My dad always said, If I can translate it, when God is giving justice, it's very slow, but at some time he will come.
I don't know when, I don't know how, but we'll find whoever did that.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murders.
Today we're talking about a one-of-a-kind case that is so tragic.
The fine still haunts both police and the family to this day.
And we're telling it to you from both of those perspectives.
First, we have the detective.
My name is Danny Smith.
I'm a detective with the City of Miramar Police Department for 25 years.
Danny Smith got his start in law enforcement in a way from the day he was born.
His father was a police officer.
And at the beginning, Danny had zero interest in following in his footsteps.
And that is until he got to high school and one day went on a ride along with his dad.
And from that moment on, he was hooked.
So after college, Danny joined the police department.
My favorite thing to do when I was first starting out was the car pursuits, the foot pursuits, anything active.
Saying, well, come on, come on, guys, let's go.
Let's go find something.
Let's go catch a bad guy.
And they're like, relax, just wait for the radio.
You don't have to rush.
You don't have to drive fast.
And I learned over the years, work smarter, not harder.
We also spoke to Marie Albert from the Altador family, who are originally from Haiti.
We all left the country for a better life.
You will notice, within the Altdorf family all of Marie's sisters' first names also begin with Marie.
There is Marie Marlene, Marie Curlene, and Marie Carmel.
Back in 1997, all of the Altdorf family lived in America, except for the matriarch of the family, Teresa Laverne.
On April 30 1997, the lives for the entire Altidore family and Detective Danny Smith were about to change forever.
And for each, it began with a phone call.
I actually was in training.
I had just started my career on this day.
And I remember this call going out and my training officer actually said, kind of off the cuff, nothing ever happens over there.
What's going on?
The area in Miramar was residential.
It was described as a middle-class neighborhood that was quiet and relatively almost always low in crime.
The call came out at actually 4.23 p.m.
They knew that there was some kind of potential that there was going to be a violent crime situation.
Responding officers already knew from that 911 call that it involved an incident at the home of Marie Carmel.
Remember, she was the youngest sister in the family.
She had a husband named George, and they had a two-year-old daughter Samantha, and a six-week-old Sabrina.
Her mom, Teresa, was visiting and staying with her.
Teresa Laverne, she lives in Haiti.
She offered to come down and help Marie with the new baby.
That was something that Teresa Laverne would do for everyone that had a child.
You know, Danny Smith was just a rookie completing his FTO training.
And to me, I would consider this type of call as a great opportunity for a rookie to get experience.
You know, at that time, I don't know what's up or what's down.
I'm just trying to keep my head above water.
And my training officer says, hey, let's head out to that.
That sounds like it's going to be something good to learn from.
There are opportunities for rookie officers to learn.
And then there are situations and crime scenes that may define an officer's career before they are fully prepared to process.
And on that day it was a scene that even veteran officers, even with decades of experience, were really struggling with.
By the time we got to the scene, the on-duty sergeant said, turn around, go back to your zone.
No one's going in there.
This is not a training environment today.
We're getting the story really from two sides.
On this side of the story is the family.
I was getting ready to go to work.
And this is what it was like for Albert on April 30th.
When I got to work, I felt like my stomach was turning.
My head was beating.
I don't know what was going on.
I went to my supervisor, and I said that I don't feel good.
I think I have to go home.
When I got home, my cousin called me.
She said, where is Nenel, which is my husband?
Finally, my husband came home.
The same cousin called him.
He was talking to him, and then I can see the emotion in his face.
And I said, what's going on?
That's how I got the news.
So, listening to this, you may be asking yourself what happened in this house that may be so difficult for a veteran police officer to handle.
So when officers first get to the home, they go inside.
So as you walk in the front door, one of the things that strike you is that everything's tidy.
Everything's neat and tidy.
But they almost knew from the beginning that something was very wrong.
So you walk in the front door and immediately to the left you've got kind of a formal living room area.
It's pristine.
The first thing that catches your eye is you've got a white bassinet, a white bassinet that had blood.
Blood was smeared on the sides and when they walk over, there's a baby in that bassinet, and that was six-week-old Sabrina.
She was dead and had obvious blunt trauma wounds to her left side.
To think about a newborn, a six-week-old, defenseless child.
I don't think there's any words.
I could really even say that.
Put that into more perspective than that.
Anytime a child is involved in a homicide, that's the pinnacle of evil.
A child is innocent.
A child doesn't hurt anyone.
A child is a child.
But unfortunately, there was more for police in that home to uncover.
So if you're standing at the bassinet and you just turn your head to the left, you will see Teresa Laverne.
And she's face down in a large amount of blood.
And she has obvious blunt force injuries and is deceased.
Within a few steps of the front door, we have two victims, just a few feet apart a baby and her grandmother.
And with guns drawn.
The search continues not only for more victims or potential survivors, but the mindset of these officers also focuses on the possibility that the killer could still be inside the home.
If you continue to go straight, you've got a bathroom, a couple of bedrooms and then you've got an office that's locked.
So they had to breach that door.
They kicked the door open.
There was no one inside that office.
Now towards the other side of the house, you're gonna see the dining room table and then right next to that dining room table is Marie Altidore and she's laying face down and she's obviously suffered blunt force trauma and is deceased.
So now you have one, two, three murders.
Grandmother, mother, grandchild.
Three victims, three generations, all in one house.
One homicide scene.
These were executions.
I'll just call it like it is.
Purposeful.
Why kill a newborn?
We've seen multiple homicide cases that secondary victims are killed to eliminate witnesses.
But this is not that.
This was personal. responding officers were not done with their discoveries yet.
When they got there, they didn't know who lived in the house.
They really didn't know the family makeup.
So as they started to get a little better lay of the land as far as who belonged in that house, they found out that there was still another family member that lived there with them.
And that was George, Marie's 33-year-old husband.
While detectives are speaking with people, a gentleman arrives and they learn that that is George Altidore, the father of this family.
As he arrived on scene, George told officers that he'd been trying to reach the family for hours.
In fact, he had called his brother-in-law to go to the home and check on the family.
He had mentioned that when he went to the house to check on the Altidore family, he heard a TV on inside and he noted that the front door was unlocked.
And he was the one who made the initial discovery knocked on the neighbor's door who, in turn, dialed 911.
That call not only brought police, but also local news stations.
They filmed George out the door, speaking with officers in front of his house, appearing distraught.
Somehow there was mention that there should be two children inside.
And there was the decision to go back in and do a recheck.
Then the obvious question is well, was she still somewhere inside that house, or had something else happened to her?
The one thing they did know is she was missing.
Now, if you're still standing at that bassinet, if you simply turn your head to the right, you'll see a small little cubby, a little area that is almost manmade.
It's made by positioning of two couches.
So you've got a couch and then another couch that's next to it.
But then there's a little open space kind of hidden in between those two couches.
And that's up against a wall.
And that's where you find two-year-old Samantha, her back up against the wall in a fetal position, and she obviously has suffered blunt force trauma.
You know, Anastasia, four deaths, two which are children.
Now, we've talked about the emotional toll for the family in homicide cases, the community.
But I can tell you, I've walked into crime scenes and they are, as I mentioned before, forever ingrained in my mind.
And for these officers, first responders, crime scene technicians this was that type of scene, the type, up to that point, they had never experienced before.
There's no reason ever to in the history of mankind that can make that right.
The idea that so much violence can fall upon a grandmother and a mom and then to have the ability to walk over to two children and savagely murder them.
I just I cannot comprehend that.
And Sabrina herself, she was sleeping like an angel in her crib.
The same little Samantha.
I think many of you know this by now, but we here at AOM, we have this rule.
We've discussed it, but it's really primarily unwritten that we all share, that we don't just want to talk about the deaths and these cases, but it is the people themselves, the victims.
We want to remember who they were in life.
So, before we dig any more into the investigation into this grisly, horrific murder, I think it's very important for all of us to understand a bit more about who the Altator family was.
At the top of the family tree is Teresa.
My mom, I described her as a Democrat lady.
My father was a strict guy.
I'm very strict.
She described her mom, and I quote, as a Democrat lady.
And I have to say, I had to look it up to make sure I understood what she meant.
Her mom guided her as a best friend, being the more liberal parent.
My mom liked to dance.
She's the one who taught us how to dance.
When they put music on, she would have me put my feet over hers so she can show me the steps.
And then you have her daughter, Marie Carmel, whose nickname was Mommy within the family.
She was my youngest sister.
She was a very friendly person.
Marie Carmel immigrated to America about five years earlier, when she was school studying administration.
She also served as a member of the church social activity committee.
And each week she would type the Sunday program at church.
Marie met George soon after she came to the United States.
And soon after that, they got married.
And soon after that, they had their first child, Samantha.
I saw Samantha when she was maybe one year old.
The cutest thing ever you can only imagine.
And so Grandmother Teresa had come when Samantha was born.
But then fast forward.
I don't know about a year and a half, and now it's baby Sabrina who enters this world.
And so Grandmother Teresa comes back to the United States again to give her daughter Marie a helping hand and also to attend her granddaughter's christening.
It's a cultural thing.
When the baby's born, before they're probably even six months old, they have to get baptized.
The Altidore home was always bustling with activity, now even more with a baby.
So, so many generations under one roof.
Exactly 30 days before this horrific crime would occur, it was Easter Sunday, March 30th, 1997.
This home was decorated and the entire family gathered to celebrate.
So the christening that had been planned was never held.
And Teresa, who had been visiting to help take care of her new granddaughter.
She'd only been in the United States for about a month.
She actually was supposed to head back to Haiti that very same week.
I am happy, you know, I had the chance to go visit before you, because I think she was supposed to go home on Saturday.
And unfortunately, she vanished on Wednesday.
When it comes to the Altidore family, you can picture a house full of love.
It doesn't seem like there would be any reason for someone to murder one of them, let alone four of them.
As you can imagine, there was an extensive canvas.
No one had a bad word to say about anyone in that house.
There was never an issue.
No one had ever even heard a peep out of that house.
There was never a fight, no screaming, no door slamming.
And just think back to other cases we have covered here in AOM.
You know, things happen on the outside that neighbors start to talk to police right away.
Well, there was none of that here.
It was literally their perfect neighbor.
Without many leads from witnesses in the area, investigators would have to lean on forensic science for clues.
This was an extensive crime scene.
It was a lot to process.
Some of the first potential clues came from the medical examiner's report.
Miss Laverne in the kitchen was actually shot one time, and Marie Altidore was shot four times.
The cause of death on Teresa Laverne, the grandmother, and Marie Altidore was gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma.
Scott, when you heard about not only the level of blunt force trauma, but also that there were gun wounds as well, what type of crime did you start to think about here?
You know, we talked earlier about how this crime appeared to be personal, right?
But in homicides, the definition of personal takes on so many different meanings.
Is it rage, crime of passion, or perhaps even revenge?
I talked extensively with Danny Smith about the crime scene and I pictured the layout as he was describing it to me.
What would be some of my first theories?
Here's a couple of thoughts.
Investigators quickly determined that there was no forced entry into the house, and that's important.
So the killer or killers didn't kick in the door or force it open.
One of my first questions to George is, did the family normally leave that front door unlocked?
And that answer was no.
The family was very security conscious.
So for some reason, they were let in.
So if the killer or killers were known to the family, that raises the theory that this massacre was personal.
And by the way, so does the fact that the victims were both bludgeoned and shot.
So at this point, DNA is around.
They've got DNA, fingerprints, ballistics.
Aside from the brutal crime scene, there was lots of serological evidence and the bodies.
There was also another clue, a big clue in this murder.
Investigators actually had an idea of why this family was killed, because it was literally written on the wall.
In any multiple homicide investigation, you always have to look at the fact that there could be just one intended target and the rest were unfortunate collateral damage.
In this quadruple homicide, investigators would have to dig into the victimology to attempt to determine who could that one person possibly be?
And Anastasia, clearly we're removing the two children from the equation.
I mean, you certainly would think so, while it seems pretty early to narrow it down.
Just the wounds themselves, at least to me, who had the most?
And that is Marie.
So you have to start to say well, if it's likely one of the adults, just like you said Scott, I mean, who would ever target one of these innocent children?
While again, I can come up with some reasons why that might be, but the fact that you have all four and that most of the wounds, especially the two different type of wounds, are to the two adult women, that seems more obvious.
So again, is it grandmother or mother?
And just based on wounds alone, mom Marie has the most.
To my knowledge, there was no information or nothing that was learned about Ms.
Laverne from over in Haiti that had any connection to whether she was an attended target or anyone she was involved with had any issues with this household.
But this next piece of evidence is where the investigation takes a really strange turn.
Within the crime scene there was a note from the presumed killer or killers, and where it was left was even more bizarre.
In between the two children, you've got a wall that basically butts up to where the garage is.
And on that wall there was handwriting in some kind of black marker that appeared to be hastily written.
It's not very neat.
Sometimes people that see it for the first time have to really concentrate to make out the words.
But that said, I want my 100,000 drug money.
They stole my drugs.
The note implies that somebody was looking for their money.
And was that a drug transaction that went bad?
Did somebody owe them money?
And the reason to come to that home and to cause that kind of carnage was over money.
And so they know this is something big that they need to preserve, right?
I mean, they actually have someone writing what would be motive on the wall.
But the way they process it was really unique.
It wasn't just photographs or even videotape of it.
They just took it.
So that wall was actually cut out.
The drywall was literally just cut right out of the house.
And we still have that piece of wall in our property and evidence section.
That wall has been checked for everything under the sun.
Well, handwriting analysis is nothing new to either of us, or maybe even to our AOM audience.
The idea of just having a note left there in and of itself is rare.
When I think back in AOM, there's only one case that we've ever covered before, and that is because it doesn't happen often.
And while I have seen it, it's only been a few times and more likely than not.
When there's a note, it's left by the victim and not the killers.
They travel with that wall to many different places to have it examined.
As you can imagine, the handwriting was looked at DNA, possible transfer of touch, DNA microscopic checks to see if there was anything unique about the specific marker that was used.
You know, when I thought about this note, I thought about obviously they know that investigators are going to see this note.
So this is someone proclaiming to the world, this is why I did it.
But I also looked at it as this underlying threat to other members of the Altidore family and maybe other people close to them, basically saying hey, look at what I did to them because I want my money.
And if they still don't have their money, is there going to be somebody else next?
If you were there for drugs or money and you wanted to send a message, why kill a six week old?
That obviously cannot identify you.
Is there really need to shoot someone four times and then hit them with a hammer in the 20 or 30 time range?
Absolutely not.
So this is overkill.
This is the definition of it.
It's rage.
It's personal.
Investigators would try to find any possible drug connections, but based on the cause of death, the brutality.
It could be someone that knew the Altidore family.
And on top of that, as I mentioned earlier, there was no sign of forced entry whatsoever.
Now, anyone that knew Marie will tell you that she was incredibly security conscious.
So the fact that she would leave her door unlocked is red flag right there, because she would never leave her door unlocked.
She would keep her door locked at all times.
You know, there's a story that police arrived there for something unrelated and that she wouldn't let them in.
This is an officer in full uniform.
Marie would not open the door for that officer.
And she went so far as to say you know what, since you're out there about this, something else could you please go and get my mail and put it on the stoop, so I don't even need to get myself out there?
And she wasn't doing that to be lazy.
She was doing that because she was extremely security aware.
If this was personal and Marie Carmel was somehow familiar with the person who killed her, then there are a couple of people on the investigators' radar to question, one of which is the person who discovered the family dead.
The individual that actually discovered the bodies initially.
His name is Rochner Serafin, and he is George Altidore's brother-in-law.
Serafin was the brother-in-law of George, and George was at work that day and he'd been trying to call home.
And he was calling over and over again and he was not getting an answer.
So he asked his brother-in-law again by phone to please go over to the home and check and see why no one was picking up.
Anyone who had access to the crime scene before law enforcement arrived would be looked at, especially if they entered a home.
Their forensic footprint, if you will, meaning their DNA, their fingerprints, would be compared with the evidence that had already been collected by crime scene investigators.
Now the other person that police would soon question was Marie's husband, George Altidore.
Obviously, in a case like this, you've got to look at the people closest to the victims.
And in this case, George Altidore is that person.
To help understand how investigators approached looking into George and how he was involved in the case, they need to start at the beginning, the beginning of how George came into Marie Carmel's life.
And the basics of it are they met first in Haiti, but then they really got to know each other when she'd moved to the United States.
We didn't see it coming because even when she was in Haiti, she never had a boyfriend.
George is also from Haiti but from a different town.
Not friends of the family, but we do know him.
One day my sister called me and she said that he's asking him out.
And within their culture, dating is a bit different than what we might expect here.
It isn't like you just go out on a date with whoever you want, whenever you want.
If you're going to start dating within their family, that meant from the get-go it was going to be pretty serious.
He met George and they get engaged and get married.
That's how she started her family.
Picking a sidestep here.
Often when we talk about couples, especially with one of them is being looked at for their spouse's murder, we always find hints of problems in the relationship, such as control issues, domestic violence.
But from everything that Albert says, everything about George and Marie Carmel sounded great.
Love was there and respect.
Albert was a maid of honor at her wedding, and she could see there was serious love between the two.
It was a beautiful wedding.
I can tell you that we see love between the two of them.
With that, the only thing I will say is that they also talked about Marie being very private.
So if there were things going on inside that home that she wasn't necessarily going to confide in others,
And also culturally, their mother always taught them that you make your husband happy.
Clearly, George is a widow in this situation.
His family has been murdered and he's going to be treated as such.
It's always difficult speaking to a surviving victim, let alone multiple homicide victims, in your own family.
So as an investigator, you need to handle it gently in the sense of be compassionate, empathic.
But at the same time in the back of your head and it can't be known to the person you're speaking to.
You need to have your investigative radar up.
So, Anastasia, what do you think some of the goals are going into the interview with George?
I think it's really just being very open and talking to him like you would any grieving family member, because any information is valuable.
So whether he is just that, the grieving husband or even something more as far as a suspect, it's really just to get him talking and say anything he wants to and see what you can do about that later.
One of their first goals was to build the timeline where George was on the day of the murder.
And talk to George they did for the next eight hours.
The investigators started looking at George out the door and he did say he left for work at about 7 o'clock that morning.
Arrived to work at around 730, which we were able to find additional coworkers that remembered seeing him.
One in particular said he was here at 732, because I was here at 732 and we're docked for every minute late.
So I'm positive on that time.
This guy knew to the minute exactly when he saw George that day.
So, you know, then you have to think about the timeline.
If we know that during that half hour that he was nowhere near the home, you have to start to wonder when the death occurred and how you can either keep George in as a suspect or maybe now rule him out.
But while he's at work, he stated that he did call home.
He called home a lot of times.
He said he was calling home just to check on things.
And when he wasn't getting an answer, he continued to call.
But he was unable to reach his family, as we mentioned earlier.
But it's important to understand that just because phone records show a phone call, it doesn't place the handset in George's hand and have him dialing that number.
There was no activity on the home phone that was out of the ordinary.
I think the one thing that did stand out was me personally.
If I'm at work, I'm trying to reach my family and I feel something's wrong.
I'm not going to call 10, 15 times.
I'm going to get in my car.
I'm going to drive home and find out what's going on.
Scott, let me just ask you this because I was thinking about it as I started to think about these questions.
What do you think about George asking his brother-in-law to go check on his family after he had called them several times and there was no answer?
Did you find that odd, or did you think that was kind of a normal par for the course thing of the times?
I think that's a really good question.
I would want to know how far George's work was from his home.
And it turned out to be 30 minutes.
So I know how I would react and how I would feel.
I'd want to know for myself.
I'd want to get there and hope to find my family well.
Sending somebody else, maybe he was closer.
Maybe he would get that relief phone call from his brother-in-law to say, hey, everything is fine.
Quicker.
But it was a little odd, I think.
But again, everybody reacts differently.
I just thought it was kind of weird to send someone there to check at all.
I mean, you call me and you can know that there are times I'm just not going to answer the phone because I'm doing something else.
Let's keep in mind, this was 1997.
There were no cell phones then, or certainly people weren't using them often.
So it is just a landline.
And what if they just weren't home?
So I don't know to jump to having them checked on again, as you said, could be completely innocent.
And he just knows his family and no one knows loved ones better than the rest of others close to them.
But I found that just a little bit at least.
It, you know, raised an eyebrow that he was sending someone there so quickly.
Let me just add this for a second, because this is the way my brain works.
Taking the other side for just a moment.
If I wanted to make sure that people knew where I was, that I could be seen by multiple people, that I was picking up a phone line that could be traced by police down the road and that if anyone ever asked where were you at a specific moment and 12 people said you were at your desk.
That's setting up a fairly good alibi.
So if I was the questioning type, which I clearly am, I would think that's the other side of that coin.
And also to keep going down that suspicion road.
What he could also be doing by doing that is make sure that it wasn't he himself that found the bodies.
He was almost setting up someone other than him who found them to make it more innocent.
George leaves for work at around 7 o'clock in the morning.
He works a good 30 minutes away down in Miami.
That path was driven over the course of a couple of weeks by numerous detectives, taking the route that he said that he took and then taking additional routes.
And there was no one that was able to get to that office quicker than 30 minutes.
So basically, if George was the killer, he would have had to have happened before he got to work at 730.
And knowing that it had to have taken him at least 30 minutes to drive to work, the murder would have to have happened at 7 am.
There's that timeline.
But there was a snag in this theory that George could have done it.
A person from Marie's home made a phone call that morning.
There's a phone call from the landline at that house saying to a distant relative in Maryland and it's not a very long phone call but it's a female on the other line saying that she's Marie.
I just wanted to call and say that Sabrina's here and she's healthy and doing fine and that's it pretty much ends the phone call.
But this call happened at 709 am, the same time when George Altidore had already been on his way to work.
And it really shows then that Marie was likely alive at the time.
So either he can be at two places at one time, or he's not the killer.
So how does this phone call at 709 after George had left to go to work?
How does it impact the case?
Does it completely rule out George Altidore?
Well, that seems likely.
This person on the phone spoke with the godfather's wife.
Initially, when investigators spoke with her, she said that, yes, it was Marie.
She said it was Marie.
But she doesn't really know Marie that well and very possibly does not know what her voice is.
Trying to confirm time of death could be critical to answering the phone call question.
Could the murders have occurred after 7.09 a.m.?
We talk about this a lot, about time of death.
And we know that medical examiners never give it to the moment.
They normally just give you a range.
And while it certainly is not an exact science, they do use things that are both common sense and science to help them figure that out.
They look at things like stomach contents to try to tell when someone last ate.
They look at rigor mortis, the state that the body is in.
And that's just a couple of the simple ones.
But it can be tricky sometimes to determine exactly when somebody died.
And certainly here when you're trying to get it down to the minute, whether it was before or after George had left.
It didn't prove so easy for medical examiners to figure that out here.
There was no food in their stomach.
They were also dressed in sleepwear.
But then on the sink in the kitchen is dinner food and still left out on the stove.
So it's all those little things that you look at and say it doesn't make sense, but I can't figure it out.
The fact that they didn't have food in their stomach just doesn't tell the medical examiner if they ate or if they didn't eat, or how long they would have had to have that food digested.
I know the food on the stove was heavy food.
It was rice, beans.
But then I'm also told by other forensic pathologists that a meal of that density can still be digested in five or six hours.
So we don't know if they actually ate or if they didn't eat.
We don't know if that was dinner food, if they were reheating it for breakfast.
So we've got two working theories here about George.
Is he or is he not involved in a quadruple murder?
Investigators were no closer to answering that question.
And the timeline still is not definitive.
So it is definitely time to sit down and talk to George directly.
Ultimately, George Altshuler got an attorney.
So investigators were not able to speak to him.
And you know, I think we have to talk about just in fairness again to someone not speaking to police.
Right.
Because, again, we're always suspect.
But there's a reason that we can't ever use that fact in court, because everyone has the right to speak to the police if they want or invoke their right to silence or just to say I don't want to talk to you.
Yeah, I mean, we see this in TV and movies all the time.
When a suspect says I want a lawyer, I don't want to say anything.
And it gives that moment in that show that you think OK, this is the person, because they don't want to talk.
Clearly, that doesn't always work out that way.
And look more into George and his reactions.
Police did.
And even though he wasn't talking to police, he still had his wife's grieving family that he continued to see.
And that included Albert.
He just said, you see what happened to me?
Sister, he called me sister.
I lost mommy.
I lost Samantha.
Everybody's gone.
Just like grieving together.
I remember having that conversation.
And, according to Albert, remember who is Marie's own sister George was there grieving with her.
You know talking about who could have done this.
We said, yeah, we have to pray together.
So, of mommy, Samantha, Sabrina, and my mom, one day they will pay for it.
Because whatever happened in the dark, God will bring light.
I don't know when, I don't know how, but we'll find whoever did that.
That's what I'm hoping.
But George's behavior did raise some eyebrows within the family.
He was quick to sell the home.
George moved out of the South Florida area into an area it's still in Florida, just a little bit north, and then ultimately moved to Oklahoma.
You lost, you know, the whole family your mother-in-law, your wife, your two kids, two years old, six weeks old.
And then you don't put your feet on the ground to go and search, to do you know and know what happened and find out if you can't.
He also remarried.
And that could tell a different story.
Now again, is that something that I am going to use if I ultimately prosecute him based on evidence?
Sure.
But is it also something that could be very innocent?
And just the way that he reacts.
You know again, we are all different when it comes to relationships.
Some of us... don't go in them for long periods of time.
And some of us are always hopping from one to the next.
And again I don't mean to get sexist here men, but definitely we have seen in the numbers that men are more likely to marry much more quickly after death or relationship breakup than women.
So again, I don't think we can read too much into it.
It might raise an eyebrow, but by itself, it just isn't going to get you to that answer.
I could just picture this Anastasia me coming into your office as the investigator, wanting to give you one more detail to take that point down the road.
What if I were to tell you that George was actually at the home of the woman he would later marry the night before the murders?
You know, a lot of investigators will tell you that they don't believe in coincidences.
And for the most part, I would agree with that.
Finding out that George had remarried, which obviously is not odd in itself.
Moving away to Oklahoma is not odd.
But remarrying and it happens to be a lady who you were at her house the night before fixing the air conditioner for that residence, that would make anyone start to wonder about motive.
And I didn't just raise one eyebrow, I'd raise two.
Again, it isn't going to get you anywhere, but it certainly makes me start to wonder and want to know more.
Now I'm sure we don't need to tell you that George is a solid person of interest, but there's no evidence, at least not enough to make a strong case saying that he's the killer.
And with the lack of movement in the case, investigators decide to turn to the public for help, hoping that somebody I always say this somebody knows something.
They held a press conference giving details of the case and even putting up reward money, hoping that would light up the phones.
All information that came in was cleared or considered unfounded.
There was never any valid or valuable information that came through.
A lot of it were people coming forward and wanting the reward money, unfortunately.
But every tip that came in was manpower that had to be spent.
They kept going down the roads, well, maybe there is some drug connection that we don't know about.
Maybe there's some connection to Haiti and some personal problem that they just haven't yet figured out.
You know, often this type of reach out through tip lines does bring great information.
And by the way, they do solve cases.
But that effort in this case would not push the investigation forward at all.
I would say this case was probably held on to for years before investigators finally got to the point where they said listen, we haven't gotten anything new in months, and let's put it in a box.
It's never away because a case of this magnitude doesn't go away.
So here's where Danny Smith comes in again, not as a rookie, but as a homicide detective who was looking for this case to try to turn it around.
In 2007, the original detectives ultimately retired.
I went to our captain at the time, and I asked for the case.
I said, I want it.
Please give it to me.
I'm ready to work it.
And that's kind of how it started.
Remember, on the day of the homicide, as a rookie, he and his training officer were turned away.
Now 10 years after this brutal murder, and now a seasoned detective, Danny Smith was on the case.
When I first opened this case, I wanted to look at everything with an open mind and just kind of take it from step one again.
I brought together homicide investigators from the area.
We brought a medical examiner in, opened up the case and just went through it all and started over from scratch.
And at that point, my mindset was, I don't care who did it.
I just want to find him or her or them and arrest them.
So, as Danny looks into the case, the one thing that he keeps coming back to is that I could not eliminate George as a suspect.
Could there have been more to George and Marie Carmel's marriage that we or the family didn't know anything about?
One thing is for sure, Marie was an extremely private person.
It was extremely frustrating for investigators.
And even her own family says if she had an issue, if she had a marital problem, she would keep it to herself.
Once he knew his file, Danny Smith went to try to interview George Altidore again and he made his intentions very clear.
I want to start from the beginning.
I'm trying to start this case up again, so would you please sit down and talk to me about it?
But George made clear, listen, I said what I had to say back then.
Remember, it was an eight-hour interview, and George was done talking.
So I had the horrible task of having to go through all these crime scene photos.
The thing that stood out to me was that this crime scene was apparently staged.
This was not a robbery.
This was made to look like a robbery, because if they're searching for drugs or they're searching for money, why would they not open one locked door inside the house?
Why would they leave the door unsearched?
And I think I'm going with Danny Smith on this one, because if this is all about finding drugs or money for drugs, well where's the evidence of ransacking?
You know, where are the drawers turned over?
Where does it look like they've been trying to look under beds or see if there's a safe or anything?
There is none of that.
In my opinion, the handwriting on the wall was completely a diversion tactic.
And then there is this blatant handwritten note on a wall just to make sure that nobody misses it.
This message wasn't to the family.
This message was for investigators.
And for Detective Danny Smith, that message was clearly to draw the attention from someone, but who?
So one way to do that was to find out who wrote the message.
We obtained George Altidore's exemplars, his handwriting samples, and had that checked a couple times.
Investigators compared the handwriting on the wall with George Altidore's, and the results were completely surprising.
So the big question is, what were the results of the handwriting analysis?
And the answer was that there was no answer at all.
They came back and said inconclusive, that they can't say it is George or it's not George, or if it's consistent with him, they're just saying inconclusive.
But just the one analysis wasn't enough for Detective Danny Smith.
He wanted to do it again.
We were able to get it looked at again by a private examiner and he actually said the handwriting does not belong to George.
He gave an opinion and said I'm not saying 100, not him, but I'm saying most likely not George Altidore.
So what does that result mean to the investigations?
You know, most listeners will think that it means that 100% means that George didn't do this.
So, you know, we have to ask ourselves when it comes to the investigation.
I don't know that I come out there.
I look at that he probably is not the person who wrote that note on the wall.
But that's really my only take for now.
You know, upon hearing that information, a lot of the investigators were kind of like back to the drawing board.
But I looked at it and I was almost invigorated, like, OK, now we know.
Let's go find who it is then.
You know, this entire time we've gone under the idea that we don't know who wrote it.
Now we've excluded one.
And I know that sounds like a daunting task, but we've excluded one person.
Let's go find who it is.
But if, for a moment, we say that we're going to come out, that it means that it's not George, or at least most likely, then the question is well then, who is it?
And you know it may go a little sideways here, but the thing that I started to think about is did this all come from a woman?
You know, if he's in a relationship, maybe someone wants him to themselves and maybe he's not getting divorced.
And while a woman is less likely to commit this type of crime, at least physically, maybe they are the person responsible and had someone else do it for them.
Again, it is purely a theory and speculation, but it's something I started to think about as I went through the evidence that they do and don't have in this case.
I thought about that as well, Adesiga.
And the one thing is, you know, we have a homicide within a home which was a brutal crime scene, but it was an extensive crime scene with a lot of physical evidence found within the home.
So if George's fingerprints or DNA is in the house, you expect that.
If George's brother-in-law's fingerprints or DNA is in the house, you're going to expect that as well.
But they weren't able to locate any other homicides. unidentified DNA, any other unidentified fingerprints.
So that is really the quagmire that this investigation is.
It closes something, at least on George Altidore, but it opens up everyone else.
Now, one thing we do have to say is that George's brother-in-law Serafin, he has been completely ruled out.
Remember, he only went to the home because George called them.
There is no which way that anyone can come up with any reason why this crime could emanate or be committed by him.
The impression of Mr. Serafin then and today is that he has no involvement.
He has no motive.
He has no reason.
He was cooperative with police.
He gave us whatever information was asked for at the time.
He is not looked at, at least in my opinion, as someone who had any involvement in this.
And so as all of you likely know right now, this is still an unsolved case.
And so now, after 25 years, we're hoping that just maybe we can do our part by getting this out there to bring answers for this family and this investigation.
I've seen it over the years in my experience and I've never seen a family keep hope like this family.
They will not give up.
You know, Anastasia, here on AOM, the majority of the time we talk about closed cases.
But we do have opportunities for information to assist an investigator in closing a case.
And I look at this case as a really great reason, yet another reason, to highlight something.
You know, we always highlight things because we want to know about the victim.
We want to highlight the people that worked so hard on their behalf to bring that accountability and justice.
Well here, maybe we can highlight it to somehow be some small measure of help by getting the word out there so that one of you or someone out there that knows something can bring it to Danny Smith.
We are approaching the 25th anniversary of this murder.
Detective Danny Smith is nearing his retirement, but he aims to solve this case any way he can, either before he retires or after.
He's not giving up on this.
To tell a family member, a surviving family member that We can't solve it.
We can't make an arrest at this time.
I gotta say that's probably with all the terrible acts that were done in relation to this case that right there is probably one of the things that keeps me up more nights than anything.
The amount of times that I've had to call this family and tell them we didn't get this or we didn't get that, or you know.
It feels like the tiniest little piece of me flies away every time I have to make that phone call, because It's gut-wrenching.
Three generations of women.
This is a fact.
Somebody knows something, and their souls deserve justice.
I asked God not to take me from this earth until I have a chance to sit with that person.
And then the only question I have for that person is why.
We hope for answers.
We want to get them all that accountability they deserve.
And we are looking to all of you to see if you can help get that for them.
A tip can be completely anonymous.
The Broward Crime Stoppers line is 954-493-8477, which is 493-TIPS.
There is a reward for information leading to an arrest.
Once again, somebody knows something.
It's 25 years, but for me, it's every day and it's now.
Because I'm still grieving.
I don't have closure.
I'm still thinking about mom like she was alive, about my sister, same thing.
We have done stories here on AOM about families who have come to the U.S. for a better life.
Imagine this entire family moving to South Florida, expecting things to be better from where they came from.
And in one instant, that family is wiped out.
Where's justice?
I thought America does it a certain way.
I thought the U.S. does things differently.
We still have a case here that is unsolved.
We have a family that is gone and we have relatives still questioning why.
My hope is that the truth will be told.
Whoever did that or knows anything about that have to, you know, pay the consequences.
My hope is for justice to be served for my mom, my sister, and my two little nieces.
Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Fresetti Media.
Ashley Flowers is executive producer.
I think Chuck would approve.
