my first read of this thread. I am pissed and think the two scum deserve the Arkansas treatment followed up by the chum, cut, shark treatment. :mad:

Rich,
What makes you think that he'd even have to do any time at all under the "new enlightened system"? - Jeff

:mad:A sad sad story. Our belated prayers to the families of Joe Cool!

As for those two...tie some bloody bait around thier waists and use them for trolling in shark infested waters

Joe Cool victims possibly alive when dumped overboard
Posted on Tue, Sep. 16, 2008
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By LUISA YANEZ
[email protected]

Two of the victims of the mayhem aboard the Joe Cool a year ago were wounded and bleeding but still alive when they were dumped overboard in the Florida Straits.

The horrific revelations of the final minutes of boat captain Jake Branam, 27, and his wife, Kelley, 30, of Miami Beach came Tuesday during the second day of testimony in the murder trial of Guillermo Zarabozo, one of two men accused in the deaths of the Branams and two other crew members of the Joe Cool, a sport fishing vessel.

Under questioning by federal prosecutors, FBI Special Agent David Nuñez said Zarabozo told him a ''hard-to-believe'' story about how the Joe Cool, on a charter to Bimini, was hijacked by gunmen who killed all aboard except Zarabozo, 20, of Hialeah and his alleged accomplice, Kirby Archer, 36, of Arkansas.

Archer has already pleaded guilty, and is awaiting sentencing.

Zarabozo said the hijackers then ordered him at gunpoint to dispose of the bodies of the Branams and crew members Scott Gamble, 35, and Samuel Kairy, 27. The victims' bodies were never recovered. Zarabozo said he followed the orders out of fear of his own life.

''Mr. Zarabozo told me the captain was still alive when he threw him overboard,'' Nuñez said, causing some jurors to shift in their seats in a Miami federal courtroom.

Asked what Zarabozo's demeanor was when he retold the end of someone's life, Nuñez said: ''He was stoic. He acted calm and cool, just like he is now,'' Nuñez said, motioning toward Zarabozo at the defense table.

Zarabozo is on trial for first-degree murder, kidnapping and robbery on the high seas. Zarabozo, who maintaines his innocence in the killings, faces life in prison if convicted. Nuñez, stationed in the Miami FBI office, testified that on Sept. 24, 2007, he had been assigned to fly out to a U.S. Coast Guard cutter in the Florida Straits to interview Zarabozo and Archer, who had been found drifting away from the ghostly Joe Cool in a life raft.

The pair first claimed the Cuban hijackers had eventually abandoned the 47-foot Joe Cool after it had run out of fuel, leaving them stranded on the boat.

Zarabozo told Nuñez the pirates told him as they jumped onto another vessel, ''You're on your own.'' Zarabozo said he believed his life had been spared because ''he was Cuban, like them,'' Nuñez said, and that he had vouched for Archer.

Archer gave similar gruesome details of a hijacking, then the killings on the Joe Cool, Nuñez said, but in his version, Kelley Branam was the one still alive when Zarabozo hurled her overboard.

Nuñez said Archer behaved oddly when he told how the mother of two had been shot by the hijackers after becoming hysterical. She had just witnessed her husband being shot on the boat's fly deck.

''Archer began nervously laughing,'' Nuñez said under cross-examination by Michael Caruso, one of Zarabozo's attorneys.

''I asked him if he thought that was funny,'' Nuñez said. ``He just kept laughing.''

Painting Archer as the bad guy is paramount to Zarabozo's defense. They claims the real killer of the Joe Cool crew was Archer, a man on the run from the law and wanting to get to Cuba, where he had been stationed at Guantánamo Naval Base during his years in the U.S. Army.

Zarabozo's public defenders have told jurors that Zarabozo was a naive and gullible teen taken in by Archer, who they described as a ``predator.''

They say Archer, wanted in Arkansas for stealing $92,000 from the Wal-Mart store where he worked, had filled Zarabozo's head with ideas that they would be working on high-security missions. They say it was his idea to charter the Joe Cool for $4,000, then hijack it. Zarabozo, they say, thought they were on a mission.

The trial is expected to last two weeks.


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latest on this pos

Jury convicts defendant in Joe Cool murder case

By Vanessa Blum | Sun-Sentinel.com
6:34 PM EDT, September 30, 2008

<i>Joe Cool</i> victims

The victims aboard the Joe Cool were (left to right): Jake Branam, his wife, Kelly Branam, crewmembers Scott Gamble and Samuel Kairy.

A South Florida man supplied a gun used in last year's quadruple murder on board the Joe Cool charter vessel, a federal jury decided Tuesday after four days of contentious deliberations.

The jury convicted Guillermo Zarabozo, 20, on four counts of causing death through the use of a firearm, but could not agree on 12 other charges, including first-degree murder.

U.S. District Judge Paul Huck declared a mistrial on those charges.

Zarabozo, a former Hialeah security guard, looked straight ahead as he heard the verdict, which carries a possible life sentence.

Related links

*
Four people killed on board the Joe Cool charter vessel Photos
*
Complete coverage of the Joe Cool boating mystery

Defense lawyers could challenge the verdict's consistency since jurors did not convict Zarabozo of actually taking part in the killings.

Attorney Anthony Natale told Huck the panel might have concluded Zarabozo was automatically guilty of the firearms charges because his gun was used in the murders.

Last week, the jury asked if he should be found guilty of those counts even if he didn't know a crime would occur. On Monday, the jury sent two notes indicating they were sharply divided over evidence in the case.

Prosecutors accused Zarabozo of murdering the Joe Cool crew with a second man, Kirby Archer, 36, as part of a botched plan to hijack the 47-foot boat and flee to Cuba.

They sought to convict Zarabozo on four counts of first-degree murder for the killings of Capt. Jake Branam, 27; his wife Kelley, 30; his half brother Scott Gamble, 36; and first mate Samuel Kairy, 27. The victims' bodies were never found.

But defense lawyers insisted Archer, an Arkansas fugitive, killed all four victims and duped Zarabozo into coming on the Joe Cool by promising him a security job in Bimini.

Zarabozo testified that he was in the boat's bathroom when Archer snatched his 9 mm Glock and opened fire on the crew.

Archer, who pleaded guilty in July to first-degree murder and conspiracy, did not testify at trial.

If Zarabozo is retried, he will face charges of conspiracy; murder; hijacking; kidnapping; robbery; and performing an act of violence at sea

Two Jurors Wish They Could Take Back �Joe Cool� Verdict
Friday, October 03, 2008

AP

MIAMI — A jury has convicted a man of four lesser charges in the hijacking and slayings of four people last year aboard a Miami charter boat. A mistrial was declared on 12 other charges, which included kidnapping and murder.

Jurors reached their verdict late Thursday against Guillermo Zarabozo. They spent three days deliberating after a weeklong trial. Zarabozo was found guilty on four charges of causing death through use of a firearm.

Prosecutors say they will meet and decide whether to retry the case on the other 12 charges.

Prosecutors said Zarabozo and 36-year-old Kirby Archer booked the "Joe Cool" for a phony trip to the Bahamas but intended to hijack it to Cuba. The boat's captain, his wife and two crew members were killed and dumped into the ocean.

"causing death with a fire arm" but not "murder"??? What mental hospital did they get the jury from?:drink:

That is just unbelievable, some bleeding hearts on the jury. They should of just sat back for a few minutes and think about, what horror/ terror was going on in that boat to the victim's by these pieces of **** and that is being nice.

Joe Cool" Auction Postponed
Murdered Captain's Family In Bitter Feud
Reporting
Gary Nelson
E-mail
MIAMI (CBS4) ― A Miami judge has postponed the auction of the Miami charter boat Joe Cool, more than a year after its Captain, his wife and two crewmembers were killed by a pair of pirates who had tried to hijack the fishing boat to Cuba.

The court-ordered sale of the 47 foot Buddy Davis vessel comes after a months long, bitter court battle among members of the murdered captain's family.

During the proceedings Wednesday in the chambers of Circuit Judge Ronald Friedman, the broker in charge of the auction requested the postponement so that the vessel could be put on display for potential buyers. All parties involved in the auction would then have to agree to the time and place.

Joe Harry Branam, Sr., grandfather of the slain captain, Jake Branam, forced the sale of the Joe Cool to recoup losses he says he suffered through co-signing on the loan that Jake got to buy the sport fishing boat for approximately $250,000.

He argued that any proceeds from the auction would be given to Jake and his wife Kelly's children.

The sport fisherman-type yacht, which has two staterooms and two bathrooms, was expected to sell at auction for a fraction of its original purchase price.

A friend of Joe Branam, Sr. told CBS4 reporter Gary Nelson the boat is essentially being sold for salvage value. Depending on the sale price, the Branam child may never see a dime of the proceeds.

"The FBI and Coast Guard tore it apart," the family friend said, explaining that "tens of thousands of dollars" worth of equipment and furnishings were removed from the boat as part of the investigation into the quadruple murder of Jake Branam, his wife Kelly and crewmembers Scott Campbell and Sammy Cary.

The forced sale of the Joe Cool was opposed by Jake Branam's uncle, Jeff Branam and other family members who claimed they had an interest in the boat after financing much of Jake Branam's charter operation.

But Joe Branam, Sr. "held the note" on the vessel, the family friend told CBS4's Nelson.

"He continued to make the payments on the boat," she said, some $2,800 a month, and had personally provided collateral for the loan from Banco Popular with a certificate of deposit.

The Branam family has been largely estranged since Joe Sr.'s divorce from his wife, Jeannette, Jake Branam's grandmother, eleven years ago.

Jeannette Branam and her son, Jeff, had battled the family's patriarch for custody of the murdered couple's two children, Taylor, who was three years old at the time of the murders, and her brother, Morgan, who was seven months.

After a court battle that raged for months, the judge awarded custody of the children to Kelly Branam's sister in Michigan.

Amid familial vitriol, Captain Jake Branam also suffered personal tragedy the year before the Joe Cool murders when his father, Joe Branam, Jr., died of a massive heart attack at the age of fifty.

In Miami federal court this year, Arkansas drifter, Kirby Archer plead guilty to piracy and murder charges in the Joe Cool hijacking. A jury found co-defendant Guillermo Zarabozo of Hialeah guilty of firearms violations, but was unable to reach verdicts on piracy and murder counts. He is to be retried.

That blows. What a tragedy and they had to tear the boat to pieces , nice.