An 18-year-old coming into the prime of his life was murdered in his own apartment. Now, Special Investigators are looking at this cold case from 1999 in hopes to find out who killed Walter Rodriguez.
John Murtagh, Special Investigator:
He was 18 at the time of his homicide.
just figuring himself out. I mean he literally had left home and was striking out his own, and we've all been there. When you get out there for the first time it's daunting. You have so many different stressors and you're just trying to figure out life, you're navigating it and to have your life ended in this fashion, defenseless. It's just all the more appalling.
DREAMS, ASPIRATIONS… A FUTURE CUT SHORT BY SENSELESS VIOLENCE.
John Murtagh, Special Investigator: his girlfriend in the afternoon hours of the 12th of January. His girlfriend came in the afternoon to check up on him, to spend some time with him, and realized he wasn't answering the door. So she had gained entry into the apartment, and they found Mr. Rodriguez shot in the back of the head, inside the apartment.
WE ARE TAKING A LOOK BACK AT THE MURDER OF WALTER OSCAR RODRIGUEZ IN HOPES THAT YOU CAN HELP US SOLVE THIS UNFINISHED BUSINESS.
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FOR THE COLD CASE INVESTIGATORS AT THE HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE, WORKING THESE CASES IS MORE THAN JUST A JOB,
JOHN MURTAUGH EXPLAINS IT IS A PASSION
John Murtagh, Special Investigator:
So the beauty and the stress of working cold cases, the beauty of it is you open up this story that starts from the unfortunate incident of a homicide all the way through until hopefully we find some sort of resolution. There's a lot of information and there's a lot of leads that go dry, and they unfortunately, you look to drum up new leads. I believe that what we'd like to do with these homicides, these cold case homicides is to get dialogue started again, to get people talking in a neighborhood, get people talking amongst the family, to get them to say, well, wait a minute, I remember that, and I remember hearing that so and so was involved or so and so disappeared after this.
I think that's what we're looking to do, to get the conversation going about these incidents again. So that of course brings in a ton of tips sometimes and you have to work your way through them and it could be voluminous, but I would rather have a lot of tips that we have to work our way through than have nothing at all. So I think that's the motivation behind taking these cold case homicides and bringing them to the public's eye.
Amanda Granit, Host
And it also, I think, really reminds family members that these cases may be "cold," but they're not forgotten.
John Murtagh, Special Investigator:
Oh, absolutely, and I think that is also the big motivator here. I can speak for myself and my partner and other homicide detectives across the world, I'm sure, that the big motivator is to let the family know that nobody's forgotten that these murders happened and that these individuals, whoever they are, they were special and their death is something that should not be forgotten nor left unanswered and unsolved. I think even if it's a distant cousin at this point, because there's so many years in between, it's still closure at some point.
So today we're talking about a 1999 case of an individual named Walter Oscar Rodriguez. Mr. Rodriguez was 18 at the time of his murder and he was found with multiple gunshot wounds to the back of his head inside of his apartment, laying face down. Mr. Rodriguez had a roommate. So he had kind of struck out on his own, left his family to go out and do his own thing and he had gotten an apartment over on Church Street over in Tampa, not too far from the Raymond James Stadium area.
He was in a complex that was shaped like a U, it was duplexes. He was in one of those and he was sharing, he had a roommate at that time, and really from there, we really don't know much.
Pod 10 - Speaker 1: (01:08)
So Mr. Rodriguez was found by his girlfriend in the afternoon hours of the 12th of January. His girlfriend came in the afternoon to check up on him, to spend some time with him, and realized he wasn't answering the door. So she had gained entry into the apartment, and they found Mr. Rodriguez shot in the back of the head, inside the apartment.
Pod 9 Speaker 1: (03:19)
Did any neighbors in this duplex hear anything unusual or see anyone unusual in the complex?
John: (03:25)
No, nothing of any leads have been generated from neighbors. We would like to locate and speak to the roommate. The roommate had kind of disappeared, left the area right after the homicide. He was unable to be interviewed and I think that presents a huge gap in the investigation. Not saying that this individual was responsible for it. We don't know who was responsible for it, but we would like to eventually have a conversation with the roommate and find out why, how he was found. How did he not see him or something to that effect.
Speaker 1: (04:07)
If there were other people there.
John: (04:08)
Exactly, who was coming in and out of the apartment. The neighbors who had been interviewed said the apartment was, I mean they were both pretty young so the apartment was lively. People would come and go and hang out, out front, so it wasn't like he was the kind of person, Mr. Rodriguez, that would be a shut in or spent a lot of time in the house. He was pretty active and so was his roommate. For all accounts, they were friendly.
John: (04:30)
There were some accounts that they may have had some sort of issues between them at times, but it could have just been normal roommate banter and we don't know for sure, and that's why we'd like to speak to the roommate. The one thing I would definitely say is that he was seen the night before in the same clothes that he was found in, so he was doing his laundry in a pair of blue jeans and a light colored shirt, and he's found in that same clothes next day in the afternoon. A former friend of his who was also a former roommate before the current roommate that was at the time of the homicide, had stated that he always changed clothes before he went to bed and he wouldn't have been found sleeping in the same clothes.
John: (05:15)
So there is the idea that there's potential that this happened late in the evening and he hadn't had a chance to get ready to go to bed yet. So we are trying to figure out a timeline. We're trying to figure out motive. We're going through the evidence to see if there's anything we could at least try to have retested and be able to pull DNA off.
John: (05:35)
He was shot with a small caliber weapon and so we're trying to locate; there was some ballistics work done and unfortunately didn't give us any major leads, but these are things that we'll be able to revisit down the line. But right now we would really like the public, if anybody has any information on this case, to come forward and give us an idea of what you may have heard, what you may have heard about either the victim, his roommate, people in the area.
John: (06:02)
Was there any other violence in the area that you knew of that wasn't being reported, just to kind of give us some atmospherics on what may have been in the area at the time that we can work with. We've done a victimology on Mr. Rodriguez. We understand what his life was like, what he was doing, nothing that has given us any leads as well. Phone records didn't give us any leads, so we really implore anybody to come forward and speak to us.
Speaker 1: (06:28)
What is a victimology? What is that process like? What are you looking for and how did it unfold with Mr. Rodriguez?
John: (06:33)
Victimology is really taking your victim and getting to know them, for a lack of a better term and keeping it simple; you look at past addresses, you look at familial relationships, you look at romantic relationships, you look at job history, criminal history. You look at financial background, anything you can find that gives you a snapshot of your victim because a lot of the times, phone records are invaluable if you can get your hands on them because they tell a story sometimes. Who are they speaking to? How long did they speak to this individual?
John: (07:09)
Social media, wow. This would've been, I might be off here, but this could have been the MySpace era in 2007. If this would've been a little longer than, a little later than, this might have been the Facebook, the Twitter, the TikTok. Those things open up doors too. That open source intelligence and social media intelligence really does play into the investigatory efforts into figuring out victimology and associates, but unfortunately we don't have that here.
Speaker 1: (07:36)
What information do you have on him that you're able to share?
John: (07:39)
Well, we have the caliber of the weapon.
Speaker 1: (07:41)
Can you share that?
John: (07:45)
It was a .380, so we have the caliber of the weapon and we have for the most part, nothing else. That's the sad part. We don't have motive. We don't have any history of disputes or longstanding problems with anybody. No issues with family. Everything seems to, in all intents and purposes, this young man seemed to be well-liked, pretty popular and just happened to die a very sad death by being shot in the back of the head. Whoever did this needs to be, or whoever the individuals are or whether it's individual or multiple, need to be brought to justice.
John: (08:30)
He was 18 at the time of his homicide.
Speaker 1: (08:32)
So really someone coming into to the prime of their life.
John: (08:36)
Yeah, just figuring himself out. I mean he literally had left home and was striking out his own, and we've all been there. When you get out there for the first time it's daunting. You have so many different stressors and you're just trying to figure out life, you're navigating it and to have your life ended in this fashion, defenseless. He was asleep. (DELETE) It's just all the more appalling.
Speaker 1: (08:57)
On your list of things you would love to be able to get your hands on or information you'd like to get your hands on that could help you lead to this case being closed, what are you looking for?
John: (09:08)
Well, like I said, we're going through the evidence. We're looking to see what will be beneficial to resubmit or submit for any forensic evidence, whether it be serology or DNA, anything we could use, and then I think we really would just like to shake the tree and find some more witnesses out there that can give us some background. It's common knowledge that people talk on the street and they don't come to the police, and I think this has been quite a number of years now.
John: (09:40)
We're looking at over 25, 23 years and maybe it's time with people growing up from that era and saying, "You know what? What happened was wrong. I know a little bit more than I chose to either tell anybody back then or I shied away from investigators. I got out of there before I could be interviewed. I'd like to come forward at this point because what happened was wrong." That's what we're hoping, get somebody to come forward and just speak to us, give us an idea. No matter what it is, no matter how small that piece of information is, it's extremely valuable.
(Insert ending)