MIRAMAR — Nearly three decades after one of South Florida’s most brutal murders, the family of Marie Altidor and Theresia Laverne are no closer to seeing justice for their loved ones.
A group of more than 50 relatives, friends and supporters reaffirmed their perpetual search for answers this week at a commission meeting in Miramar.
They banded together in white T-shirts with photos of the victims in the unsolved 1997 quadruple homicide: Marie Altidor, 29; her two babies, 6-week-old Sabrina and 2-year-old Samantha; and her mother, Theresia Laverne, 68.
Multiple relatives flew in from other states for their chance to make yet another public plea for something more to be done, to share their hope that someone might still come forward with new information that could provide a long-awaited break in the case.
The April 30, 1997, murders remain one of South Florida’s most horrific crimes. All four victims were found shot and bludgeoned to death with a hammer inside the home on South Crescent Drive that Marie Altidor shared with her husband, George Altidor.
The crime scene inside the Altidor home had been staged to make it appear as a drug-related home invasion. Miramar Police detectives have said since the beginning that there were no signs of forced entry into the home. By 1999, the lead detective had ruled out motives including robbery, drugs, random violence or political ties in Haiti, where both Marie and George Altidor grew up, the Sun Sentinel reported.
Infant Sabrina was lying in her bassinet. Laverne was found facedown in the kitchen. Marie Altidor in a pool of blood in the dining room. It took some time to find Samantha, who was lying behind a couch in a small spot known to be her hiding place.
A significant piece of evidence became a message scrawled in marker on a wall inside the family room: “I want my 100,000 / They stole my drugs.”
The South Florida Sun Sentinel’s latest season of Felonious Florida reexamined the cold case across six episodes with never-before-released audio and exclusive access to Miramar Police’s complete case file, which the attorney for the family cited in an Oct. 24 letter to Chief Delrish Moss demanding “renewed investigative resources” on the case. The podcast revealed gaps in the early days of the investigation that could have uncovered critical evidence.
A brutal 1997 Miramar quadruple murder remains unsolved. A new podcast investigates why
Miramar Police considered George Altidor, Marie’s then-husband and the father of the two little girls, a suspect not long after the murders, and eventually the only suspect, according to reports from the Sun Sentinel archives. He remains a suspect today, detectives say in the podcast, Felonious Florida: The Altidor Massacre.
Chief Moss has vowed his department has not and will not give up trying to bring the case to an end. He maintains police don’t have enough evidence to make an arrest.
“What’s really critical is that someone out there knows something,” Moss told reporters this week. “And if they have information and they bring it forward, that would be more helpful than anything that we probably have already.”
Five detectives have worked on the case since 1997. They have tested and retested all of the evidence available as technology advances, and the case has been presented to the State Attorney’s Office multiple times over the years, said Moss, who was a Miramar resident at the time of the murders.
Moss told the commission they would again be meeting with the State Attorney’s Office in a few weeks.
Frustrated family
The Altidor/Laverne family has been hearing the same message for years, and their frustration is palpable.
“For us, it’s like every day,” Carline Laverne, one of Marie Altidor’s sisters and daughter of Theresia Laverne, told the Sun Sentinel.
She hopes that after their latest public plea, someone who has information might finally make a phone call. The family is tired, she said.
“I have faith, one way or another, that this will be solved,” Carline Laverne said. “I don’t know if it’s tomorrow, but that case will be solved somehow.”
Alain Laverne, a brother of Marie Altidor and son of Theresia Laverne, said the family’s hope is still that the killer will be put behind bars.
“After all those years, we know that there are people who know what happened. So we are still in the dark,” he said. “We want renewed attention to this case because this case can be solved. It cannot be a cold case.”
In recent years, the police department has revisited the case to test evidence using new advancements in DNA technology, including the preserved wall with the killer’s message.
The wall had gone through three rounds of testing over the years, but no DNA evidence was found during any of the testing, Cold Case Detective Danny Smith said in the podcast’s sixth episode “George and Florence.” The detective retired in late 2024.
Decker Act
Despite the past efforts, attorney Kertch Conze, a former Miami-Dade prosecutor who is working with the Laverne/Altidor family pro bono, believes more can be done.
“Whether it is through additional testing of evidence, speaking to witnesses or the simple addition of human resources … Something needs to be done for this family. They have waited and grieved for the past 28 years. We will hope that they will not wait for another 28 years and let this case die on its own,” Conze told the commission.
The proposed “Decker Act” could benefit the Altidor case, Conze told the Sun Sentinel. The bill was introduced in the 2024 and 2025 Florida legislative sessions and, in part, would require law enforcement agencies to conduct full reinvestigations of certain cold cases. It was named after Marilyn Decker, who was strangled to death, stabbed and left in a canal in Davie in 1987. The cold case was recently solved after new DNA testing identified the suspect, who died in 1995.
If a bill were to pass, Conze said statewide resources could be available, with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
“It’s a very good thing, but at the same time, we have to have it passed and right now it’s not even actively pursued,” he said.
Sun Sentinel editor David Schutz and information from the Sun Sentinel archives contributed to this report.