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This man's killer got away with murder, family says

Donna Garbett-Proffitt is certain she knows who murdered her father 40 years ago in his Miami, Fla. home - and she's convinced that person got away with it.

"He was such a wonderful guy. He was charismatic; he was awesome; he was good looking; he had presence. He had a big future planned," she told 48 Hours' Crimesider about her father, Donald Garbett, a 46-year-old successful businessman.

"I never got any closure. I want my story told."

August 31, 1974

In the early hours of August 31, 1974, Miami homicide detective Jimmy Beall responded to a call about a home break-in in which someone was reported shot.

"It was a nice house on one of the waterways in North Miami," Beall told Crimesider. "There was a white male in the bedroom, shot in the chest - Don Garbett. And there was a lady there that was hysterical - Sylvia Garbett."

Inside the Don Garbett murder investigation
Inside the Don Garbett murder investigation

Sylvia, who was 34 at the time, told Beall and Ina Shepard, another detective who responded to the scene, that she and Don were sleeping when two men broke into their home and entered their bedroom. They held the couple at gunpoint, she said, and one of the intruders took her into another room and tried to rape her, telling her, "If you're a good little girl, your husband will be okay."

Sylvia told the detectives she screamed. Then, she said, she heard a gunshot in the other room.

Sylvia said the killers fled soon after. When she felt safe, she says she ran to the bedroom and found Don lying on the bed, clutching a pillow. He wasn't moving. The phone lines were cut. She ran to a neighbor's house and called 911.

"That started the process," said Beall. It was the beginning of a case both he and Shepard say they will never forget.

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A sketch of one of the suspects that was drawn up based on Sylvia Garbett's description. Miami Police Department

The investigation began immediately and Beall and Shepard were in charge. Police dusted the house for fingerprints, took photos of the crime scene, interviewed neighbors and, with Sylvia's help, drew up a sketch of one of the suspects, which was widely circulated.

The case captivated the community. A successful, handsome businessman who was well known in the Miami area was dead, shot to death in his own home; his beautiful wife left distraught.

It was sensationalized in local newspapers. "His Dream House Was No Sanctuary," a Miami Herald article about the case proclaimed. A $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to an arrest and Sylvia Garbett appeared on a local TV news crime show alongside Detective Beall in an effort to solicit tips.

But months passed, and still, nothing.

It was almost a year later, Beall told Crimesider, when he received a call from an attorney that would crack the case wide open.

"He said, 'I've got a client, I think he may be in trouble.'"

On July 10, 1975, nearly 11 months after the murder, Detective Beall met with the attorney and his client, Julio Leite. Leite said that he and Sylvia had been having an affair since before Don was killed, and that one night he and Sylvia got into an argument, he called her stupid and Sylvia retorted, "Julio, don't call me stupid. Don called me stupid and I killed him. Don't call me stupid because I can do it again."

Who is Sylvia Garbett?

"She was very unassuming, you would never think that somebody like that could actually commit a murder," David Garbett, Don Garbett's nephew, told Crimesider.

David's father, Larry Garbett, was Don's only brother. Don and Larry owned a light manufacturing business together in Miami.

Prior to meeting Sylvia, Don was married for 12 years to a woman named Rose. They had three children: Jan, Donna and Allen.

"Dad was married to the business. That's why mom and dad got divorced," Jan Garbett-Loman, Don's eldest child, told Crimesider. "He spent 99 percent of his time doing work."

It was roughly four years after the divorce when Don met Sylvia - a beautiful Brazilian woman who said she was a former Playboy Bunny. The two never married, but everyone close to them was under the impression that they were legally wed. Sylvia went by Don's last name.

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Donna Garbett and her father, Don Garbett in an undated photo. Personal Photo

"I loved her... I literally loved her," said Donna Garbett-Proffitt, Don's youngest daughter, who was 20 at the time of the murder.

"Sylvia was somebody who was - at least outwardly - a very kind and gentle woman. ... [There was] nothing about her that appeared to be aggressive," said David Garbett.

David, who was 16 at the time of the murder, remembers getting a phone call from Sylvia at his dad's house that night. She said something terrible happened and they needed to come right over.

When David and his father got there, police and Sylvia described to them what had happened.

"In retrospect, [Sylvia] was eerily calm for somebody who had gone through that kind of experience," David said.

However, Sylvia's behavior at the crime scene didn't initially strike Detectives Beall and Shepard as odd.

"She was so innocent-acting," Shepard recalled to Crimesider. "In the beginning, we never suspected her. We never had a reason to."

"She conned me and I'm not easily conned."

But when Julio Leite came to authorities almost a year later, Beall and Shepard started taking a closer look at her.

Leite told police that he had a hunch for months that Sylvia may have been involved with Don's murder. He was also worried that she could have been plotting to frame him for the crime. The police sketch depicting one of the suspects bore a remarkably close resemblance to Leite.

48 Hours' Crimesider obtained the Miami Police Department's file on the Garbett murder, which includes Julio Leite's statement to police and a polygraph test he took, and passed. Leite was cleared by police of any involvement in Don's death.

"I was shocked. I was at a complete loss," Leite told police of Sylvia's alleged confession. "I said, 'My Lord God, how can you do that? I can't believe you did that.' She said, yes, 'I was tired.' He called me stuped [sic] all the time.'"

According to the transcript of Leite's interview with police, he said it scared him that Sylvia confessed to killing Don, but it also crossed his mind that she could have been lying.

"She told me, but this is not enough for me to know she did it," he told police. "I am just saying what she told me. I didn't see anything. I don't know anything."

So Beall outfitted Leite with a wire, and on July 15, 1975, sent him to meet Sylvia. His task - get her to confess to Don's murder on tape.

Police records indicate that when Leite asked Sylvia why she previously told him she killed Don, she responded, "Sometimes we say stupid things that come back to us."

She did not admit to the killing.

Plan B

The detectives decided to bring Sylvia in for a polygraph, and on July 31, 1975, exactly 11 months after the murder, she sat down with polygraph examiner George Slattery.

Just before hooking Sylvia up to the machine, Slattery went through his usual spiel.

"He basically told her that she cannot beat this machine. He's good at what he does, he knows how it's gonna work and if she has anything she wants to tell him, she should tell him now," Beall said.

It was then, according to Beall, that Sylvia relented.

"OK. I'll tell you. I killed Don."

Beall told Crimesider he almost fell out of his chair.

According to police documents, Sylvia then went on to describe in detail what happened the night Don was murdered.

In a typed, signed statement to police, Sylvia admitted that she and Don had been having marital difficulties and had been unable to have sex because Don was impotent. Sylvia allegedly stated that on the night of Don's murder, they got into an argument over that issue just before going to bed.

"He kept commenting, 'You're no good, you're a tramp and that's why I didn't marry you, and you're no good,'" Sylvia allegedly told police. "And, he said a few things like, you are uneducated and my brother was right, my mother was right."

Sylvia told police that Don fell asleep after the argument, but she couldn't let it go. She said she got up out of bed and went to the nightstand where Don kept a gun.

"I got the gun and I shot him. ...It was a big bang. It was a terrible thing," Sylvia said, according to the police documents.

She told police she tried to fire another shot but the bullet got stuck. Then, she said, she panicked and hid the gun inside a fireplace in their home, but days later, went back, retrieved it and threw it in a canal.

Sylvia allegedly told police she acted alone and she agreed to lead authorities to the murder weapon.

"We took her to where she said she threw the gun," said Beall. "She showed us the path she took. She sat down on a little bench and picked up a coconut and threw it about 10 feet out into the canal. We had our divers standing by in the water. She said, 'That's where I threw it.' The diver went down and when he came back up, he said, 'I got it.'"

A bullet was stuck in the chamber just as she had described, said Beall.

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Detective Jimmy Beall holding the alleged murder weapon which was recovered from the canal. Miami Police Department

Everything was falling into place. Authorities had a confession and the murder weapon. Sylvia was arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

Case closed?

"An Open-And-Shut Case"

Sylvia Garbett went on trial in November of 1975 for first-degree murder in the death of Don Garbett.

The prosecutors on the case, George Yoss and Hank Adorno, were confident that it was going to be an easy win, Beall told Crimesider. So much so, Beall said, they declined to accept a deal with the defense for a conviction of second-degree murder.

The trial took five days and the jury heard roughly six hours of testimony, said Beall. The defense called 12 witnesses, including Julio Leite; George Slattery; and detectives Jimmy Beall and Ina Shepard.

Everything was going as planned -- until Sylvia was called to testify.

According to Beall, Sylvia changed her story on the stand. She told the court that she received a phone call the night before she went in for the polygraph test from an unidentified man who threatened her; if she didn't take responsibility for killing Don, he would harm her son.

Her testimony must have had an impact on the jury, Beall said, because Sylvia was acquitted.

"I blanked out when they found her not guilty," Donna Garbett-Proffitt, who was 20 at the time of her father's death and is now 60, told Crimesider. "I thought no, that's not correct. I looked at the judge and I screamed, 'No, what are you doing? What are you talking about? She's guilty. She confessed.'"

Beall, now 71, says it was this case that made him request to leave the homicide unit.

"There was nobody else in my opinion," said Beall. "There was no doubt in my mind that she would be found guilty. There was no way to not find her guilty. There was nothing that didn't fit."

"It was definitely one that had an effect," the former detective added. "You can't have that much and not win."

Shepard, now 69, said that it was the biggest disappointment in the more than 25 years she worked as a police officer. She retired in 1991.

"It was a joke. It was such an open-and-shut case," she said. "At the trial, after they found her not guilty, my partner [Jimmy Beall] threw his badge and said, 'I give up.'"

"[The jury] knew she did it. I overheard one of the jurors tell Sylvia, 'Be a good girl, don't do anything bad again,'" Shepard continued. "The justice system sucks."

Double Jeopardy

Despite authorities being sure that they had the person who was responsible for the crime, after the acquittal, there was nothing else that could be done. Sylvia was innocent in the eyes of the court and she was free.

"The guilty person had been prosecuted. The case was closed," said Beall. "It just is what it is."

Detective Andy Arostegui, who currently heads up the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Unit, agrees that there's nothing left to be done. The concept of double jeopardy, which is outlined in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, prevents someone from being prosecuted twice for the same crime by the same jurisdiction.

"Even if she says right now, 'I did it' - that's the way it goes," Arostegui told Crimesider.

But how can that be? Why can a conviction be appealed and not an acquittal?

Robin Barton, a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, says the protection against double jeopardy stems from a guiding principal in our criminal justice system: "It's better to have 10 guilty men walk free than to have one innocent person to go jail."

Barton says that the double jeopardy clause is intended to prevent prosecutors from "jury shopping" and retrying a case until they get the guilty verdict they want.

"It forces prosecutors to put their best case forward in the initial trial because that's the only shot they get. And that's perfectly reasonable. I don't think many people would object to that," said Barton.

But while there are benefits to the double jeopardy provision, there are problems with it, too, Barton acknowledged.

"For example, a man is charged with stabbing a woman to death. There's only circumstantial evidence. No murder weapon. The case goes to trial and the guy is acquitted. Later on, police find the murder weapon. It has fingerprints, the DNA of the defendant and blood that can be tied to the victim. What can they do? Nothing," Barton said. "That's a problem."

Barton told Crimesider she believes the double jeopardy clause in the U.S. is too rigid and should be refined.

"I wouldn't advocate for getting rid of it because... there are lots of overzealous prosecutors - they would happily re-file charges many times," said Barton. "We do need the protection, but there are ways to structure it so that it's a little more flexible and ensure that justice is ultimately done."

Australia and Great Britain have revised their laws within the last decade to allow courts to toss out an acquittal and retry a defendant in cases of serious crimes in which "new and compelling" evidence is uncovered. The caveat, said Barton, is the prosecutor then gets only one more shot at a retrial.

It's unclear whether a similar change to the United States' double jeopardy provision would have changed the outcome in Don Garbett's murder case. Despite Sylvia's acquittal, prosecutors were convinced they had the woman responsible for the crime. There was no incentive to keep the case open and look for new and compelling evidence because double jeopardy prevented her from being retried.

No matter what.

The only option the Garbett family had was to file a civil lawsuit, something Jan, Don's eldest child, told Crimesider they weren't aware of at the time.

"Nobody told us. Nobody directed us. I was in my early 20s. My sister and brother were younger. We had no real direction as to what could be done," she said.

Where Is Sylvia Now?

"Even knowing [Sylvia] is alive, is horrifying," said Don's nephew, David.

"I think that what [Sylvia] did, with getting away with it, is horrible. Even after 40 years. She caused a lot of misery to a lot of people," he said.

Just months after Don's murder and prior to her arrest, Sylvia married a man named Jerzy Wajtczak. It is unclear whether they are still married, but she currently goes by the last name de Souza. Now 74, she is living in a mobile home park in Hallandale, Fla.

Sylvia maintained her innocence in the death of Don Garbett when reached by 48 Hours' Crimesider via telephone.

"I did not kill my husband. I loved him. I suffer till this day," she said.

"I think the person that did it, is dead," she continued.

When asked why she confessed to the murder to police, she said that she felt guilty.

"[The men who broke in that night] told me, 'don't make any noise.' If I didn't make any noise, he wouldn't have been killed. That's why I said I killed him. I felt guilty that I screamed."

She said people can believe whatever they want to believe about who killed Don Garbett, adding that they're a "bunch of liars" and "they don't know the truth."

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