Paula Levine

Okay.

So as you exited the vehicle, he's about, what, 25 to 30 feet from a staircase, which would have led him up to his apartment?

That sounds like a pretty pat answer that a police officer would typically give.

But it sounds like he didn't really want to give you any details about their investigation.

What were you thinking at the time?

Like, what was your response to their deflection?

It was surprising and frustrating.

Again, they had asked us to help them bring attention to this case.

So here we are trying to help them do that.

And the only way we can do that is by asking questions.

questions which they did not seem to want to answer.

So we put in a request to get a copy of the police report, which under Florida law, police have to release on cases that are no longer active.

But the department turned us down.

They said the case was still open and active.

Eventually, we did manage to get our hands on that police report, but there was one major problem.

The nearly 200-page document was heavily redacted.

Thick black boxes, one after another, often blacking out entire pages, due to the fact that police still claimed the case was open and active.

We weren't going to accept that, and we'll get into that story later.

In the meantime, the report, even with its redactions, did provide us with something valuable.

Clues.