42 years later, ex-lover found guilty of Fla. nurse’s murder
MIAMI — From the day Coral Gables nurse Debra Clark was discovered strangled, beaten and shot inside her town home, police focused on one chief suspect: Allen Bregman, her older, married lover.
Forty-two years later, a jury decided that detectives had the right man.
A jury on Friday convicted Bregman, now 77, of murdering Clark during a fit of rage in August 1977.
Over the course of two weeks, prosecutors presented a circumstantial case that transported jurors back to 1970s Miami, and relied on a major piece of evidence: a single hair from Bregman, found resting on the inside of Clark’s arm.
“A little piece of the defendant — his hair,” prosecutor Rebecca DiMeglio. “What’s at issue is when the defendant’s hair fell out of his head. Based on where it landed on top of her immobile dead body, we know when — after he killed her. You can use your common sense and you can take that to the bank.”
Defense lawyer Charles White told jurors that detectives ignored other possible suspects, and the hair was already in the bed because Bregman often stayed with his secret lover.
“You can’t hold Allen Bregman responsible for the lack of evidence,” White said. “You can’t let your emotions fill in the gaps.”
Bregman faces life in prison when he is sentenced in the coming weeks.
Clark’s murder went unsolved until 2016, when Miami-Dade cold-case homicide detectives arrested Bregman after the DNA match to the hair. Bregman is a retired real-estate agent who lived for years in Boca Raton.
Back in the 1970s, Bregman worked for his wealthy father managing real-estate properties. In 1977, he lived in an upscale waterfront home in Miami Beach down the street from the La Gorce Country Club and was an avid boater, serving as a volunteer with the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. His wife was Florence Bregman.
Jurors heard that Bregman was seeing Clark for more than a year. He vacationed with her, moved her into a town home he owned near Coral Gables and promised he would divorce. Prosecutors said he was living a “double life.”
“He wanted a mistress and a wife. He didn’t want a divorce,” prosecutor Lara Penn told the jury.
Bregman was in New York for a Coast Guard training when a friend called to tell him Florence had discovered the affair and planned to file for divorce. On Aug. 4, 1977, he changed his trip itinerary and flew home to Miami.
There were no witnesses to Bregman arriving at Clark’s home that day. But prosecutors relied on a host of clues to prove he was in the house.
There was no signs of forced entry. “He had a key. He let himself in,” Penn said.
Clark was also dressed in night clothes and was laying on the bed, which suggested she was comfortable with the person who killed her. Prosecutors theorized that Clark refused to leave the apartment and Bregman snapped, shooting her with a small handgun he had bought for her months earlier.
Then, they said, he strangled her, beat her with his hands and the pistol, so brutally that the gun’s grips fell apart and were found on the bed.
She was not discovered until two days later, when worried co-workers went to the home and called police. All of Bregman’s belongings — and even their photos together that had been on the wall — were taken from the home.
Bregman’s actions after the murder also cast suspicion. Two days after the body was discovered, he filed a life insurance claim on her for $50,000 — something her relatives fought in court for years. He also failed to attend the funeral and never showed grief for the death of his girlfriend, her friends told jurors.
White, the defense attorney, told jurors that prosecutors were simply making Bregman out to be a “bad guy” because he was having an affair.