Francisco Del Junco was arrested in Miami at the start of June 1996 and charged in the deaths of four women killed in the city since August 1995. Police said he confessed. The women were Vida Hicks, 43; Diane Helms, 44; Cheryl Lee Ray, 37; and Janice Cox, 37. According to the Associated Press, all four were found in or near Allapattah, an inner-city neighborhood north of downtown Miami. The arrest closed a ten-month investigation by a serial killer task force, and it came, police said, just as he was setting out to kill again.
Vida Hicks was 43. Diane Helms was 44. Cheryl Lee Ray and Janice Cox were both 37. Police said all four had been beaten to death. Beyond their names and ages, little was reported at the time about who the women were, about their families, or about their lives before they died.
The deaths came at intervals of a few months. United Press International, citing police, put the first in August 1995, the second in October, the third in January 1996 and the fourth in April. The Associated Press gave the span as August to March.
For months the investigation had few leads. Witnesses said they had seen a man with the third woman shortly before she was found dead, and police circulated a composite sketch of a man known on the street as Dread, a name that came from his long dreadlocks. "We didn't know if he was a suspect in the killings, or a witness to them," Lieutenant Bill Schwartz told UPI. "We only knew we needed to talk to him." After the arrest, police said Del Junco was not Dread and did not resemble the sketch. They described Del Junco as a white Latin man.
The break came on the Friday before the arrest. A woman went to the task force and described how she had escaped an attack by a man about nine months earlier, according to the Associated Press. She had recently seen the man again and called police. Her description led investigators to Del Junco, UPI reported.
Detectives picked him up for questioning that Friday. They released him while the crime laboratory finished its tests. Those tests matched the size and sole pattern of his combat boots to prints found at one of the scenes, the Associated Press reported. On the Monday that followed he was arrested and charged; United Press International reported the arrest in a dispatch dated June 3, 1996.
Investigators befriended him, in the phrase the police gave UPI, "got into his head," and encouraged him to talk. Investigators took him to a beach on Key Biscayne, south of the city and away from police headquarters, and there he began to talk about the killings and admitted his part in them.
"He told us things only the murderer could know," Lieutenant Tony Rodriguez told UPI.
Police gave no motive. Assistant Police Chief John Brooks told the Associated Press that Del Junco said voices had told him to do it. Rodriguez described his manner. "His demeanor is one of little or no remorse," he said. "He is very calculated, very cunning, very methodical. He does nothing without planning." He also said Del Junco knew what he had done was wrong and had tried to stay out of the hands of the police. "He was afraid of capture and he wanted to elude police," Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez credited the task force with stopping another death. "The night that he was caught, and it's commendable the work (the police) did, he was out to another one," he said.
The Associated Press gave Del Junco's age at his arrest as 38; UPI gave it as 39. He lived in Miami and worked as a dishwasher at a sports bar in the Coconut Grove neighborhood. His early life, his family and any earlier record have not been reported.
Del Junco was charged in all four deaths. Police scheduled a news conference for the next morning, a Tuesday, and declined until then to discuss the confession in detail. As of June 1996 he was an accused man. The confession, the account of the woman who escaped and the boot-print match were the police case against him as it was described that week.
August 1995: the first of the four deaths, according to police as reported by UPI.
October 1995: the second death (UPI).
January 1996: the third death (UPI). Witnesses report a man known as Dread with the third woman shortly before she was found, and police later circulate a sketch of him.
March or April 1996: the fourth death (the Associated Press gave the span of the deaths as August to March; UPI put the fourth in April).
1996, the Friday before the arrest: the woman who escaped describes her attacker to the task force; Del Junco is picked up for questioning and released while laboratory tests are completed.
June 1996, the following Monday: Del Junco is arrested and charged in the four deaths; police say he confessed (UPI dispatch dated June 3, 1996).