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Joseph DiMare
Miami’s Cold Case Volunteers Have Delved Into the Murder of Joseph DiMare
Joseph J. DiMare, 52, was a successful businessman and partner in a
family owned food processing corporation. They became dominant in
tomatoes with an international business. DiMare lived on Miami Beach and
then moved to Keystone Island in North Miami. On March 24, 1961 his
body was found in the passenger seat of his Cadillac Fleetwood in nearby
Sans Souci Estates, a largely undeveloped residential area adjacent to
the Keystone Islands in the City of North Miami. Joe DiMare’s wife
Frances ran into a nearby gas station and police were called. Frances DiMare's account of the incident was accepted by the police and published by the media. Here are some news articles reflecting her story:
Uncovering the Truth: Infamous North Miami Murder
For six decades the truth about an infamous murder in North Miami has
been concealed behind rumors, misleading information, and lies. The
volunteers have investigated the 1961 murder and after several years of
work, have assembled facts based upon discovered and analyzed evidence.
We have shared the information with the police and with the family of
the victim. Here is the case, and the essence of our findings for public
release.
No one was ever arrested or prosecuted for the murder of
international businessman and tomato magnate Joseph DiMare, 52, who had
recently moved from Miami Beach to Keystone Point in North Miami. Mr.
DiMare grew up in Boston, and with his younger brothers, started selling
produce from pushcarts. They developed their partnership into a huge
domestic and foreign produce farming, importation, and distribution
business. Joseph DiMare would run aspects of the business from Miami,
and he frequently traveled across the United States and through Latin
America. He and his new wife Frances lived in the Keystone Point home
along with his daughter; his sons were living at college but would visit
and were in touch with their father frequently.
Joseph DiMare was shot and killed on March 24, 1961. In 2015, the
victim’s youngest son, Richard, asked Paul Novack and the volunteer team
to look into the case. We had previously identified his father’s
homicide as having suspicious connections to other cases that were
already on our radar.
The Investigation
We found and carefully looked into all available pieces of
information. We moved the investigation forward despite the system being
resistant for many years. We obtained the original police reports,
press reports, and accounts of what happened. We found startling new
information on all of the individuals involved in this horrible crime.
Most significantly, the physical evidence has been assembled and
re-evaluated with important new discoveries and determinations. The
analysis of physical evidence, and substantial other information, has
come to a consistent and conclusive set of findings that account for all
of the many aspects and elements of the murder.
Relatives of the victim were told for over 58 years that there is no
evidence and there is nothing that can be done. On many occasions,
police officials were harshly critical of Richard for persistently,
continuously, and not always courteously, seeking answers on behalf of
his family. He was less than respectful on many occasions, but he was
clear in issuing many reminders that he would continue to insist upon
attention to the unsolved murder of his father. He frequently complained
that police have been disingenuous in failing to earnestly work the
case.
Investigating the Officials: Buchanan and Hill's Involvement in Organized Crime
We looked back and examined every detail. In charge of the
investigation in 1961 was then Chief of Detectives (later Sheriff) T.A.
Buchanan and Homicide Captain (later Chief of Detectives) Manson Hill.
They were the same lead officials in the case of Danny Goldman (March
1966) and many other cases included on the “ Linked Deaths ” page on this site. The volunteers’ discoveries prove connectivity of persons and events – there are no “coincidences” here.
Buchanan and Hill faced indictments of their own late in 1966. They
were protected because of their knowledge of an extensive, corrupt
criminal operation and its participants. Actually, they had more than
mere knowledge; they were involved. They were never brought to trial or
convicted. We established that their extensive illicit activities were
known to federal and local authorities, but not to the public. As we
have discovered, they were part of, rather than in opposition to,
organized crime activity in South Florida.
Although the victim’s widow, Frances DiMare, 33, gave a story that
was acceptable to high level police officials, we have seen ample reason
to conclude otherwise. The volunteer citizens’ team found significant
information, evidence that was previously ignored, and details never
before available to the victim’s family or to the public.
Here is our summary, comparison of statements, and evaluation of evidence in the case:
Statements Of Frances DiMare
Multiple news reports repeated Frances’ story. She asserted as
follows. She and her husband had left their Keystone Point home to go to
dinner; she was driving their Cadillac Fleetwood and he was in the
passenger seat. They stopped at an intersection at the south exit from
Keystone Point just west of the Broad Causeway at a red light. Two men
jumped into the sedan. One of the men pushed a pistol to the back of her
head and forced her to drive to a nearby empty lot in Sans Souci
Estates. When her husband looked back he was smashed in the face with a
pistol butt. She screamed and was also hit with a pistol.
As reported by the Miami Herald, she said that the gunmen ripped off
her jewelry. When she disobeyed an order not to turn around, one of the
bandits in the back seat hit her with his pistol and knocked her out.
When she came to several minutes later, she said the attackers had fled
and her husband was slumped against the car door, blood flowing from his
head. In a moment of panic, she said she raced through the brambles,
bushes and over sharp rocks to a nearby Phillips 66 service station.
Police were called.
According to news reports, Frances “said the gunmen beat her with his
pistol when she became hysterical as they sought to strip her of her
jewelry. She lost consciousness and when she came to found her husband
had been shot.”
Another Herald article reported that Frances got to the gas station
and told Norman Logan, son of the owner, that “two men had gotten into
the car, one in the back, one in the front. The man in the back told him
not to turn around but he did and the guy hit him on the head.”
Frances soon gave an “exclusive interview” to the Herald and
explained: “When we reached the Causeway-Bayshore intersection, two men
jumped into the back seat. I didn’t see where they came from. There was a
car behind us, but none was coming up or down the Causeway. I was
driving and one of the men held a pistol and told me to do exactly as he
said. He told me to drive straight ahead – to the Sans Souci Estates.
He ordered me to take a right hand turn off Bayshore Drive, after about a
block. My husband asked the men what they wanted. One of them answered
that they want his money. They told us to keep our heads to the front,
but Joe kept looking back at them, trying to struggle with them. He
turned once and one of them smashed him in the face. He turned to me and
said “I’m bleeding”. Then he turned back again and they hit him again.
That’s when I started screaming. They hit me twice – seemed to know just
where to hit because it knocked me out the second time. The next I
remember I was lying outside the car on the gravel. They’d taken all my
jewelry – about $5,000 worth. Joe was carrying about $400 cash on him,
and I learned they got that, too. I’m confident the men were not
amateurs. They were calm and methodical. I never got a good look at
them, but they didn’t talk like hoodlums. They didn’t talk like college
educated men, either. I kept thinking it was a terrible mistake, they
men called my husband Frank instead of Joe for some reason. I think that
either they mistook Joe for someone else, or they just wanted to rob
us. I don’t think they were trying to kill us.”
Physical Evidence and Witness Accounts
The murder weapon was a .25 caliber Sata, an Italian auto pistol. It
was owned by and registered to Frances DiMare, purchased for her by
Joseph DiMare. Casings and projectiles in the car and in Mr. Dimare’s
head matched a casing and projectile previously fired from that weapon
by Mr. Dimare’s son, Richard, who had kept them.
A box of ammunition of the same brand and caliber was found, right
after the murder, in the glove compartment of Dimare’s other vehicle,
the one used by Frances, a Cadillac convertible parked at the house in
Keystone Point.
At the time of the murder, Mr. DiMare was in the front passenger
seat. Frances DiMare was in the driver’s seat, a few feet to the left of
the victim.
Mr. DiMare was hit by four .25 rounds. Two rounds were fired from in
front of the victim’s face, into the mouth. Two more rounds were fired
from the left into the areas immediately in front of and behind his left
ear. All four shots were fired a extremely close range, each one
leaving gun powder around the wound.
There were nine abrasions or contusions on the victim’s head. The
victim had contusions on his left arm and right index finger. Blood was
found on the front seat, on the back seat, and on the exterior of the
car, flowing down the window and out of the door bottom.
As we were able to confirm again in late 2019, blood was not found on
the driver’s seat, on the steering wheel, or on the driver’s door.
There was no blood spatter beyond the center of the front seat.
On the exterior of the car, streaks of blood were noticeably swept backward. The blood flow was substantial,
reflecting the severity of the wounds and the time involved in bleeding
following the shots.
Blood was not found in the victim’s lungs. A faint redness was found
on the victim’s jaw. Medical investigation postulated that these
findings could indicate that an arm was around the victim’s neck when he
was shot, closing off the airway; or alternatively, that the killing
shot caused an immediate cessation of respiration.
The victim’s gold ring and diamond cufflinks were not taken from him, he was wearing them when found in the car.
Two men were fishing about 200 yards to the east of where the car was found. They heard nothing, no shots, no commotion.
Frances had no cuts on her feet. Her shoes were found near the car. They appeared to have been “placed”, not strewn about.
When a female deputy was later asked to remove her shoes and run
through the course that Frances said she had used to get from the car to
the gas station, the deputy’s feet were cut and bruised in numerous
places.
The first person that Frances spoke to at the gas station was Norman
Logan; according to Logan, “she never once said he (her husband) was
shot”.
Patrolman Ben Scola, North Miami Police Department, was the first
officer on the scene. “I saw her at the gas station. She didn’t look too
messed up. There were some scratches on her face and some specs of
blood on her dress. The scratches looked as though she had made them
herself by running her hands down her face. She told him that she was
either knocked out or unconscious somehow, and that she did not see the
shooting.
Shell casings were found in the back seat of the Cadillac. We have
photographs that also show, upon enlargement, that there were at least
two unfired rounds also sitting on the back seat.
