Camile Hamilton paused to study the bearded man’s photo.
South Florida detectives had traveled to her home in Jamaica that summer of 2010, hoping to solve a murder. She was the only survivor of a 2009 Miramar home invasion that took the lives of her teenage daughter, her friend, and her friend’s teenage son.
Hamilton looked at the photo and shook her head. “No,” she said.
Then the lead detective did something extraordinary: he showed Hamilton 14 more photos, all of the same man, taken over 10 years of his life.
Now Hamilton recognized him as the killer.
The detective’s maneuver defied proper police tactics and helped lead to the arrest of Kevin Pratt, a homeless man with no connection to the women and teenagers shot in the attack.
The two critical pieces of evidence against Pratt, Hamilton’s memory and DNA found at the scene, had serious flaws. But Miramar detectives and Broward prosecutors pushed forward on the case despite credible doubts about Pratt’s guilt, a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation of more than 13,000 pages of documents, 80 hours of testimony and dozens of interviews found.
Pratt only became a suspect after repeated tests of inconclusive DNA collected from a roll of duct tape. His arrest also hung on the hazy recollections of a traumatized witness, her memory influenced by the detective.
Police never explained a plausible motive for why Pratt would pick that particular home or why he would execute three strangers. If robbery was the motive, it was a lot of effort for little gain: roughly $80.
The Broward State Attorney’s Office clearly had concerns. As the case faltered, the lead prosecutor offered a shockingly light plea deal — 10 years in prison for the murders of a woman and two teenagers.
Facing the possibility of the death penalty, Pratt took the deal — and continued to maintain his innocence.
Miramar police and the detectives involved declined requests for an interview, and instead offered a statement:
“This case was methodically and thoroughly investigated by respected, experienced homicide detectives. Every search warrant, body warrant, arrest warrant, etc. went through the proper channels: under the direction, guidance, review, and approval of the State Attorney’s Office, as well as approved by a judge. The totality of the case led to an arrest. The defendant had an option of a jury trial; however, he chose to plead guilty on all counts. To try this closed case in the press minimizes the complexities of it and only serves to question the authenticity of the lone survivor’s account.”
A horrific crime scene
The call to police came a little before 3 p.m. on Aug. 17, 2009. Camile Hamilton sat slumped against the door of her friend’s Miramar home. A bullet had entered near her left temple and lodged in her neck.
The home belonged to Hamilton’s friend Faith Bisasor, 49, an emergency room nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Her son Davion, 15, a bookish student at Stranahan High School in Fort Lauderdale, also lived there. Hamilton’s daughter Nekitta, 15, had been spending the night.
Officers found all three dead in the master bedroom, each shot in the head, their ankles bound with duct tape. The teenagers’ wrists were also bound. Nekitta wore pink pajama leggings and a tank top that read, “Love and Peace.”
Detectives later downplayed something unusual found in the home’s garage: A two-door Mercedes S600, armored with double-paned windows and reinforced doors, registered to Bisasor.
Though they had three bodies in the home, officers didn’t collect any evidence from the Mercedes or explore why an emergency room nurse had an apparent armored car.
“It didn’t look like it had been part of the crime,” Roberto Caceres, a Broward Sheriff’s Office crime scene detective, said in a deposition.
“It didn’t raise any flags,” testified Miramar Police Det. Steven Toyota, the lead investigator on the case.
Detectives spoke with Davion’s father, Hamilton’s husband and her brother-in-law, who also knew Bisasor. They checked out more than 50 tips, including one that said Bisasor was connected to a Jamaican gang. In the end, Toyota concluded the attack was random.
But Miramar police Major Cynthia Brown, who oversaw the homicide detectives, later testified that she was worried about how thoroughly her detectives investigated those leads.
She demanded that the detectives file reports detailing their investigative efforts.
Brown said in a deposition that she believed her decision to speak out was why she was later moved from her role supervising the detectives.
Inconsistent memory
Two weeks before the attack Hamilton and her daughter had traveled from Jamaica. Hamilton was in South Florida for work. Nekitta was visiting.
On the night of Aug. 16, Hamilton had left her job caring for an elderly woman in Lake Worth to bring groceries to her daughter at Bisasor’s home.
Hamilton arrived around 11 p.m., and the teens came out to help her unload the car. It was then, Hamilton told Toyota, that a man with a gun approached them in the driveway. He demanded money and forced them inside. Bisasor was upstairs in the master bedroom, Hamilton said.
Hours later, Hamilton woke up, bloodied and disoriented. She got her cell phone and called a friend, who dialed 911 and sent officers to the home.
Hamilton was surrounded by nurses and doctors when Toyota first saw her in a hospital trauma room. He moved in close before medics rushed her away. If he didn’t get any information then, he thought, she might die and he may never get the chance to ask.
Over the next hour, Toyota spoke to her twice. She was weak, could barely talk and it was hard for the detective to understand her due to her Jamaican accent.
“Just try to speak up a little bit louder,” Toyota told her. “I know it’s hard, but we got to get through it.”
Precisely what happened inside the home remains unknown. Hamilton’s answers varied when she described the attack, according to transcripts and audio recordings of more than a dozen statements and sworn testimony she gave.
On her first day in the hospital, Hamilton told Toyota she did not look at the man. In a later conversation, she said the man didn’t have anything covering his face before then saying that he was using a t-shirt to try and cover it. During another retelling, she said the best look she got of the man was outside when he came upon her.