From the Week of Thursday, June 28, 2001   News A Flight of Fancy Broward commissioners are spending big bucks on an unlikely airport-growth scheme Lying for Kicks South Florida again becomes an outpost for Latin American sleaze Letters Letters to the Editor Letters for June 28, 2001

Rivera, wearing his prison-issue orange jumpsuit and a yarmulke, smiles almost demurely. His soft brown eyes, good humor, and gentle demeanor can be disarming -- even if you're armed with the knowledge that in 1986 he was convicted in Broward County of plucking 11-year-old Staci Jazvac off her bicycle and killing her. Rivera's appearance has surprised people who expected to see a cold-blooded, dirty beast. Court records indicate a potential juror in his 1987 trial said he looked at the accused and thought only, That can't be him.

Any illusion Rivera really doesn't belong behind bars disappears when he describes his life before prison. He speaks of his addiction to crack cocaine, of exposing himself to strangers, of his lust for little girls. His candor can be chilling -- as when he calmly demonstrates the chokehold he used on unsuspecting victims he intended to rape. No wonder he's confined to a six-by-nine-foot cell at Union Correctional Institution in rural Central Florida. No wonder authorities have put steel bars, fences, rolls of razor wire, and armed tower guards between him and the populace.

But he might not belong on Death Row. He swears he didn't kill Staci. And he could be telling the truth.

Rivera has insisted all along that he's a victim of his own fantasies, that confessions during obscene phone calls were a product of his twisted, sexually charged dream life. It's a bizarre explanation, but an analysis of the exceedingly murky case shows the state never proved his guilt. A jury, with no conclusive physical evidence tying Rivera to the murder, convicted him based on a mountain of hearsay, some of it from the mouths of hardened criminals. The trial was a highly publicized, emotional affair, marked by the presence of John Walsh, star of America's Most Wanted, and a courtroom full of children about the victim's age. The judge, who had made damning statements about Rivera before the trial, ruled against the defense at every turn.

Though his appeals have failed, Rivera now has new hope for vindication from a most unlikely place: the Broward Sheriff's Office, which investigated his role in the murder. BSO has come under intense public scrutiny since new DNA analysis showed that the agency helped send an innocent man, Frank Lee Smith, to Death Row, and cajoled false murder confessions from Jerry Frank Townsend, who was freed last month after serving 22 years in prison for a string of killings he didn't commit. For Smith the DNA test came too late -- he died of cancer in prison.

The same investigators -- Richard Scheff, Phil Amabile, and Tom Carney -- who pinned the murder of an eight-year-old girl on Smith in 1985 made the case against Rivera a year later. The state is investigating whether Scheff, who led both investigations and is now the commander of BSO's countywide operations, lied in court to help keep Smith behind bars.

In light of these findings, BSO is reviewing four other Death Row cases in which deputies have determined that new DNA tests can be conducted to determine if the convicted are indeed guilty. Sheriff's officials say they want to make sure no other life-or-death mistake was made. At the top of the list, they say, is Rivera's case, in which a single hair could make all the difference.

Found in a van that Rivera allegedly drove at the time of the murder, the strand was the only piece of physical evidence that tied him to the crime; under a microscope it matched Staci's own sandy blond hair. But that "match" was far from conclusive, as the hair could have come from any number of people.

What the jury never heard is that the van's owner, Mark Peters, swears Rivera didn't have his vehicle at the time of Staci's disappearance. Peters, who has never before spoken to the media about the murder, says he fled town before the trial because he was scared of the BSO detectives.

Peters's contention adds more doubt to what essentially remains a murder mystery that began on January 30, 1986, when Staci disappeared. Rivera calls it his "day of infamy" and insists he's scheduled to be executed by the people of Florida for a crime he didn't commit.

Staci Jazvac was overjoyed on her last day of life, a Thursday. She loved to run and had just learned that she had made the Lauderdale Lakes Middle School track team. But when the pretty, blue-eyed sixth grader came home from tryouts after 5 p.m., there was little time for celebration. An A student, she had homework to do and needed some poster board for a reading project. So she asked her mother, Nancy, if she could run to a store just a few blocks from her house. Nancy assented, and before Staci left, they taped a flashlight to the girl's ten-speed bicycle because it was getting dark. At roughly 6:15 p.m. she set off with $3 in her pocket.

After taking a shortcut through a field, Staci, who weighed a scant 60 pounds, arrived at the Super X drugstore near the corner of State Road 7 and Oakland Park Boulevard. She paid for the poster board and started home. At about 6:30 a man named Rickey Mudd noticed a red pickup truck leaving the field through which Staci had ridden. The truck left a cloud of dust as it sped away, Mudd later told police. He also noticed the red glint of a reflector about 100 feet from the road. Mudd investigated and found a ten-speed bicycle on the ground with a still-shining flashlight fastened with duct tape to the handlebars. Although he considered the scene peculiar, he went on his way.

By 7 p.m. Nancy was beginning to panic. It wasn't like Staci to be late. So she headed for Super X and looked around the field, calling for her daughter. Distraught, she reported the missing girl to BSO, which soon began a massive search of the area. Staci was gone.

The disappearance was the talk of South Florida. Volunteers working with the Adam Walsh Foundation (named for John Walsh's son, who had been abducted and killed in 1981) distributed pictures of Staci everywhere they could. Numerous psychics surfaced with improbable theories. BSO took calls from tipsters, hearing about dozens of would-be child killers and Staci sightings. None of the tips seemed promising until a puzzling figure entered the picture.

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