Palm Beach County puts photos of crime victims on playing cards in jail
Posted March 2 2006
By Leon Fooksman
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Card games behind bars soon could be a good deal for cold-case investigators and a financial windfall for jail inmates.
The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office plans to give inmates playing cards with photos and information about slain and missing people. Once inmates start shuffling the decks, investigators hope they'll dish out leads about dead-end, years-old investigations in exchange for reward money.
"People have been sleeping on this information for 20 to 30 years. It's been gnawing at them for years," sheriff's Capt. Jack Strenges said. "Now it's their time to come forward."
Investigators have long pounded the pavement and relied on DNA evidence to crack some of the Sheriff's Office's 273 unsolved homicides and missing persons cases dating back to the early 1960s. Now, they're turning to the jail to tap criminals' knowledge and entice them to bring closure for victims' families.
Organized by the Sheriff's Office and the nonprofit Crime Stoppers of Palm Beach County, the cards will feature 52 victims -- one for every card in the deck. The first batch of 2,000 to 3,000 cards will be handed out to inmates in the coming months. They'll include toll-free numbers that inmates can use to call in information anonymously and potentially get $1,000 rewards. Inmates recently started getting playing cards with the Crime Stoppers logo, but the cards didn't have information about specific crimes.
Besides the cards, posters of victims and brief synopses of other unsolved homicides also will be posted at bus shelters.
The use of playing cards to find people gained popularity when U.S. soldiers carried the "most wanted" cards of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his associates. Colombian fighters had their own version of the cards with the name, photo and reward amount for insurgent leaders.
Heartland Crime Stoppers in central Florida's Polk, Highlands and Hardee counties made cards featuring 13 fugitives and 52 homicide and missing persons cold cases and gave out about 5,000 decks to inmates last year at the Polk County Jail.
Since then, inmates provided tips leading to the arrest of four fugitives and two people charged in a homicide, said Wayne Cross, the group's executive director.
"It's been a real surprise to us," said Cross, who added that the agency plans to get another 5,000 decks. "These inmates hear things. They know things. So we tapped into that intelligence source."
Crime Stoppers organizers in Hillsborough, Lee and Escambia counties have plans to get cards for their unsolved cases, Cross said.
If Palm Beach County inmates can help clear even one case from the long list of unsolved homicides, it would be an accomplishment, sheriff's Sgt. William Springer said.
The cards' projected $7,500 cost likely will be covered by money seized in drug raids and forfeitures. Inmates will be allowed to get only cash for supplying information. Authorities won't consider giving them lesser sentences or any other breaks in their incarceration.
The cards will focus mostly on victims who didn't get a lot of attention in the media, including at least one prostitute and drug user, Springer said. They were added because they were the most likely to have contact with people at the jail.
The decks will contain some higher-profile cases as well, such as the December 2004 shooting death of 3-year-old Erikh Davis during a home-invasion robbery in Riviera Beach, Springer said.
Jennie Johnson was glad her 8-year-old daughter, Marjorie "Christy" Luna, would be included in the cards. Luna disappeared near her Greenacres home in 1984 while walking from a neighborhood general store.
Luna's face has appeared on billboards, milk cartons and the sides of trucks as a missing child over the years. Still, none of the leads have been strong enough to crack the case, Johnson said. Turning to inmates for help makes sense, she said.
"I'm sure there's plenty of bad people who know where she is," she said.
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