Paris Matthews (6 of Hearts, Florida)

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Speaker 1 Our card this week is Paris Matthews, the six of hearts from Florida. In the spring of 2013, Paris Matthews was enjoying an evening at home when he heard a a knock at the door.

Speaker 1 Someone on the other side of the door identified themselves by a name, but Paris knew it was impossible for it to be that person.

Speaker 1 Seconds later, before he could piece together why someone was lying, Paris was shot and the years-long search for his killer began.

Speaker 1 Investigators have had to weed through rumors, finger pointing, strange text messages, and a code is hit that wasn't what it seemed.

Speaker 1 But it's going to take one of you out there there to solve this mystery.

Speaker 1 I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck.

Speaker 1 It was around midnight in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, when Paris Matthews and his roommate, who we'll refer to as E, were hanging out in their apartment playing modern warfare.

Speaker 1 Their attention was pulled away from their game when they heard a knock at the door.

Speaker 1 Paris called out asking who it was, and the person outside responded by saying Jay, a pseudonym that we're also using at the request of law enforcement. But that didn't make sense to Paris or E

Speaker 1 because Jay used to be E's roommate at that very same apartment. And E and Paris knew that the reason he still wasn't living there was that in April of 2013, Jay had been incarcerated.

Speaker 1 So who knows them well enough to know that Jay once lived there, but not well enough to know that he'd been locked up? And why are they lying about being him at all?

Speaker 1 E watched as Paris went to the door, opened it, and that is when all hell broke loose.

Speaker 3 As soon as he started to open the door, two men rushed in. Parrish tried to stop them by, you know, pushing and fighting back.

Speaker 3 Paris was pushed back onto that couch, which is right there in the doorway, and a gunshot was heard. E is sitting there watching this whole thing and

Speaker 3 is kind of frozen, but it's also happening so fast he hasn't fully developed time to react. As soon as the gunshot goes off, the two men run out of the house.

Speaker 3 Paris is still alive, still trying to fight to stop these guys, and hangs on to them as they run out the door.

Speaker 3 And he is drug holding on to them outside the threshold of the door, where then he lets go.

Speaker 1 That's investigator Eric Swain of the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office.

Speaker 1 And he said that when EMS and fire department personnel arrived at the apartment on Woodham Avenue, they found Paris still lying at the threshold of the apartment.

Speaker 1 E was putting pressure on a gunshot wound and Paris's girlfriend, who'd been in another room when the shooting happened, was crouched over him trying to get him to respond.

Speaker 1 The 33-year-old was rushed off to Fort Walton Beach Medical Center, but a little after 12.30 in the morning on April 29th, he was pronounced dead.

Speaker 1 The ME report says that Paris was shot in the abdomen, but there's at least one news report stating that his family was told the bullet then traveled to his heart.

Speaker 1 Now, based on the statement E initially gave to detectives, he wasn't able to give a great description of the two assailants. He said that both strangers appeared to be men and wore hoodies and masks.

Speaker 3 From what it was described, I don't think it was like a full ski mask. I think it just covered the nose.
E says that he could see their skin around their eyes and then their hands.

Speaker 3 One of them was a black male. The other was either a lighter skin or a white male.

Speaker 3 The black male did have the firearm.

Speaker 1 That firearm he described as black in color. And E told investigators that this guy said something when he shoved his way in.
You know what it is.

Speaker 1 He said he didn't recognize the voice, but all of this certainly makes it seem like the two men knew Paris and E in some way. They seemed to know the name Jay, might get them to open the door.

Speaker 1 And if they knew that, it's also possible that they knew both E and Paris were involved with narcotics, which points to a motive.

Speaker 1 Investigator Swain remembers that rips, as he calls them, were very vogue in that time in 2013.

Speaker 3 Essentially, you would go to their house to either buy narcotics or you would just show up and then you would take what they have. We know that that was a popular thing.

Speaker 3 My belief is it was something along those lines was

Speaker 3 planning to occur. However, they didn't intend on Paris fighting back.
I don't believe that

Speaker 3 they came there to shoot anybody.

Speaker 1 So if that's what this was, a rip. When the gun did go off, it probably was a surprise.
And the two men ran before they could take anything.

Speaker 1 Investigators found a little over $1,000 worth of cash and a small amount of marijuana split between Paris's wallet and a lockbox in his closet.

Speaker 1 E's money and some drugs were also untouched, though police didn't know that at the time because he hid the drugs in his truck before they arrived on scene.

Speaker 1 But even though this might look like a rip, The report from that night says explicitly that police didn't know the motive.

Speaker 1 Police did bring in a canine unit, and while canine Draco did pick up a trail on the suspects, it ended at an intersection just behind the building, which led investigators to conclude that it was likely the masked men had escaped in a car, but there were no cameras or witnesses to say what kind of vehicle.

Speaker 1 So it was really a dead end. And there weren't any traces of evidence from the assailants inside the apartment either.

Speaker 3 So no physical evidence left behind that, you know, you can see from the neck and eye.

Speaker 1 Investigators didn't even find any shell casings, which makes investigator Swain think it's likely Paris was shot with a revolver.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so when you fire a revolver, a cartridge, the casing stays inside the gun.

Speaker 3 It just stays in the cylinder and moves, whereas a semi-automatic, when you fire it, the slide on the top of the gun moves back, the casing is ejected, and a new one goes into the chamber.

Speaker 1 The bullet itself was recovered from Paris's body, but without the casing, it wasn't possible to specifically identify the caliber, although officers did keep it for potential future comparisons.

Speaker 1 Investigators also swabbed the front door for DNA and collected things like a cigarette butt found outside, Paris's clothes, including a lanyard that he'd been wearing, and cell phones from the apartment.

Speaker 1 Paris had left his own phone at his mother's earlier that evening, so that had to be retrieved from there.

Speaker 1 But speaking of Paris's mother, detectives learned that trip to her house was pretty eventful.

Speaker 1 Both Paris's girlfriend and E told investigators that just hours before he was shot, Paris broke up an argument near his mom's place, which was just a couple of miles away from his apartment.

Speaker 1 Paris's girlfriend told investigators that she and Paris had gone over there sometime before 10 p.m.

Speaker 1 And while they were there, two men had gotten into a verbal disagreement out front

Speaker 3 paris went out said hey you know you need to get in your truck and leave told the other guy hey you need to calm down when the guy he told hey you need to calm down he then directed his aggression towards paris and he and paris got in a physical altercation

Speaker 1 The two men, one black man and one white man, were identified quickly. They were locals, one of which Paris knew.

Speaker 1 And when police located them, one of the two men had a black hoodie and a nine millimeter gun in his car. On the surface, all very promising for police.

Speaker 1 But as they dug deeper, things sort of fell apart.

Speaker 1 The guy with the hoodie and the gun had a solid alibi. He was actually with one of Paris's sisters, Shamika.

Speaker 1 In fact, he was the one that drove her to the hospital when she got the call about Paris being shot. which Shamika herself confirmed.

Speaker 1 Investigator Swain also told us that when investigators compared the gun from the man's car to the bullet extracted from Paris, it was clear to them that it was not the murder weapon.

Speaker 1 The other guy from the incident said that after the argument, he stayed home and drank, passing out until the morning. So, not a solid alibi, but also no real solid motive either.

Speaker 1 I mean, overall, both of these guys seem to have beef with each other, not Paris. But as that lead quickly fizzled, another one bubbled to the surface just a few days after the murder.

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Speaker 1 Paris's girlfriend floated a theory to investigators that Paris's shooting might have been retaliation for an incident that occurred when Paris had been in prison serving time for selling cocaine.

Speaker 1 Now, the one note in the case file about this tip doesn't describe what that incident was or even when it took place, but it does say who it involved, a name that is officially off the record, so we're going to call him Q.

Speaker 1 We've confirmed that Q has been incarcerated. He has a long list of criminal charges ranging from narcotics to weapon violations to burglary and theft.

Speaker 1 Now, our team wasn't able to find records old enough that confirmed if Q and Paris served time together.

Speaker 1 And investigator Swain said that the state records he reviewed didn't show that they had been incarcerated together.

Speaker 1 But either way, it wasn't the only thing Paris's girlfriend wanted to share with Sheriff's deputies.

Speaker 1 She also told investigators that a person she knew told her that they saw Q, another guy, and a woman in a car behind Paris's building before the shooting occurred.

Speaker 1 And after the shooting, these three people and the car were gone.

Speaker 1 Investigators went to the person who supposedly told this to Paris's girlfriend, and sure enough, that source corroborated her story, or well, their story that they told Paris' girlfriend that she told investigators.

Speaker 1 You get it.

Speaker 1 And actually, this source was able to add more details. Her story from that evening is a little convoluted, but it's worth describing.

Speaker 1 She says that in the hours leading up to the murder, she had called a man to buy drugs. We're going to use a pseudonym for him too.
Investigator Swain asked us to call him Love.

Speaker 1 So this woman said she'd gone to meet Love in his car sometime after 9.30 that evening on the street behind Paris's apartment building, a spot pretty close to where the canines had lost the suspect trail.

Speaker 1 When she got to the car, she saw Love, who is black, sitting in his car along with Q, who is white. And they were accompanied by a woman that she didn't know.

Speaker 1 Now, one thing to point out is that this sighting of Love and Q and this car happens well before Paris was shot around midnight. But that didn't mean it wasn't still significant.

Speaker 1 Investigators wanted to talk to Q and Love, and they were able to determine that the car seen that night belonged to Love, and eventually they stopped it on the road and pulled him over.

Speaker 1 Now, there were two other passengers with Love at that time, but neither of them were Q.

Speaker 1 This is where it gets interesting, though. The same canine unit used to search Paris's neighborhood was also called to the scene and alerted positively to Love's car.

Speaker 1 Now, there's no clear documentation if this hit was for narcotics or what exactly, but whatever this hit was gave police the ability to tow the car and get a search warrant for the vehicle and its contents.

Speaker 1 And they were able to bring Love into the police station for questioning, which he agreed to voluntarily. But it was a quick chap.
Love said that he had an alibi for Paris's murder.

Speaker 1 He had to be at work at 11 p.m. that night, a full hour before Paris was shot.
So he was let go. And sure enough, investigators were able to confirm that Love clocked in at around 11.30 p.m.

Speaker 1 on April 28th and then clocked out the next morning at around 9.15 a.m. I mean, not only that, but his company used biometric data for this.

Speaker 1 Love had to use his thumbprint to confirm that he was on site. So Love was almost in the clear.
Almost.

Speaker 1 You see, while they had been finding things that seemed to rule him out, that search of his car was underway, and they found something that very much kept him square on their radar.

Speaker 1 One of Love's two passengers had left her cell phone in the car when she got out, and that became part of the evidence that police were able to search.

Speaker 1 Now, that phone belonged to a woman whose name is, again, off the record. So we'll be referring to her as Linda.
She had been riding in the car with her boyfriend while Love drove.

Speaker 1 And when police accessed her phone, they found some very suspicious text messages. These texts were between Linda and her boyfriend, Thomas, also a pseudonym.

Speaker 1 Now, what we got is just a list of messages. It doesn't say who sent what or if this is the complete conversation.
Much of it is written in shorthand, so it is confusing.

Speaker 1 But there's enough there to make anyone suspicious. And beyond the contents of the texts, when one of the exchanges began is important.

Speaker 1 30 minutes after Paris was shot. One of the texts says, I'm scared.
Another described being worried about going to jail. The words shoot and rob are in there too.

Speaker 1 And maybe not being in the car with them and perhaps most notably, I was with Q. And a reference in them to White Boy, which is a nickname some people used for Q.

Speaker 1 And listen, I know that sounds confusing, but I'm telling you, these things are hard to interpret. There is just enough there to make investigators' spidey senses tingle.

Speaker 1 Now, neither Thomas nor Linda had been arrested the day that Love's car was towed, so police didn't get a chance to ask them about these texts.

Speaker 1 But both of them were arrested later in a separate incident on drug-related charges. That's when investigators took the opportunity to ask them about the messages.

Speaker 1 Now, Thomas denied any knowledge of the text messages and said that he wasn't involved in Paris's murder.

Speaker 1 Linda tried to act like the texts weren't on her phone, and when she was assured they were, she just refused to talk about them.

Speaker 1 Ultimately, law enforcement was never able to determine anything conclusive about Thomas and Linda's involvement, not even when a cellmate of Linda's came forward.

Speaker 1 This person claimed that she was told that these texts did in fact revolve around Paris and that the texts specifically referred to the fact that Thomas had given a gun to Q that day.

Speaker 1 Now, a gun had been found at Thomas and Linda's shared residence when they were arrested on those drug-related charges, but from the jump, it didn't seem like this was going to be the gun they were looking for.

Speaker 1 E, Paris' roommate, had told law enforcement the gun that he saw was black, but the gun taken from Thomas's home was described as silver in investigative records.

Speaker 1 Now, I know that was sent away for ballistics comparison, but the records that we've been given to review aren't clear about the results.

Speaker 1 All we know is that neither Thomas nor Linda have ever been arrested or charged in relation to Paris's murder.

Speaker 1 But just because that wasn't the gun doesn't mean Thomas and Linda weren't still suspicious.

Speaker 1 And their connection to love and their mention of White Boy and Q in the text messages made police feel like even if they weren't hitting a home run, they were in the right ballpark.

Speaker 1 They just needed to find Q.

Speaker 1 This whole time, Q had been pretty elusive. But when he got arrested on some outstanding felony warrants after the murder, they were finally able to get in front of him.
Though, that wasn't much help.

Speaker 1 Q just denied having anything to do with Paris's murder and called for an attorney, ending the conversation, which left investigators stuck.

Speaker 1 But while Q wouldn't talk, One thing deputies weren't short on was other people who would.

Speaker 1 Throughout the rest of 2013 and into 2014, rumors continued to make their way to investigators. And not all of the rumors were about Q and love.

Speaker 1 And as more names came in to investigators, so did the results from evidence testing. Over the years, investigators were able to get DNA from various items that they sent out.

Speaker 1 That cigarette butt, a swab from the doorknob, Paris's clothes, and even his lanyard produced results.

Speaker 1 Though unfortunately, these were all either mixtures or partial profiles, none that were good enough for COTIS.

Speaker 1 But there was one additional sample, one that came from under Paris's fingernails.

Speaker 1 Documents from the case file note that the sample appears to be a mixture consistent with two donors, with at least one of them being male.

Speaker 1 And with these results, over time, investigators were able to confirm that a number of these men did not match the DNA they had.

Speaker 1 This included guys like Love and Thomas, E, the roommate, and one of the men whose argument Paris broke up. And most notably, Q was not a match either.

Speaker 1 Although, this is a tricky sort of exclusion, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, by E's account, Paris only touched and interacted with one of the men who showed up at the apartment, the man who eventually ended up shooting him.

Speaker 1 That still left the second man who may not have left any DNA behind. And to that end, Q only fit the description of that second man, not the one who actually shot Paris.

Speaker 1 But if sheriff's deputies were able to figure out who did match that profile, it seemed reasonable that they could sort out who the second person was.

Speaker 1 So that DNA profile from under Paris's fingernails was entered into CODIS,

Speaker 1 but no matches came back. So investigators waited and waited.

Speaker 1 And then in September of 2016, they got a hit.

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Speaker 1 The CODIS hit was for a man named Matthew, and that hit gave investigators hope that they were close to finally solving Paris's case.

Speaker 3 They can see the finish line. It's an obtainable goal.
It's right there in front of them.

Speaker 1 But as investigator Swain explained, there was a problem when detectives looked more closely at Matthew.

Speaker 3 During their research, they found that he was incarcerated at the time the homicide occurred.

Speaker 1 Matthew had been in a Florida prison since 2009, years before the murder. And he still wasn't due for release until 2025.

Speaker 1 Investigators even went so far as to make sure he wasn't furloughed or anything like that during the time of the murder. and he wasn't.
Essentially, this hit was some kind of false positive.

Speaker 3 It was just a mirage, you know,

Speaker 3 now they can't see the finish line, but they're continuing to still run the race.

Speaker 1 How this happened isn't totally clear. Could the DNA from the crime scene have been left by a relative of Matthew?

Speaker 1 In the case file, it appears at first that that idea was ruled out, but then later investigators revisited that as a possibility and started looking into Matthew's family.

Speaker 1 But there's nothing in the file to confirm that anything came of that.

Speaker 1 So this didn't leave investigators much to go on beyond rumors. And there were more that popped up as the years went on.

Speaker 1 One that investigators heard was that Paris was killed because of some beef he had with a California drug supplier. I mean, it wasn't totally out of the question.

Speaker 1 A couple of local Fort Walton dealers appeared to get their weed from California.

Speaker 1 Even Paris' girlfriend told investigators of a possible issue with a California source, but she also told them that things had been smoothed over.

Speaker 1 Investigators looked into this, but it didn't lead to an arrest in Paris's case. And looking at it today, Investigator Swain doesn't think that theory makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 3 To have somebody come from California to Florida to kill somebody over,

Speaker 3 you know, honestly, it wasn't even a ton of weed or money

Speaker 3 would highly be unlikely for them to have, for them to pay somebody. We honestly don't think that that, it would be worth it to them for that.

Speaker 1 The second one that continued to come up was that Paris's death had stemmed from a variation of the original drug tip that came in before.

Speaker 1 One source told investigators that E had allegedly bought some drugs earlier on the evening of Paris's murder. Now we'll refer to the man who sold the drugs by the pseudonym G.

Speaker 1 What this informant said was that G sold E drugs and then brought his cousin and another man to steal them back. But things went south and a struggle ensued.

Speaker 1 The dipster said that he knew all of this because he'd been paid $300 to drive one of these guys to Mississippi to evade law enforcement, which investigator Swain points out might be the reason why all the DNA testing they did in the Fort Walton area didn't pan out.

Speaker 3 It's definitely something that's possible. And maybe that's why all the people that we've, local people that we've been able to get samples from, they haven't matched.

Speaker 3 It's because maybe our shooter or maybe the people that are involved are not from here.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, follow-ups by law enforcement on this lead showed that G's cousin was eventually shot and killed in Mississippi.

Speaker 1 So the Mississippi angle lined up, but any chance to interview the cousin was gone. And according to investigator Swain, G was never interviewed about any of this.

Speaker 1 Though at some point he was ruled out as a contributor to the DNA that they had on file.

Speaker 1 So that leaves just the third rumor that they they had to look into.

Speaker 1 That Paris was killed in a case of mistaken identity, which also had a certain level of credibility to it, given an incident E, the roommate, described happening just days before Paris's murder.

Speaker 3 Prior to his homicide, there was an incident where he was in a neighborhood. The neighborhood is about halfway in between his mom's house and his house.
A car pulls up. There's men in the car.
And

Speaker 3 they're said to one of them at least has a gun. They see him, and then one of them is like, no, that's not him.

Speaker 3 That's not the right guy. And they leave.

Speaker 1 Other people besides E mentioned this to investigators too. In at least one version, someone pointed an AK-47 at Paris.
In another, all four men in the car pointed guns at him.

Speaker 1 In all the tellings, Paris walked away unharmed when the men realized that they had the wrong guy.

Speaker 3 There was another gentleman in the area that was robbing people of their drugs.

Speaker 1 This guy's name was similar, Parrish, with an H. Investigators were actually able to track him down, and he corroborated what investigators had heard.

Speaker 1 He told them that at one point those people did find and shoot at him. Obviously, he survived.
And if they ended up finding the right guy, no one believes that they would make the same mistake twice.

Speaker 1 Also, remember, the people went to Paris's apartment. That didn't feel like a mistake.

Speaker 1 Despite all the tips over the years, there was never enough new information for investigators to build a proper case.

Speaker 1 So when investigator Eric Swain came on the scene in November of 2022 and began reviewing the work of about half a dozen investigators who'd come and gone before him, he had his work cut out for him.

Speaker 1 But after looking at everything,

Speaker 1 there was just one name that kept coming up again and again and again, Q.

Speaker 1 And not even just in the old files. Even while he was working this case in December 2023, new tips naming him were coming in.

Speaker 1 An unnamed tipster told investigator Swain that shortly after Paris's murder, she was in a sexual relationship with someone she called white boy Q.

Speaker 1 And while she wasn't a witness to the murder or had any direct details, she said that Q and a black man were hiding out around that time.

Speaker 1 Now, luckily for investigator Swain, Q was still getting into trouble. So Swain had his own opportunity to talk to him when he was arrested.

Speaker 1 And this was for something totally unrelated to Paris's murder, by the way.

Speaker 3 I went up there to talk with him, see if he had information on Paris Matthews that he was willing to provide us.

Speaker 3 He came in, sat down, read a Mesmiranda, writes, and and as soon as I made the comment, hey, I'm here to talk to you about Paris Matthews, he said, talk to my attorney.

Speaker 1 No one has ever been arrested in connection with Paris Matthews murder. The CODIS profile is one of the biggest question marks left to investigator Swain.

Speaker 1 He's hoping that a hit could identify a new suspect. or that over time, the Okaloosa department could try to triangulate whose DNA it is they have on file.

Speaker 3 I know that other agencies have had success identifying suspects. They're genealogical.
So I would love to see that, you know, that that be a successful tool for us.

Speaker 1 While new approaches like investigative genetic genealogy might help solve this case one day, there's no guarantee.

Speaker 1 But Investigator Swain believes that there could be a simpler solution to all of this.

Speaker 3 You know, somebody knows what happened and either they're going to come forward or they're going to tell somebody and that person's going to come forward.

Speaker 1 Paris Matthews left behind two children and his mother died never knowing who murdered her son.

Speaker 1 We briefly spoke to one of Paris' sisters, Shamika, and she and her sister Tamika have spoken out before about their brother's murder.

Speaker 1 She felt like her brother was turning his life around at the time of his death, but whoever took his life never gave him the chance.

Speaker 1 And now all that's left is to try and get his family some kind of justice. Investigator Swain seems up to that challenge and he's passionate about solving this case.

Speaker 3 I didn't know Paris. I didn't work here at the time.

Speaker 3 But at the end of the day, he's somebody's brother, he's somebody's son

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 he deserves the justice. So hopefully I can be the one to give that to him.

Speaker 1 If you have any information about the murder of Paris Matthews in April 2013 in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, please contact the Opaloosa County Sheriff's Office at 850-651-7400.

Speaker 1 Or you can contact the Emerald Coast Crime Stoppers at 850-863 TIPS. You can also submit a tip anonymously on their website, emeraldcoastcrimestoppers.com.

Speaker 1 The deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.

Speaker 1 I think Chuck would approve.

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