Delia D'Ambra

They were up against a lot of contamination issues because so many bystanders and first responding officers had touched the Dumas station wagon, pulled Raymond and the boys' bodies out, and so on.

But something police probably could have done better was separate the individual eyewitnesses at the scene, likely so that they couldn't inadvertently influence one another's accounts of what happened.

Another potential mishap by police was that investigators failed to get ink impressions of Eric and Mark's fingerprints prior to their burials.

They also didn't fingerprint Robert Matsky before he was laid to rest, but it was reported that copies of his prints were later found on file with the military.

And Juan's had been taken when he'd immigrated from Cuba in the 1960s, but obtaining fingerprints for the boys was impossible, aside from exhuming their bodies, which did not happen.

By the time the ninth anniversary of the crime came and went, things were still at a standstill, and fewer of the victims' surviving family members opted to talk to the press about the crimes.

According to WFTS's three-part series, several years later, an investigator with the Manatee County Sheriff's Office learned that a convicted mobster named Donald Frankos had published a book about contract killings.

The novel was presented as a tell-all account of various murder-for-hire jobs that Frankos had knowledge of.

One of the stories detailed in the book was about a hitman who'd faked an injury and ended up killing a victim before riding away on a bicycle.

because that specific scenario very much mirrored the circumstances of the boat ramp murders case.

A Manatee County investigator wrote to Donald Frankos in prison, and he actually agreed to an interview.

Frankos claimed that the boat ramp killer was one of his former cellmates who'd held a high position in a drug dealing operation.

According to him, his former cellmate had issued a $15,000 contract for Raymond Barrows' shooting in 1980 because Raymond had allegedly stolen 55 kilos of cocaine from him.

Frankos said that another man had taken the job and gone through with the actual hit.

Unfortunately, though, the Manatee County investigator never found any evidence to support Frankos' claims.

And the two men who he said were involved were never formally interviewed about the Holmes Beach case, despite the fact that authorities had their names and information and they were sentenced to serve time in prison for unrelated offenses.

Eventually, the 20-year anniversary passed and then the 30th, and during that time, Donald Frankos died in prison, Raymond's widow Dora died, several former investigators died or fell into poor health, and authorities were still basically at square one.

In 2010, Bradenton Herald reporter Beth Berger wrote a long piece for the 30th anniversary, which recapped everything that had previously been covered in the case, as well as a bunch of new details that authorities had never shared before.

For example, investigators revealed that a man driving by the original crime scene in August 1980 had snapped several pictures of the Dumois' crashed station wagon.

Those images showed the suspected killer walking away from the crime scene.