◆ SpookStack

~-be the weapon"——the standard FBI handguns. As tor supptying agents with * “heavier firepower, an FBi spokesman ci fields of fire. An eyewitness, Rob- “ “3 ert Stebbins, remembers screaming.” frantically al one driver to get out of the way. “But I'm late for my tennis les- son! she replied, and drove on. Two other agents, Richard Manauzzi and Gilbert Orrantia, were wounded. The gunmen had gotten into the siain Grogan's FBl ca: and were desperately trying to getil started. Agent Edmundo Mireles, 33, his left arm shattered by a rifle bullet, managed to fire a shotgun bias! at the felons before falling to the ground. In great pain, his arm hanging uselessly, he crawled to the driver's side of the car. With his last bit of strength he rose up and fired six rounds through the window, killing both criminals. The dead gunmen were identified as Michae! Platt, 32, and William R. Matix, 34. neither of whom had a criminal rec- ord. The FB! began meticulously trac- ing their jives. and strange facts soon emerged. The first wives of both men, for instance, had died violently. Platt's wife. Regina, had been killed in 1984 by a shoigun blast tha! was ruled a sui- cide. A year earlier Matix's wife, Patri- cia, and another woman had been knifedin an unsolved Columbus, Ohio murder. Matix, suspected in the crime, had subsequently become a born- again Christian, iecturing church groups about how he had turned to Je- sus after the devastating loss of his wife three months after the birth of their daughter, Melissa. Meanwhile. questions have been raised about the shoot-out. Should the agents have tried to stop the car at that moment? Are FBI weapons adequate when criminals can command such firepower? The heroism of the agents overshadowed those questions. “The bottom line is that we didn't want those men to get on South Dixie Highway.” explained Hanton, “We knew if they got on South Dixie they would have sprayed the town, and people would have gotten hurt. They didn't get on South Dixie, so ihe damn thing was a success. We're sick about Ben and Jerry. But we oot our two. Those men [Piatt and Matix] won't hurt anybody anymore.” if there was any tailure, said McNeill, “the failure may said, “We cannot use automatics or high-powered weapons because of in- hocent bystanders. There is nothing to “hospital research lab where they indicate that our agents were inappr. priately armed.’ The agents were unanimous in Praise for their slain colleagues. “Ben Grogan was ine class by himselt,” said Hanlon. “He hit it hard everyday." Once a Student for the priesthood, Grogan was a graduate of Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and for a time taught Latin and biology at the Marist School in Atlanta. In 1970 he married Sandra, who works in the bu- reau’s Fort Lauderdale office. A small, Muscular man who ran marathons, the 24-year FBI veteran was eligible for re- tirement three yeats ago. When given & desk job, Grogan, at age 50, wangied his way back onto the street as head of Miami's elite SWAT team. Jerry Dove grew up in Dunbar, W. Va., where he now lies buried. His Parents divorced when he was a baby, and he was brought up an only child by his mother, Bobbie, who taught him a strong sense of morality. “It's just the way we feel," she Says, pride assuag- ing her grief. “We don't see shades of Qtay. Things are right or they're wrong.” His heart set on being an FBl agent since boyhood, Dove earned a 1981 law degree at West Virginia University to improve his chances. Accepted by ihe Bureau in 1882. he worked the 1984 Olympics with a SWAT team before he was assigned to Miami's criminal squad. “if it was his time, this would have been the way he would have wanted it,” his mother says. “He was doing what he believed in. He had very Strong feelings for his country—that we shouidn’t live with bars on the win- dows, that we should not be atraid to " walk the streets. Only two days before his death, Dove, a bachelor, told his grandmoth- er, “I've got a condo on the beach. I've gO! a sports car. I'm doing the job! jove. ! wouldn't trade with Ron Reagan, I'm the happiest man in the world.” He never spoke of fear. “We always felt God was watching whatever he did,” Bobbie Dove says. The mysterious Matix wanted pec- ple to believe that he also was God- fearing, but that is harder to believe. The summer after his wife and a co- orker were knifed to death at an Ohio jorked, Matix and his baby daughter’ ‘noved to South Florida, where he joined his friend Piatt's lawn-care busi- “ness. The two had been buddies since serving in the military a decade before. =Six months after Matix’ 's arrival, Platt reported to the police that his wife, - 3- * tother of his three children, had taken her jife with a shotgun. The death was ruled a Suicide. The gruesome coincidence of their wives' deaths caught no one’s atten- tion, and the two seemingly respect- able widowers fed their apparently placid, suburban lives undisturbed. Platt remarried. Matix became a pa- rishionet at Miami's Riverside Baptist Church and not long atter his arriva! found the woman he would marry— Crristy, a 29-year-old pnone company employee, whom he met at an inter- church volleyball game and wooed on a church canoe trip. Christy didn't know Much about men. Her social life centered around church activities—children’s choir, Sunday schoo! and nursery. “He seemed on the ievel,” she recalls now. “His concern seemed to be for Melissa andcreatinga Stabie home and family.” Within weeks of their meeting, the deeply religious Christy was pregnant. Formented by guill, she prayed. “If there is some reason for me to get pregnant the first time | wentto bed, there must be some reason You want this child here.” At Matix’s urging. she married him in May 1985, but within two weeks Matix had changed into a monster of foul and angry moods. Christy assumed that the problem was money: The lawn business with Piatt had dissolved. Ma- tix never lef on that he had received about $350,000 in insurance following his first wife's murder. He kept pressur- ing Christy to leave, and by the end of July she moved back in with her par- ents and filed for divorce. On Dec. 27 she gave birth to their son. Matix re- fused even to see the child, turning Christy and the baby away from his door this past Easter Sunday. “You're a bad omen!” he shouted at her. Eleven days later he was dead. What was really going on in Matix's life was beyond Christy's direst imagin- ing. Last Oct: 16 two armed robbers wearing ski masks attacked a Wells Fargo armored truck parked ata South Miami supermarket. They fired a shot- gun and a semiautomatic weapon, se- verely wounding a guard, but fled with- out any money. On Nov. & two banks Age -arere tobbed inthe same area: On dan.” 10, as a Brink's guard was opening the back of his truck, two ski-masked gun- . men approached him. Without warning, one shot him in the back with a shot-