One Deal From Murder

One Deal In this episode, we’re heading to New Jersey AND Florida. It’s Saturday, February 24 of 1996. 58-year-old Frank Black, a man who made his millions in the business of… buses… is headed to Florida to meet a potential client. He doesn’t normally work the weekends, but who am I kidding – when you own your own company, you aren’t ever really off of work. This weekend he decides to make the trip because this could be one of the biggest deals he could land. He tells his work help, his family and his girlfriend that he’s heading to Palm Beach to meet with a woman named Mia Giadano. Mia was to pick him up from the airport and from there they’d be meeting up with others who would be involved in the deal. He was only going for the weekend, and he’d be back Monday for another meeting he had scheduled. Frank is hoping this deal will be the perfect end to a great career. He’s ready to land this deal and then sell his business and retire. He had an offer from a bigger company to buy his business and he was planning on accepting it when he returned to New Jersey. So, back in New Jersey, when Monday arrives and Frank has not, everyone knows something is wrong. Frank is the type who has a hand in every aspect of his business and it legit can’t go on without him. He’s apparently not great at delegating, unlike those in our last episode. Knowing that he was looking forward to retiring, when he misses that very important meeting about selling his company Monday morning, his loved ones quickly report him missing. He hadn’t just missed that major meeting, but he also hadn’t been answering phone calls while on his trip. He was one of those to have the early cell phones, but he was strangely not answering or calling back. Since he’s so involved in his business, not answering his phone was unusual to say the least. Frank’s office manager and girlfriend, Sally Roberts, said the woman, Mia, from Florida had called the office several times but hadn’t ever left a number with the office. She had said she was representing a business called Valdes Exporting. This Mia had given Frank a description of herself as she’d be the one picking him up from the airport. Sally told authorities Mia had described herself as 5’1” and blonde. A detective went to speak with the travel agent who had booked the trip for Frank had booked a one-way ticket to Florida but had decided against renting a car as he had been expecting to get rides from his potential clients he was meeting. Airline records showed that Frank was on that flight, so they know he made it to Florida. They check registries at all the hotels in the West Palm Beach area where he had traveled to, but he wasn’t registered at any of them. As for financial records – they do find that Frank’s credit cards had been used after the flight. One credit card was used at the Embassy Suites on Riviera Beach between 1 and 2 in the morning. It wasn’t for a room, though because he wasn’t registered there. Then, a different credit card of his was used at 4 am to purchase gas from a gas station in North Miami. Remember, though, he had told the travel agent, he didn’t need to rent a car, so why was he buying gas? Police go to talk to the attendant from the gas station and show him a photo of Frank. He says he doesn’t remember Frank, but that didn’t mean all that much since it’s one of the pumps equipped with a credit card reader on the pump, so he wouldn’t really interact with customers unless they came inside to pay or purchase something else. When they asked the attendant if he remembered seeing a woman matching Mia’s description, he gave the same answer. No, he’s not sure he saw someone like that. When they go to the Embassy Suites, they catch up to the clerk who had been on duty the evening Frank’s credit card was used and show the clerk his photo as well. She didn’t recognize Frank’s photo, and since it was the very early hours of the morning, it wasn’t a super busy time, so she was able to remember who she encountered then. She mentioned a woman who was only a little over 5’ tall who had come in at about 2am. The woman had dark hair, not blonde, and had come in asking for a room. When the clerk told her they were all booked up, the woman had asked to use the phone to call other hotels for availability. At this time in the 90’s they had a type of payphone with a credit card swiper for guests to use. Investigators also contact the Florida Secretary of State to get an address for Valdes Exporting, the company that the mysterious Mia worked for. The secretary of state could find no such company registered in Florida. Detectives also try to look up Mia Giadano but there’s no one in the state of Florida OR New Jersey by that name. By now, it’s been 5 days since Frank went missing and detectives are just baffled, wondering if maybe Frank intended to leave his life and never come back. Frank’s adult daughter and his girlfriend insisted he was right at the cusp of what he was viewing as his golden years, where he could leave the stress of work behind and enjoy retirement. They couldn’t imagine any reason he would have to check out of his own pretty great life. So, police keep going and decide to look further into Frank’s phone records. They’re able to confirm that Frank was getting calls from someone in Florida. The calls weren’t coming from West Palm Beach, but from Jupiter, Florida which is about 30 minutes away. They trace the calls to a woman named Lisa Costello. Lisa Costello’s information is pulled up and she’s definitely NOT blonde, but, her driver’s license says she’s 5’1” tall. Investigators take Lisa’s photo in a photo lineup back to the clerk at the hotel who immediately picks out Lisa as the woman who was making the phone calls the evening that Frank would have arrived in West Palm Beach. Digging into Lisa’s whereabouts the day of Frank’s arrival in Florida, police find that Lisa had rented a car near the airport shortly before Frank’s plane was to arrive. They even track down the rental car to look for evidence and have it impounded, but nothing of any importance was found in it. There’s still only circumstantial evidence to link Lisa to Frank, so police decide to put a tail on Lisa. Again, would they do this for the average Joe that goes missing or is this because Frank’s a millionaire? While following Lisa, they quickly discover she’s dating a man named Alan Mackerley who also happens to own a bus company like Frank and who also is from New Jersey like Frank. What are the odds? Alan had recently made the move to Florida from New Jersey, but he still owned his transportation company in New Jersey. Now focusing their attention on Alan, they wonder how he could play into all of this. I mean, he had to in some way right? The chances that the two men coming from the same line of pretty specific business and same state are just too small to think it could be a coincidence. Investigators soon find out that Frank and Alan had a powerful rivalry going between their two transportation companies. Their businesses are only about 10 miles apart, not on opposite sides of the state and the two were constantly competing for the same clients. Specifically, schools and other institutions were a big get for these guys. When checking phone records, investigators find that there were recent calls from Frank’s phone to Alan’s home phone. Since the men are well-known enemies, why would they be calling one another? To find out, police return to Frank’s office manager slash girlfriend, Sally to find out if maybe the men had made amends and were planning to work together. Sally sad the last time the rivals had been in the same room together was in January of 1996 at an industry banquet. Sally and Frank had been talking with others when Alan stormed up to Frank steaming mad. Alan was furious with Frank for stealing one of his major bussing contracts. He threatened Frank saying that he was going to get him and put him under. Sally and Frank took that to mean either he was going to destroy Frank’s business or Frank himself. Authorities find out exactly what may have made Alan so infuriated. Apparently, that bus contract was won by Frank underbidding Alan by more than half the cost, probably just to spite Alan. This happened to be a big school district account. Frank took Alan’s threats seriously and from that time on, he wouldn’t go to any meetings or conferences that Alan could also be attending. He must have been shaken up enough to believe Alan could actually turn violent. Knowing that Alan had received calls at his residence from Frank and that his number had also called Frank’s number, police go to ask him if he’d spoken to Frank recently. Alan denies he talked to Frank of late which basically proves he’s lying in the minds of investigators. They believe that Alan made good on his threat to put Frank under, but they needed some proof. They had no body, no weapon and no confession. They decide to try to get approval to tap Alan’s phone, but wire taps are pretty hard to get and you really have to prove that there’s probable cause to get one. Fortunately for detectives, they get lucky and a judge grants them the wire tap. They’re hoping that Lisa and Alan will be caught discussing the probable murder. However, very few conversations were even had by the couple over the phone because by this time, Lisa had actually moved into Alan’s house. It’s not like me where I actually call my sons while we’re all home because I get tired of trying to bang on their doors to hear me through their headphones. Now, if they want to hear anything Lisa and Alan are discussing, police need to bug Alan’s house. Now, if getting wire taps is hard, placing listening devices in homes is like escaping quicksand. Which I think all of us kids from the 80’s assumed would happen to us all at some point in our lives but have yet to find any quicksand let alone have to know how to escape it. Which we do, since it was in so many 80’s movies. However, authorities are able to convince a judge that this was indeed needed and they bug Alan’s house. Alas, the couple were extremely careful and investigators think they somehow knew the place was bugged. Whenever they began talking, they’d turn up the radio enough that it drowned out anything they were saying. Frank disappeared in February of 1996 and now it’s June of 1996 and there’s still no sign of him. Fortunately, one of the investigators at the case had an old friend in a power position. He was an FBI agent and offered the FBI’s help on the case. This opened up more resources for investigators. They figure their best lead is the presumed false identity that Lisa Costello had put on as Mia Giadano to snare Frank. They hope that if they confront Lisa with all the evidence they have showing that she likely knew what happened to Frank, maybe she’ll turn on Alan and the confession will come. They decide to offer her immunity if she talks after they subpoena her to speak in front of a grand jury. This is a risk, because if Lisa is actually Frank’s killer, she could take the deal, admit she killed him and get off scot free. On June 13 of 1996, Lisa appears before the grand jury but she refuses to talk. She’s uncooperative and hostile during questioning. The judge warns her that if she doesn’t answer the questions and answer them honestly, she’ll be jailed for contempt. Lisa ignores the warnings and elects to go to jail instead of answering the questions. Her plea deal for immunity is now gone, but also, now investigators don’t have anyone that could turn on Alan to get to the bottom of what happened to Frank. But then, a confidential source comes to police saying that a witness wanted to come forward but was afraid to because of their own involvement and because Alan was very capable of violence and retaliation. PART 2: In part 1 of this story, we were discussing the disappearance of Frank black and that police believe they know who Frank’s killer is, but the one person they hope will turn on Alan Mackerely, Lisa Costello, was a brick wall. We left off with a witness coming forward. The witness, a former marine pilot named Bill Anderson, was one of Alan’s closest friends. Bill had also had a bus company in New Jersey after having been a commercial airline pilot. Investigators convince him to come talk to them with the promise of witness protection. The lead detective and his FBI agent friend were also previous marines and they used this connection to build camaraderie and trust with Bill. Bill was hesitant to talk about Alan with investigators, but after many meetings with him, he begins to show signs of confidence in their ability to keep him safe. Detectives decide that giving Bill a subpoena to testify in front of a judge would help him justify to Alan why he had to turn on him. They know as marines themselves, it’s hard to turn against their country’s law for a single person. With his subpoena, he has the option like Lisa did, that he had total immunity if he testified even if he took part in the crime. Bill goes in under oath and tells investigators everything he knew. He tells them that Alan had purchased a plane at one point and asked Bill to be his private pilot. In exchange, Bill could use the plane whenever he wanted for his own use. Under oath, Bill tells investigators that in March of 1996 he was staying at a hotel in Leesburg Florida to oversee repairs being done on the plane. He gets a call from Alan saying he needs Bill to get the plane, come get Alan and do a flyover the Ocean. Bill explains that the plane is grounded for a few more days and they just don’t have that option. Bill suggests they rent a different plane but Alan insists on using his own plane, not wanting to report the flight to anyone. Bill, of course, asks why and Alan straight up tells him that he had shot Frank, wrapped the body in plastic and dumped it in the ocean. He explained that the body floated in the plastic at first, so he used a knife to stick holes in the plastic to sink it. Now, he was worried that the body had resurfaced and he wanted to do a flyover to make sure it hadn’t. Bill was shocked and refused to help Alan. He too had known Frank well and didn’t like him in the least but he didn’t agree with a man being killed over a business rivalry. He told about how when owned a bus company in New Jersey, many fellow transportation companies had issues with Frank, feeling like he was making dishonest and shady deals. He and other allies in the business joined forces to try to do surveillance on Frank in hopes of chronicling violations. They jokingly referred to this group as the “Frank Black Admiration Society.” Without really having to push for details, Alan told Bill all the details of killing Frank. He told Bill that Lisa had lured Frank to his house, where he was shocked and angry to see Alan. Alan told him how he had put Frank in a headlock in the foyer and shot him in the head. Now that police have these details, their investigation is reignited. But, since they still don’t have a body or murder weapon, Bill’s testimony in court would just be a he said, he said kind of deal which would not likely result in a conviction. Police decide they need a taped confession from Alan. They tell Bill that he’s going to be helping them get this confession. Bill REALLY didn’t want to wear a wire meeting with Alan and he had good reason. In the past, Alan had told Bill a story about an acquaintance who’d gotten convicted because of a person who’d worn a wire and that if anyone ever did that to him, he’d kill them. Bill knew Alan wasn’t kidding and had the means to do so. Investigators promise protection the entire time and he reluctantly agrees. The plan is to lure Alan to Bill’s house where they’d have a hidden video camera and Bill would be wired for sound. To get Alan to come over to Bill’s house, they have Bill call him and tell him he’d been served with a subpoena (not telling him that he’d already gone through with the deliberation) and he wanted to ask Alan what he should do. Alan says he’ll be right over. Investigators have an FBI agent positioned in Bill’s house in case something should go sideways. The rest of the team would be listening from a transmitter out in a vehicle. The car team would radio into the FBI agent to let him know when they saw Alan’s car so he would know when to go hide. While the team in the car are waiting for Alan to arrive, telephone repairmen pull up in a van outside of Bill’s property and start digging near a telephone box. Knowing how paranoid Alan is about being watched, they know if he sees the workers, he’ll think they’re undercover agents and he’ll run. So, they run out to the workers, tell them to leave asap and conceal where the men had started digging. The agents make it back to the car just as Alan pulls around the corner. They try to alert the agent inside, but get no response. They try again, and still it’s radio silence. By then, it’s too late and Alan is already at Bill’s door. Luckily, the agent is smart enough to duck into hiding when he hears the doorbell. Bill leads Alan to the kitchen where the video surveillance is set up and starts to try to talk to Alan is still hesitant to talk, pointing to the walls and whispering that someone could be listening. Alan didn’t want to sit inside where he’s worried it could be bugged, which it was, so he leads Bill outside. Fortunately, Bill does have the wire on him so they can still at least listen in. However, knowing Bill is so sure Alan will kill him for what he knows, police wonder if Alan is leading him out to the densely foliated area of Bill’s property to kill him. Instead of heading towards the recesses of the property, Alan begins walking towards the agent’s parked car where they’re all sitting in the car. The car is only about 100 feet from the two men and the radio in the car is loudly transmitting the men’s footsteps on the gravel as they walk. Agents are worried that Alan will hear the sounds through the car. It would only take him looking in their direction to see them all sitting there. They’re just sitting there frozen, listening. With the two men walking, the sounds of Bill’s moving clothing muffles most of the conversation. Before Alan can spot the surveillance team, Bill guides Alan in a different confession. The only thing they were able to get out of the conversation was Alan promising to come forward to tell the truth if Bill is put in jail. Meanwhile, Lisa is still in jail for contempt and it’s been 3 months but she still refuses to talk. Agents decide to try to get dirt on her for other possible crimes to try to help her to open up. Lisa’s old roommate told them that Lisa used to deal cocaine and roofies. Knowing that depending on the dosage, roofies can relax someone or knock them totally unconscious, investigators come up with a theory. They wonder if Lisa had taken Frank to Alan’s house and made him a drink laced with roofies. Having him knocked out would be far easier for Alan to take the man down. They take this theory to Lisa, hoping knowing this about her could scare her enough into finally talking. They also let her know if she didn’t cooperate now, the immunity clause would be gone. That would mean she could be charged with murder and spend life in jail. Even with all of this, Lisa battens down the hatches and won’t say anything. Investigators decide it’s time to go ahead and arrest Alan, hoping that Bill’s testimony, Alan’s motive and suspicious actions and all the circumstantial evidence will be enough. 7 months after Frank’s disappearance, Alan is arrested for kidnapping and murder. When the news of his arrest hits the local airwaves, a man calls in with more information. He agrees to come in and make a statement. The man is Alan’s son-in-law named Robert. Robert says he’d gotten a call from Alan on February 25, the day after Frank had arrived in Florida. Alan asked Robert to come over to help him do some work on his house. When Robert gets there, Alan and Lisa had already begun some major renovations in the foyer. They had removed parts of the wall and the carpet had been taken out. While they’re working, Alan mentions that Frank had been over to his house. Knowing very well about their rivalry, Robert asks, “why would Frank come see you?” Alan said he didn’t want to talk about it but cryptically said, “given the OJ Simpson trial, we gotta get rid of any evidence and make sure there’s not so much as a hair in here.” Robert didn’t ask for details, explaining he then knew what had probably happened and he that he never saw any blood. The trio used an industrial vacuum to clean up and hauled the debries to the local dump. Robert described dumping sheetrock, carpeting and even the vacuum in the landfill. Police believe Robert’s story as it further corroborates what Bill said about the killing happening in Alan’s foyer. Police send out an evidence recovery team to the landfill to attempt to find the items Robert had described. They scoured for 3 days and found carpet that matched the one that Robert had described as well as sheetrock. However, nothing was found on any of it that could conclusively link it to Alan’s house. So, they go search Alan’s house. In the foyer, even with all the clean-up, the team finds what looks to be traces of blood, but DNA markers couldn’t be exclusively matched to Frank. So they STILL don’t have physical evidence. The FBI even goes so far as to go to stores to collect receipts where Alan had bought cleaning supplies, trash bags and duct tape which they felt he had bought all to clean up his crime. They then prepare for trial. Just before trial was to begin, inmates housed with Alan ask to speak to investigators. They claim that Alan had hired someone to kill Bill, the star witness. Alan was well aware that if Bill couldn’t testify, prosecutors would have to drop their case. Witness protection is informed, and Bill is being guarded even more heavily now and Alan’s now being watched in jail with more scrutiny. Because of his threats, Alan is held without bail until his trial. Alan’s trail began January 20 of 1998. Alan had told people in the past that if there’s no body, there’s no crime. However, courts have long said that they don’t reward people for being good at getting rid of a body. You can still prove death without a body through circumstantial evidence. Bill testified and gave a pretty complete picture of what had happened. Prosecutors added on what they think happened which was that Lisa had picked up Frank from the airport wearing a blonde wig and took him to Alan’s house on the pretense of meeting other business executives. Frank had no reason to think it was Alan’s house, otherwise, he definitely wouldn’t have gone in. From there, they think that Lisa made him a drink spiked with roofies which are odorless, colorless and tasteless. Lisa and Frank talked while the drugs took effect after which Alan took over. After Frank was dead, they went out and used Frank’s credit cards to create a fake trail for the police, making it seem Frank had indeed been running around West Palm Beach himself. They say that Alan shot Frank, wrapped the body in plastic, and used one of his power boats to dump the body about 20 miles off shore in the Atlantic Ocean. Police had searched one of Alan’s boats and while there was not any evidence, the last GPS location on the boat’s system indicated a place 20 miles off shore where no one even really fished. The jury finds Alan Mackerely guilty of kidnapping and murder. He’s sentenced to life without parole. Now, prosecutors set their sights on Lisa. Lisa finally sees that she’s facing murder charges all because of a man she loves. She decides to give a full testimony as to what happened. She admits that she did brink Frank to Alan’s but was told that she was bringing him there because Alan wanted to convince Frank to sell his bus business to him. After she brought him there, she went upstairs to take a shower while the men talked and then heard the shot. She plead guilty to 3rd degree murder and false imprisonment. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison with time served. She had spent 18 months in jail for the contempt charge which was the longest in Florida’s history. Later, Alan’s conviction was thrown out because there was no way to prove Alan had actually kidnapped Frank since Frank flew to Florida of his own volition. During his second trial, one juror disagreed with the 11 others and wouldn’t enter a guilty verdict, so that ended in mistrial and was thrown out. Alan’s defense team decided to go with a new tactic in his 3rd trial. Alan decides to take the stand in his own defense. He admitted that he lied about Frank’s death to friends and authorities, but that he didn’t kill Frank. He asserted that it was Lisa, not him, that had killed Frank. Alan said he was spending the night on his yacht when he got a call from Lisa saying that Frank had become enraged and confronted her when she had lured him to Alan’s house to try to make a deal with him to buy his bus business. He had attacked Lisa and she had grabbed an exercise weight and hit him in the head with it. Supposedly, this killed him instantly. He said by the time he got home, Lisa had already dumped the body and he had no choice but to go along with the coverup. Alan said he didn’t go to the police because he loved Lisa and wanted to protect her. Since Lisa has told different stories about what happened and was uncooperative in the past, the prosecution didn’t have her testify, thinking she’d be seen as an unreliable witness. Once again, Bill testified and once again, Alan was convicted of murder, but not of kidnapping. I watched a show where Lisa, now out of jail, was interviewed. Alan had been paying all of her bills and legal fees AND was also taking care of her family and promised to do so as long as she didn’t talk. Frank was trying to convince Lisa to take the plea deal of immunity and then claim she had killed Frank, but Lisa’s lawyers told Lisa that those immunity deals aren’t air tight. So she decided just to not talk at all in the beginning. When Lisa wouldn’t claim she killed Frank to authorities, he cut her off financially, and that’s when she decided to talk. Alan Mackerely ended up dying in jail. SOURCES: Edweek.org, tampabay.com, FBI files: Millionaire Murder episode S3, E8, sports.yahoo.com, wtsp.com, the ledger.com, hearldtribune.com, gopbi.com, snapped: lisa costello