Post by Scumhunter on Feb 9, 2017 2:39:33 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: ABC Tampa website)
From the Tampa Bay Times website:
DUNEDIN — The 15-year mark came and went this week, and Andrea Bolden still doesn't know who killed her husband.
Bolden, 54, her daughter, Tyra, and several friends and family members gathered at Clarence Bolden's grave Wednesday at Brewer & Sons at Parklawn Memorial Cemetery to release white, bird-shaped balloons in his memory. They spoke of their loving husband, devoted father and generous friend, imploring anyone with information on his murder to come forward.
"God stays high, and he looks low," Andrea Bolden said. "I want to say 'hallelujah' one day."
Bolden, 37 at the time of his death, was playing poker Feb. 7, 2002, at a friend's cottage on Fulton Avenue in Clearwater when two masked men barged in. Bolden, who owned a landscaping business, was shot in the upper torso. The men grabbed a pot on the table and told the players to give up their cash. They shot another man, who lived, then ran from the cottage to a white car down the street.
Adrian Jackson saw them run, he said after the memorial Wednesday. It was his house where the men were that night. He and another man left to grab snacks for the group. They were gone six, seven minutes tops.
"We came back, and it was total chaos at the house," he said.
He ran to his mother's house and called 911 while his mom, a nurse, ran to the cottage to try and help. Jackson, 47, still lives in the cottage, haunted. He knows the exact spot on the floor where his friend died.
The murder kicked off a six-month string of robberies around the city that left six dead. It also wasn't the first tragedy to strike the Bolden family. One of Clarence Bolden's older brothers, Chris, was home from college on a break in June 1983 when a man fired a revolver into a crowd on N Greenwood Avenue. A bullet hit Chris Bolden in the head. The 20-year-old died the next day.
Investigators found the elder son's killer days later. But justice for Clarence has been much more elusive. Clearwater police Detective Paul Comini said Wednesday that the lack of physical evidence left them with few leads. The robbery moved quickly, he said. The men didn't touch anything to leave behind fingerprints. There was no struggle to stir up hair strands or skin under fingernails.
There are suspects in the case, he said, but more people with knowledge need to step forward before an arrest can be made.
"It's going to take someone saying, 'This is what I know,' " he said.
Comini thinks it's fear that drives the silence, fear of retaliation from the men responsible or of being a snitch. He hopes the family's courage to keep speaking out will move others to come forward.
It was Clarence Bolden's mother, Johnnie Mae Baldwin, who kept her son's spirit alive for the first decade. In a wheelchair, she told Angela Bolden her last wish before she died in March 2013: get her son's killers off the street.
"As long as I stand, until the day I die, I'm going to push," Angela Bolden said.
Baldwin is buried now, right next to Clarence and a dozen steps from Chris. Tyra Bolden, 22, darted to her father's plot when she arrived at the cemetery Wednesday. She knelt on the ground, tears streaming down her face, and thought about closure, how free it would feel, like the flight of a balloon.
web.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/family-members-gather-to-remember-clearwater-man-killed-in-unsolved-murder/2312512
Thoughts?
Admin Note #1: According to the Tampa Bay Times website:
Investigators ask that anyone with information contact Clearwater police at (727) 562-4242 or contact Crime Stoppers of Pinellas County, toll-free, at 1-800-873-8477 or by texting your tip and the keyword CWPD to 847411
Admin Note #2: If you have any (news-related) updates on this case, please contact us here: amwfans.com/thread/1662/website-contact-form