Solving the West Palm Beach Murder of Jeffrey Heagerty

By Graham Brunk

The true crime story of a love triangle, drug deals, and the 1984 cold case murder of a gay, South Florida teenager.

Jeffrey Heagerty was like most young gay nineteen-year-olds in South Florida in the 1980s, commonly finding himself and his friends at the popular Kevin's Cabaret in West Palm Beach on Saturday nights. On one of those Saturday nights in 1984, Jeff vanished from the club, leaving his friends behind even though he was their ride home. His body was found dumped in a canal the next morning and his car was missing, only to be found a month later, abandoned on the other side of town. Rumors of a love triangle, drug dealings and sexual encounters snarled police efforts at solving the case. The investigation stagnated and the case grew cold until the solution came from two unexpected sources: overlooked details in police photographs of Jeff's car and a mysterious letter from an inmate in the Palm Beach County Jail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781439667231

Graham Brunk

Graham Brunk was born and raised in Palm Beach County and works as a librarian in Palm Beach. He has also served as president of the Palm Beach County Library Association and, in partnership with that organization and its members, authored a book on the library history of Palm Beach County. He also written for SFGN.com, Mirror Magazine and the Palm Beach Post. His writing has been syndicated in publications throughout the nation. He has always maintained an interest in local history and has had a fascination with true crime from an early age.

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Friends.

PREFACE

I always knew that I wanted to author a book using my research skills, but I just didn’t know when the right story would hit me. I was working on a different story for a freelance column I write for a local newspaper when I stumbled upon a January 7, 1985 article in the Palm Beach Post that listed several Palm Beach County–area unsolved murders from 1984. That year is considered one of the bloodiest on record in our local history, with 113 homicides by the year’s end. After the year’s end, 16 remained unsolved. The very first one at the top of the list jumped right out at me:

Jeffrey Heagerty, 19, was found floating in a Royal Palm Beach canal at 10 a.m. on July 1. He had been to several bars June 30 and was last seen at Kevin’s Lounge [Cabaret] in West Palm Beach in the early morning hours of July 1. He had been strangled and his car was missing.

From that paragraph alone, I knew this would make for an interesting story, perhaps another newspaper article for me to write, but I never imagined all the twist and turns I’d find that were yet to happen in the years following when that snippet was published in the Post.

Everything in this story is based on police records, court records, newspaper stories and memories of those associated with the incident. This was thirty-four years ago, so I do caution that some things may not necessarily be the way others remember it. At times, this was difficult to research since police, court records and newspapers often misspelled Jeffrey as Jeffery.

Furthermore, in talking to Jeff ’s friends and family, as well as reading every page of the court transcripts, I determined that how the events played out leading up to Jeff ’s murder may have varied slightly compared to how the media sensationalized them. Bear that in mind when reading the story.

The year 1984 was one of Palm Beach County’s deadliest on record. The Palm Beach Post published a list of every homicide up to September of that year. Of the 116 homicides in Palm Beach County that year, 16 were still unsolved by January 1, 1985. Jeff ’s was one of them. Courtesy the Palm Beach Post.

A STARTLING DISCOVERY

Sunday mornings were usually the perfect time for Patrick Foster and his father, Stephen, to bring out their custom go-kart that they often worked on together. It was a great father/son bonding ritual, and they would often make modifications to it and then bring it out to a rural area to test it out at its full capacity.

On Sunday mornings, Patrick and his father would take their Ford pickup with the go-kart in tow out to a rural area twelve miles away from their West Palm Beach home to test out what they had done. They often would go to the southeast corner of Royal Palm Beach Boulevard and Canal M, a rural area of Palm Beach County, Florida, known as the Acreage. Much of this area is different than the rest of the county since it is far less developed and more appealing for those seeking life outside South Florida’s busy hustle and bustle.

This particular area was secluded enough and was used by a lot of other locals for doing similar activities, so much so that a makeshift pathway had developed over time around much of the large pine trees and palmetto scrub. This area remained much this way until 2016, when it was finally paved into double lanes with sidewalks and streetlights, converting this remote area of the 1980s into suburbia of the new millennium.

Patrick and his father arrived at this spot around 10:30 a.m. Patrick’s mother, April, came along for the trip this time too. It was to be another balmy South Florida summer day with not a cloud in the sky. After unloading the go-kart from the trailer, Patrick drove it around the pathway at high and low speeds.

Jeff ’s body was found floating near the bank of Canal M near Royal Palm Beach Boulevard. Courtesy Palm Beach County Sheriff.

Every time he rounded the path closest to the canal, Patrick thought something seemed a bit unusual at its bank. In Florida, it is not uncommon to see all sorts of wildlife blossoming from and flitting around the canal such as ducks, fish or even alligators, but this seemed rather different. Patrick stopped the go-kart and yelled for this father to run over.

Patrick was stunned to see the body of a young man right at the bank of the canal. The white male body was clad in white Spalding sneakers, blue jeans with the fly open and his penis exposed, a long-sleeved gray shirt with the right sleeve pulled up and a gold chain around his neck. He was positioned in such a way that his right arm was reaching forward, and his eyes were closed. He was simply floating at the surface of the canal bank as small fish swam by. With no movement, it was clear to Patrick that he was looking at a lifeless body.

After a quick look, Stephen and April immediately got their son into their truck and drove to the nearest residence about a block away. Owners of the property allowed Stephen to use their phone, and the Sheriff ’s Office informed him that it would send a team of investigators out to check out the incident.

Veteran Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office detectives John Dibattista and Russell Butler were among the first investigators to arrive on the scene and were followed by local newspapers and television stations that had heard of the body’s discovery on police scanners. Within a short time, the entire area was yellow taped, and onlookers gathered on the other side of the canal to catch a glimpse of what was happening.

The area around Canal M at Royal Palm Beach Boulevard was popular for dirt bike and four-wheel riders because of its mushy terrain and secluded location. This also meant it was a great location to do illegal activity. The area has since become more suburban, and the road was widened and paved in 2015. Note the sticks in the ground that investigators placed to indicate what they felt appeared to be drag marks heading toward the canal. Courtesy Palm Beach County Sheriff.

Dibattista and Butler removed the body from the water and placed it on a yellow blanket. Upon closer inspection, they could see that the body was in the beginning stages of rigor mortis and had small abrasions on the forehead and chin but no obvious signs of any trauma. There were also bits of blood around the man’s face, but both detectives, having recovered bodies from canals before, knew that this was likely from interaction with local marine life. As rigor mortis progressed, Dibattista could see intense bruising on the left side of the neck. They were waiting for the arrival of the medical examiner, but Dibattista already had a good idea of how the victim died.

Butler and Dibattista knew that the area was a popular dirt bike hangout, but near the canal bank, among the beer cans and potato chip bags littered around, they both noticed drag marks near what looked like standard car tire marks in the dirt. Photographs were taken of the scene—everything from the tire marks to the footprints in the dirt.

Looking south, this aerial shot shows the area where Jeff ’s body was found. The bridge is Royal Palm Beach Boulevard. The circled area shows where Jeff ’s body was found. Courtesy Palm Beach County Sheriff.

There were no signs of identification on the body. Both investigators canvassed the scene to see if any other evidence existed, perhaps a wallet or any indication of who this man was. Detective Butler knew that this could slow things up a bit since they would have to wait for someone to file a missing person report, and if it were from out of the Palm Beach area, it could take some time for that information to get across. Despite that, it was routine procedure for investigators to fingerprint the victim and check it across local databases in the event there was a match. That would only be possible, however, if the victim had been arrested before.

A fingerprint sample was taken just as Dr. James Benz arrived from the medical examiner’s office. After a brief postmortem exam, the body was transported back to the medical examiner’s office. Dibattista and Butler followed Dr. Benz to the office, located on Gun Club Road, to hopefully get an official preliminary idea of the cause of death.

Soon after their arrival around 3:00 p.m. that afternoon, Dr. Benz informed them that he felt the victim had died due to trauma to his neck but was still awaiting a toxicology report to see if any drugs had been in the victim’s body.

About an hour later, Detective Butler was informed that by a stroke of luck the fingerprints from the body had a positive hit when cross-referenced with others in the Sheriff ’s Office database. He was identified from a September 13, 1983 fingerprint card for being charged with fraudulent use of a credit card by the Jupiter police in the northern part of Palm Beach County. With a description of five-foot-seven and 130 pounds, brown hair and brown eyes, along with a matching mug shot featuring a pencil-style mustache that was popular at the time, they had a name for their victim. He was Jeffrey Heagerty, a nineteen-year-old resident of Jupiter, Florida.

Now the questions came. Why did this happen to him? How did he end up in the canal? And most of all, who wanted him dead?

COMING OF AGE IN THE PALM BEACHES

Jeffrey Michael Heagerty was born on April 19, 1965. Shortly thereafter, he was adopted through