Police identify person involved in 1986 killing of Miramar firefighter – NBC 6 South Florida

The murder of a popular Miramar firefighter, unsolved for 37 years, has been solved after detectives identified one of the people they believe was involved in the murder.

Miramar Police held a press conference Tuesday to announce new developments in the murder of William “Billy” Halpern, whose body was discovered on October 21, 1986.

Police believe a man named Harry Collier was involved in the murder, but say Collier himself was murdered seven months after Halpern.

Halpern, 28, was found bound, beaten and with his throat slit in his Miramar townhouse after a group of people knocked on his door and let them in, according to investigators.

Miramar Police

Halpern was a former firefighter and bodybuilder who trained at the Apollo gym in Hollywood, and his murder is linked to a series of other murders in the 1980s that have been linked to the gym.

The gym’s owner, Hubert “Bert” Christie, and a former Miami-Dade club police officer, Gilbert Fernandez, were arrested and later convicted of the murders of three other people.

Fernandez, now 70, is still serving his life sentence. Christie died in custody in 2000 at the age of 66.

Officials said Tuesday that Fernandez, who was initially considered a suspect in Halpern’s murder, was ruled out based on DNA analysis.

Police said they were able to link Collier to the crime scene after finding his fingerprints at the scene of a double murder of a couple in Tamarac just seven months later.

Miramar Police

Miramar Police Officer Danny Smith said the crime scene in Tamarac and the crime scene in Halpern were almost identical.

“There was no forced entry at either crime scene, a sharp-edged weapon was used. The method of tying up all three victims was very similar and unique in the sense that the way their hands were tied together and the fact that black electrical tape was used to tie them up really painted a picture of the modus operandi. The way the crime scene in Tamarac was set up was very similar, if not identical, to the crime scene in Halpern,” Smith said.

Eight days after the Tamarac killing, Collier and another man were found murdered in Pembroke Pines, Smith said.

“Based on the similarities between the crime scene and Billy Halpern’s crime scene, as well as the dozens of interviews we were able to conduct, we are confident that if Harry Collier were still alive, we would charge him with murder and bring him to trial,” Smith said.

Smith said Halpern was not involved in the drug rings, home invasions or other crimes that the people at the gym were linked to, but said he likely had information on other crimes and murders.

“In the gym, he definitely heard certain things about certain crimes and the idea is that he just didn’t want to play along, he didn’t want to stay silent, he was really a loose case for those who could potentially be held responsible for their crimes because of what Billy might say,” Smith said. “He knew something he just shouldn’t have known and he heard something he shouldn’t have heard.”

The Halpern case has been resolved but is not yet closed.

“We’re still searching and that’s why we wanted to talk to you and the public. We wanted people to look at Harry Collier’s picture, we wanted people to hear the name Harry Collier and hopefully get an idea, maybe refresh their memory and come out with information that could help us find the other perpetrators in the Billy Halpern murder case,” Smith said.