- March 12, 2025
Several days each week, a team of volunteer investigators sit, surrounded by evidence, in a conference room, hunting for leads in homicide cases that went cold years ago.
They’re all former law enforcement professionals, all from large metropolitan areas and all agree: once investigation is in your life, it’s hard to get it out.
“As a detective, you experience each case personally,” said Bob Aiken, a cold case investigator for the Criminal Investigations Division of the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office. “Each case leaves residue, and there’s this cumulative effect after so many years — you can’t shake it.”
Aiken worked in the Philadelphia Police Department for 21 years, spending much of his time as a detective. He then moved to the Bureau of Criminal Investigations in the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office, where he worked as a special agent for 12 years.
Joining his investigations is Bob Brandsma, who worked a total of 20 years as a sworn officer for the state of New Jersey working with juvenile delinquents at the Hightstown Police Department and the East Windsor Township Police Department.
The third member of their team, Amarilis Hernandez, is a retired New York Police Department detective. She worked there for more than 11 years, starting as a patrolwoman 10 years prior to becoming a detective.
“Amarilis is the real deal, and so is Bob,” Aiken said. “The three of us are pretty tight.”
Aiken and Brandsma both moved to Palm Coast after retiring from law enforcement and participated in a Cold Case Squad to investigate the Daytona Beach Killer, a murderer responsible for a string of homicides in Daytona Beach starting in 2005 whose identity is still unknown.
The squad prompted Aiken to start a similar effort closer to his home.
“I had a varied and intense career,” he said. “I felt that what I had — it’s one of those skills or traits or whatever you want to call it that you can’t apply to the outside world — but I felt I could be a help.”
Aiken approached Flagler County Sheriff Donald Fleming, who interviewed both Aiken and Brandsma and agreed to take them on as investigators. Hernandez already knew Aiken, and she joined the team soon after.
“As a homicide detective, you become a victim’s voice,” Hernandez said. “For me, it’s important to give that chance for a voice and for closure back to the family.”
The cold case investigators hope that, with their experience, they’re the team to do so.
And they’ve seen a lot. In Philadelphia, where Aiken and Brandsma have both worked, the homicide rate bobbed between 300 and 400 victims per year during the last five years, according to its police department.
New York City, where Hernandez worked, has seen between 471 and 697 homicides annually for the last decade.
“What I can’t stress enough is how important teamwork is in law enforcement,” he said. “We can all sit around and bounce ideas off each other, and that’s how things start coming together and cases get solved.”
For all three of the volunteers, bringing closure to the families of victims is one of the main reasons they continue to work in investigations during their retirement years.
But returning to cold cases presents challenges that come from the passage of time. Often, witnesses are hard to track down, and uncovering any new evidence is largely impossible.
“When I look at a cold case, I try to look at it like a new case,” Hernandez said. “There could always be something new to find.”
With advances in technology, DNA testing can make revisiting old cases fruitful. Use of a national DNA registry has been a catalyst for many cold case investigations throughout the country, Aiken said.
And sometimes, publicizing old cases will jog witnesses’ memories or convince those who had formerly been unwilling to come forward with evidence to do so.
Overall, the work is tedious and time-consuming. Solving these cases is no easy feat; they went cold for that very reason.
“It’s hard seeing what the families (of victims) go through,” Hernandez said. “The families are going through a lot of pain, and not to get any justice for them is just not fair.”
The team, which has been working together for almost two years, hasn’t closed a case yet, but they’re making advances in many of the county’s large number of cold cases.
“You have to be careful,” Aiken said. “You have to make sure you have enough evidence to get a conviction. Anyone can go to trial, but what we want is a conviction, and you have to make sure your case is really solid.”
At the very least, preventing family members from having to spend their remaining years unsure of what happened to those victimized can help surviving family members find peace, Aiken said. This was one of the things about law enforcement that held his attention for so many years.
“Investigative work is very rewarding,” Brandsma said. “It kind of gets into your blood. It’s difficult to get away from it.”
Cold Case Investigators search for unidentified male found in Intracoastal Waterway
In September 1997, an unidentified white male was discovered floating in the Intracoastal Waterway, in Flagler Beach. The victim had been killed by a gunshot wound to the head and then restrained and weighted in attempt to hold the body at the bottom of the waterway.
Fifteen years later, his name remains unknown.
“Our main hope is to try to get this person identified,” said Bob Aiken, a cold case investigator for the Sheriff’s Office.
Experts who conducted an anthropological analysis of the victim’s skull said he was likely of Eastern European descent and had undergone costly dental procedures common to Europe.
The victim is believed to have stood about 5 feet, 8 inches tall, and weighed 170 pounds. He had brown eyes, no notable scars, no tattoos and no body hair.
Aiken and his team of investigators have contacted Interpol to look into international missing persons.
“After 15 years, this person is still a missing person,” Aiken said. “Somewhere, someone’s missing him.”
Any tips for this investigation should be directed to Crime Stoppers of Northeast Florida at 888-277-8477. All callers can remain anonymous.
Flagler investigators re-open case of man who disappeared in 1997
By all accounts, Robert Picard was a nice guy who loved to play the guitar and who minded his own business. Those who knew him cannot think of a reason anyone would want to harm him. But it’s been 15 years since Picard has been seen or heard from, and the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office cold case squad investigators are determined to find out why.
Picard was living in a rented trailer situated on a large parcel of property on County Road 2006 in Bunnell at the time of his disappearance in September 1997. He was 38 years old.
His landlord, Mary Pellicer, and her son, Claude John Pellicer Jr., lived in a home on the Flagler County property, not far from the trailer where Picard lived.
According to the initial missing person’s report filed Sept. 30, 1997, Pellicer Jr. told officers that Pellicer became concerned about Picard when he failed to show up to do some work he’d promised to do for her, and that his dog had been “hanging around” Pellicer’s house for about two weeks, because it was “probably hungry.”
Pellicer Jr. and his son, Claude John Pellicer III, went to check on Picard and noticed his bicycle, which they said was his usual mode of transportation, next to the back porch. They discovered the back door was unlocked and they went inside, a police report states.
Pellicer Jr. told officers he and his son found “blood, pot and a mess,” so they called deputies.
According to Flagler County Sheriff’s Office records, “a large amount of blood was found in the trailer.”
A number of marijuana plants, in various stages of growth, and marijuana growing apparatuses were also discovered inside Picard’s home.
"It’s quite likely he’s dead as a result of what we believe occurred in the trailer,” Aiken said. “Quite a thorough search was done initially, including an aerial search of the area. There are lots of lakes, loaded with ‘gators, and we think he may have been deposited in one of the many lakes in the area.”
One week before Picard was reported missing, the trailer was burglarized, reports show. The discovery was made when his sister, Marylin Legates, asked detectives if she could visit the trailer. She realized his stereo and speakers were missing.
Eventually arrested and charged in connection with the burglary were Claude John Pellicer III, then 15; Maynard Rupert II, then 20; and two 15-year-old males whose names were withheld. One was Rupert II’s younger brother, according to police reports.
In 2001, Pellicer III was convicted of burglarizing Picard’s home. He served three months of a two-year sentence in prison. He is currently incarcerated in Okaloosa on two charges of sexual battery from 2004, and is due to be released in 2013, according to records from the Florida Department of Corrections.
Aiken said it appears evident that Picard was selling marijuana, but that he was a completely “non-threatening” individual.
“He never bothered anyone,” Aiken said. “He was very non-confrontational. Everyone said so.”
Picard’s niece, who asked not to be identified, said she was in her mid-twenties when her uncle vanished.
“I was really close with him,” she said. “We were a close family. He was just a very gentle, good guy, just a hippy dude who liked to hang out, go camping, and he played the guitar really, really well. But he didn’t like the bar scene.”
She said she last saw Picard when she visited him at the trailer during the summer months before he disappeared.
“He seemed uneasy there, uncomfortable being outside,” she said. “(Reinvestigating) is kind of like starting all over again but we know people know something, and we just want some closure. I know I certainly couldn’t carry something like that around in my life.”
Anyone with information on Robert Picard is asked to call the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office at 386-586-4842 or Crime Stoppers at 888-277-8477. All callers can remain anonymous.
Rewards of up to $1,000 are offered for information leading to an arrest. Reward money may be collected at a designated bank without tipsters ever having to provide their names or identification.
— By Erika Webb | Hometown News
