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LINKED IN SUCCESS LINKED IN TRAGEDY

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By BILLY TOWNSEND

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 18, 2008

WINTER HAVEN - A bullet slammed into 19-year-old Robert Cameron's shoulder, fired as a warning so he would stop resisting.

Instead, it traveled through his rib cage, pierced a lung and lodged in his stomach.

As the gunman and an accomplice fled his condominium, without the big score of high-grade marijuana and cash they came to steal, Cameron was dying.

Two of Cameron's friends got up off the floor, where they had been held at gunpoint. Bryan Cassidy called 911, poured Cameron a cup of Kool-Aid for his thirst and frantically checked the window for the ambulance.

News stories would eulogize Cameron, 19, as a model student and athlete at Lake Region High School, where his mother was a math teacher and swim coach.

But the investigation into his slaying Aug. 22, revealed in court documents, tells a darker tale of betrayal among a group of friends from different social classes who sold and smoked marijuana and used Cameron's upscale condominium as a hangout.

At the center of the story are Cameron and Cassidy. Friends since childhood, raised in the same church, brought together by their fathers - one served as the other's best man - they were the next generation of two families that have accomplished much in Polk County.

There are few more prominent developers here than Albert "Al" Cassidy, Bryan Cassidy's father, who also happens to be executor of the estate of the late Hall of Fame slugger Ted Williams. In October, the Cassidy family made a $2.5 million contribution to what is now the Cassidy Cancer Center at Winter Haven Hospital.

Cameron's father is a developer, too, and his grandmother, Sue Buckner, is one of the most revered educators in Polk County, the former principal of a tough neighborhood school that is held up as a model for helping poor, minority students achieve.

Long linked in success, the families are now linked in tragedy.

"This is devastating," Al Cassidy said. "I can't imagine what I would be like. I know that the worst I ever feel is better than the best they feel."

Not Where Such Things Happen

The Cassidy and Cameron families both had a hand in developing the condominium complex at Winterset. Nestled on the shore of a lake near the lush Cypress Gardens tourist attraction, Winterset has tennis courts, a heated pool and spa, a spacious clubhouse and a waterfront volleyball court.

Built in the mid '80s, it is still considered a prestigious address in Winter Haven.

"When I first read about it in the paper, my first reaction was: 'At Winterset?' This just doesn't happen at Winterset," said Bob Gernert, president of the Winter Haven Chamber of Commerce.

Kelly Washington, 20, and Antonio Neal, 21, had been regulars at Cameron's condo in the days before the slaying, playing video games and smoking "dro," the hydroponically grown marijuana Cameron bought and sold. Just days before, they had all celebrated a buddy's birthday at the Mons Venus strip club in Tampa.

As Cameron's friends attended to him after the shooting, Polk County sheriff's investigators say Washington and Neal were hiding outside with another man, all accomplices of the two armed intruders. The five are accused of planning and carrying out the ill-fated robbery. All face first-degree murder, armed burglary and armed robbery charges.

Cassidy and Cameron considered Washington a friend, according to court documents. Cassidy, 20, said they grew close in high school, then lost touch when Washington was sent to what they described as a "program." They reconnected later, and all three would party and go clubbing together, sometimes with Neal.

At the time of the killing, Cameron and another friend, Kyle Owens, had been living together about a month at Winterset. Cassidy spent much of his time there, too, crashing nightly on a couch the friends had hoisted over a second floor balcony and through a sliding door. It was the same route the intruders would take.

Cameron "pretty much gave me a place to stay, gave me money, gave me a house to live under and stuff like that," Cassidy said March 5 in a sworn interview.

The court files are full of examples of Cameron's generosity with money and marijuana. The day before he was killed, according to Cassidy, Cameron loaned Washington some marijuana to sell because, in Washington's words, he was trying to "get on my feet" financially, Cassidy said.

Cameron and Cassidy spent their days either working for their parents or hanging out. Roommate Owens often worked an overnight shift on the book-in desk at the Central County Jail in Bartow, where he was a civilian employee. Owens was not home at the time of the robbery.

The Fatal Intrusion

Investigators and co-defendants point to Washington as the instigator of the robbery. By 10 p.m. Aug. 22, the plan was in motion. The five men drove to a nearby shopping center and walked up to the rear of Cameron's condo, avoiding the front gate and the round-the-clock security guards at Winterset, investigators say.

About 10:45 p.m., Henry Jones III, 23, and Jeffrey Green, 24, apparently strangers to Cameron, climbed over the back balcony into the condo, authorities say. Washington, Neal and Desmond Davis, 22, waited on the ground nearby. Some in the group helped boost the intruders over the balcony.

Inside in the living room, Cameron, Cassidy and the third man there that night, Tino Villareal, were about to wind up the day by sharing a blunt - a hollowed-out cigar filled with marijuana.

Cassidy played rap music he downloaded earlier in the day on his computer.

Something caught his eye.

"I looked and I saw two dudes jump over the balcony," Cassidy said in the deposition. "And I was, '... Robert, turn around, like, look.'"

The intruders were armed. Bandanas covered their faces. They ordered everyone to the floor and asked for Cameron, who identified himself. Jones put a gun to Villareal's head while Green set to work on Cameron, tapping him on the head with a pistol as he lay on the floor, demanding to know where the marijuana was.

"Where's the dro at," Green asked, according to court records.

Cameron got up and started to lead Green to his stash. Then he turned on Green and started to struggle with him. After a brief, frantic fight, Cameron broke away and tried to get into his room and shut the door. But Green was able to get in behind him and fire a single shot at close range into Cameron's shoulder, authorities say. Several statements from witnesses and suspects indicate Green meant to wound Cameron so he would stop resisting.

Cameron, injured, handed the marijuana to Green and let Green pull him back out into the living room.

Cassidy and Villareal said at least one of the men suggested that the two robbers kill all three victims, but instead they fled through the front door, on the apartment's ground floor. Cassidy, who said he did not have a phone of his own, used Cameron's cell phone to dial 911. He and Villareal were downstairs when Polk County sheriff's deputies arrived.

When they went back upstairs, Cameron used a racial slur in describing who had robbed and shot him. He was having trouble breathing.

Cameron was flown to Lakeland Regional Medical Center, where he died.

Jeffrey Green, accused of being the shooter, is scheduled to stand trial Monday. Trial dates for the other defendants have not yet been set.

Unraveling The Plot

The day after the shooting, according to a report by Polk sheriff's Deputy Louis Giampavolo, Cassidy told him that "if this was in fact a drug rip-off, the person that comes to his mind is a subject named Kelly Washington." Cassidy told the deputy that Washington "is always bragging about place to rob where drugs and money may be found," according to Giampavolo's report.

During another interview, Cassidy mentioned Neal, his other strip club buddy, as a possible suspect.

Detectives quickly used Cassidy's information and other leads to round up Washington and the other four men.

Then in November, three months after the slaying, Henry Jones III, the man accused of holding Villareal and Cassidy at gunpoint during the robbery, accused Cassidy of working with Washington to set up the robbery. The accusation echoed street-level gossip, and detectives began to scrutinize Cassidy, documents show.

But none of the other defendants corroborated the story. Washington said in a sworn statement that Cassidy had nothing to do with the robbery.

In the end, detectives decided they couldn't substantiate Jones' allegations. There is no record that detectives have interviewed Cassidy as a possible suspect.

"That whole thing fell by the wayside pretty quickly," said W.J. Martin, chief of detectives for the sheriff's office. He also questioned what motive Cassidy might have. "If it was money, all he had to was straighten up and get his life in order, and his family is money," Martin said.

A Painful Aftermath For 2 Families

Al Cassidy and the elder Robert Cameron, the victim's father, became friends as young men after the Cassidys moved to Polk County in 1970 from Massachusetts. There, the Cassidys owned and operated a baseball camp with Ted Williams, the "Splendid Splinter" of Boston Red Sox fame, who died in Inverness in 2002.

Cassidy and Cameron went into land development. Cassidy eventually served as best man at Cameron's wedding, and he and his wife are the godparents of Cameron's children, including young Robert. The families both attend St. Matthew's Catholic Church in Winter Haven.

Neither family would talk about their relationship today or about the investigation.

"I don't know what's going on," Robert Cameron said.

A lawyer representing the Cassidy family said Bryan Cassidy could not comment.

A MySpace Web page posted by a Bryan Cassidy is titled "BC$ R.I.P RWC." Cameron's middle name was Wayne. The page's creator is described as 20, from Winter Haven. The private site was active as late as Tuesday, but a message left there requesting a comment was not responded to.

Cassidy's father, Al, said there's nothing to the allegations that his son conspired in the robbery attempt. But Al Cassidy acknowledged there's been talk in the community.

"There's a rumor mill out there," he said.

He understands any uncertainty the Camerons might have about the question.

Investigators, Cassidy said, "have looked at it every which way. But how do you ever know as a parent?"

The death of his friend, Cassidy added, is never far from his son's mind.

"He thinks about it all the time."

Near the end of Bryan Cassidy's deposition, under questioning from a defense lawyer, Cassidy revealed he had been the victim of a violent robbery once before, about a year earlier.

He and a friend - not Cameron - went to buy marijuana in Winter Haven's Inwood neighborhood. It's the same poor neighborhood where Cameron's maternal grandmother served as an elementary school principal and the home of some of the men accused in the slaying.

Buckner said she recognizes names among the five defendants and thinks she may have been principal for some, if not all, of them.

"Most of them came from the same area where I worked for so much of my life," Buckner told the Tribune. "It made me sick to my stomach to think about it."

When Cassidy and his friend left the car to make the buy in Inwood, a group of men descended on them, pistol-whipped them and rifled through their pockets. Neither Cassidy nor his friend ever reported the incident.

In the case against the five suspects, one of the lawyers asked Cassidy, "Do you see any connection between the drugs and the violence"?

Answered Cassidy, "Oh, yeah, definitely. My eyes have opened."

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