Highland Beach widow, 85, was murdered, report says
HIGHLAND BEACH — When a couple came home from dinner to their Highland Beach condominium unit April 30, they saw police standing in Betty Cabral’s open doorway.
At the time, authorities reported the 85-year-old’s death as “suspicious.” But she had been fatally stabbed by someone who stole her car, The Palm Beach Post has learned.
The new details are in a single page of a Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office report, recently
obtained, that categorizes the death as a homicide and armed robbery with grand theft auto. It lists the weapon as a knife or “cutting instrument” and does not list forced entry.
The Sheriff’s Office will not release the remaining 34 pages of the report or provide comment,
citing its open investigation into the woman’s death in her fifth-floor condominium at Penthouse Highlands, along the Intracoastal Waterway.
The murder is believed to be only the second in the 69-year history of the 1-square-mile town of about 3,500, along the oceanfront between Boca Raton and Delray Beach.
“It’s kind of hard to imagine an 85-year-old, pretty much confined to her wheelchair, being stabbed and her car stolen,” Robert L. Cabral, her nephew, said from the Tampa suburb of Brandon.
“She wasn’t going to put up a fight. That’s for sure.”
Highland Beach Police Chief Craig Hartmann last week deferred all comment or release of documents about the investigation to the Sheriff ’s Office, saying he’d called in that agency “the minute we got there.” Deputies arrived just before 8 p.m.
The chief did say he’s assured Penthouse Highlands residents that they should not be concerned, telling them “this was isolated to this person’s situation.”
‘The door was open’
Highland Beach police said they were dispatched about 8 p.m. April 30. The Sheriff ’s Office has said authorities were responding to a requested “welfare check” but have not said by whom or otherwise elaborated.
Anthony Ciarfadini and his wife, Carmella, “were the first ones to see her body,” Ciarfadini said last week.
He said an officer in the doorway asked whether the couple knew Betty. The officer said he didn’t have a search warrant but, “He said, ‘Well, the door was open, if you’d like to come in.’”
Ciarfadini said: “We walked in and found her in the bedroom deceased. We were ushered out very quickly.”
He said the Cabrals “kept pretty much to themselves.” After Betty became a widow, he said, he and Carmella “didn’t see much of her, except once in a while, her nurse’s aides would take her on the catwalk with her walker. She was more of a recluse because of health reasons.”
Ciafardini said Betty Cabral had a car but did not drive, having it only for her caregiver to run errands. He said police told him the car had been recovered in Pompano Beach.
A Broward County Sheriff’s Office report says a woman called authorities about 3 p.m. April 30 after seeing the silver 2013 Hyundai Sonata abandoned in a field near Atlantic Boulevard and Florida’s Turnpike, west of Pompano Beach. That’s about 14 miles, in a straight line, and about 20 miles by car, southwest of Cabral’s condo. The report said the car’s keys were on its floorboard.
The car, still registered to Betty’s late husband, William Cabral, did not come up as stolen in a computer check, and sometime after 7:30 p.m., Broward Deputy John Capaldi called Highland Beach police, offering to reach out to the owners to say their car had been found.
A dispatcher said the department was “working an active investigation at this residence and to secure the vehicle as a crime scene.”
The report said two Palm Beach County deputies came down and arranged for the car to be towed to their
agency.
Who were the Cabrals?
Bill Cabral’s family had come generations earlier from the Azores, an island group in the Atlantic that is a Portuguese possession, and he and Betty had grown up in Cambridge, the Boston suburb that is home to Harvard University, their nephew said.
The two were married for about a half-century and had no children. William worked for years for the city of Cambridge, mostly with veterans. Betty worked all her adult life in the administrative offices of Cambridge City Hospital.
Robert Cabral said the two retired in about 1990 and became snowbirds. He said they “lived very conservatively” and had a comfortable financial stake.
Palm Beach County court and property records show the Cabrals bought their place in March 1996, paying $110,000. The property appraiser set at $270,000 the market value of the two-bedroom, 1,166-square-foot condo, built in 1969.
In October 2005, the Cabrals sold their home on Homer Road in the Boston suburb of Arlington, Mass., for $425,000, property records show.
As Bill’s health failed, Robert Cabral said, relatives suggested Betty move to an assisted-living residence, but she was opposed. After Bill died in April 2017, Betty wanted to stay in her home and receive outside help. A relative lived with her for a few months. Otherwise, she retained a primary helper during the week and others on the weekend. Robert did not know whether the caregivers slept at the condo.
Robert Cabral said he last spoke to his aunt in February and did not even know that she had died, much less that she was murdered, until The Palm Beach Post began calling relatives.
“None of us knew,” he said.
Alan Croce, the Penthouse Highlands homeowners association president, called Betty and Bill Cabral “wonderful people.” Betty “spoke to everyone,” the retired Long Island undersheriff said last week. “She was one of God’s children.”
A quiet town
The only other murder on record since Highland Beach was incorporated in 1949 occurred in January 1994.
Police said a woman fatally stabbed a man at his home in the 4000 block of South Ocean Boulevard — a mile south of the Cabrals’ home — after he called her a sexist slur and angrily advised her to get an abortion. The woman later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Croce said he does not want to speculate on what authorities know about Cabral’s slaying. He did say that a week before Betty was killed, the association installed security cameras. He said he led investigators to them, but they have not said whether they found anything.
Hartmann took over the Highland Beach department of 15 sworn officers, including himself, in 2009, coming over after 27 years in adjacent Delray Beach.
“It’s a very low-crime area, and very little, if any, violent crime at all,” Hartmann said. “And even in those type of cases, it’s something where it’s a domestic. But not where you’d expect a homicide.”
Because the case appears to be specific to Cabral, Mayor Carl Feldman said last week, “that’s why we don’t have the interest or scare factor. And also it’s out of season. If it was in season, there might be more interest.”
But Feldman, a resident for two decades, said he hopes the case is wrapped up soon, “to just put a little peace to it.”
The only other murder on record since Highland Beach was incorporated in 1949 occurred in January 1994.