? So I figured, I knew of this department, I knew of Danny Smith. My call to him was, this is what I’m thinking about doing. He had just been transferred to run the cold case unit at Miramar police department, and he had yet to look at a single cold case. He was just beginning his journey. I suggested to him that I take a flight down, let’s grab a beer and let’s talk cold cases. And that immediately went into, let’s just go into the office, let me pull out all of these files. And fortunately, I had my little recorder with me. So when he put those files down, I asked the PIO for permission to record the initial meeting saying that it would be off the record until it wasn’t off the record. And that’s when we started to go through the cases and we formulated a plan very quickly, and they both said, you know what? Clearly you have the credentials to do this. We think it would be great. Let’s start going and figuring out which case you want to take. And that’s when he pulled out Billy Halbert’s case.”
Actually solving the murder of a well-liked man who got in with the wrong crowd, seemed impossible that many years later. Challenges included the difficulties of trying to use sophisticated DNA science but finding that much of the decades-old evidence had degraded because nobody knew to store it differently than simply tossing it in boxes placed on shelves, to finding a way to get DNA of prime suspect Fernandez that actually eradicated the theory he perpetrated the murder. Why was Halpern murdered? The theory is he became a liability to members of the gym for knowing too much about potential illegal activities including drugs and guns.
“It is a reminder that truth is stranger than fiction,” he said. “I think the elements of getting Gil’s DNA, to finding a guy in witness protection, I don’t know if a screenwriter would be able to add those elements, but that’s exactly what happened. And the entire thing for a writer is visually audibly captured for them. It is a rich character driven story that has unusual elements, but ticks all the right boxes as far as I’m concerned. And it’s solved. I mean, there was a time that we weren’t sure the case was ever going to be solved, and I still think it’s a great story without the solve, but the fact that the family has justice and that one of the victims, Billy’s best friend who vowed to find the killer, had a hand in solving the crime, from his grave, well that’s just a Hollywood ending.”
