Retrial begins in Casey’s Nickelodeon murder case
For law enforcement, the Casey’s Nickelodeon murder investigation began before anyone knew the murders were committed, Broward prosecutor William Sinclair told a jury Monday morning.
A Mercedes convertible belonging to Casimir “Butch Casey” Sucharski was found burning on the side of the road along U.S. 27 near West Palm Beach on June 26, 1994. Investigators were able to recover Sucharski’s concealed weapons permit from the glove compartment.
A Broward Sheriff’s detective went to Sucharski’s home in Miramar to let him know, but no one answered. The detective left a note on the window of Sucharski’s other car, a Mercedes limousine.
Sucharski, 48, was already dead, gunned down during a home invasion robbery earlier that day. Also dead were his two guests, Marie Rogers and Sharon Anderson. Both were 25.
Their bodies were discovered before sunrise the next morning.
On Monday, for the fifth time, wife, Tanya Quinones, during her husband’s trial on Monday.
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a Broward jury began hearing evidence in the case to determine who committed the murders. Sinclair told the jury there is no room for doubt — Pablo Ibar, 46, seated at the defense table with five lawyers representing him, was one of the two men who
committed the crime.
And DNA will help Sinclair said.
The Casey’s Nickelodeon case is one of Broward’s most notorious — it sent Ibar and a co-de- prove it,
fendant, Seth Penalver, to Florida’s death row and back.
The case has been in front of four previous juries — Ibar and Penalver were initially tried together, resulting in a hung jury in 1997. Two years later, Penalver was tried separately, convicted and sentenced to death.
Ibar’s retrial followed in 2000, with the same results.
Sucharski was the onetime owner of Casey’s Nickelodeon, a popular nightclub in south Broward. He was at his home with Anderson and Rogers when two robbers burst in, terrorized them and shot them to death.
The entire attack was caught on surveillance video in Sucharski’s home, but the video footage is grainy and, according to the defense, not at all conclusive.
Penalver was granted a new trial based on his contention that prosecutors failed to turn over evidence that could lead a jury to conclude he was not guilty. He went before another jury in 2012 and was found not guilty.
Ibar’s own request for a retrial was granted in 2016 after the Florida Supreme Court determined that his previous lawyer failed to adequately challenge the state’s facial-recognition experts who determined that he was one of the men seen in the violent, disturbing surveillance video.
Sucharski’s daughter, Alexis, was in court for the opening statements and the first day of testimony. She was accompanied by Rogers’ mother, Margaret, and brother, Kareem.
On the defense side, numerous supporters joined Ibar’s wife, Tanya, to watch the trial’s opening.
Just as Sinclair pointed to DNA evidence, so did defense lawyer Kevin Kulik.
According to the prosecutor, Ibar’s DNA was found on a T-shirt left at the crime scene, proving conclusively that he was the man seen covering his face with that shirt and wiping his brow repeatedly. DNA belonging to Anderson was also on the shirt.
But Kulik said there is a third person’s DNA all over the same shirt — a person who has never been identified.
“Unknown number one,” Kulik called the source of that DNA.
Kulik promised the jury
they would find reason to doubt the identification of Ibar as the perpetrator — a key witness who saw two men apparently stealing the convertible on June 26 was shown a still frame from the surveillance video right before he was asked to pick Ibar out of a photo lineup, Kulik said, contaminating the witness identification of Ibar.
Kulik pointed to other issues he had with the prosecution’s case. One potential witness, who went to police claiming responsibility for torching the Mercedes in Palm Beach at the direction of his boss, was killed the day after he came forward, leaving him unable to shed light on what he knew about the murders, Kulik said.
The case is being tried before Broward Circuit Judge Dennis Bailey, who had to dismiss one juror late in the day when it appeared that juror had fallen asleep during testimony.
Seventeen jurors remain on the panel, though only 12 will be tasked with deciding whether Ibar is guilty. If convicted, Ibar faces a life sentence or a return to death row.