- 2 days ago
A Miami couple’s idyllic Bahamian voyage aboard a luxury charter boat turns haunting when the craft drifts near Cuba, crew vanished. Bloodstains and a missing raft unravel a tale of dark secrets beneath the shimmering waters of paradise.
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00:00A sun-soaked escape to a secluded island shimmers with promise.
00:07You can snorkel, you can speer lobster.
00:09It's just a really great place to go on vacation.
00:12Kelly was just planning on spending time with her husband.
00:16Until the tides shift.
00:19Let's begin with the case of the missing boat crew from Miami Beach.
00:23Descending into something far more sinister.
00:26No one had ever made any distress call.
00:30The door on the back is swinging open.
00:33They started calling it the ghost ship.
00:35On the churning seas, investigators find themselves adrift in a web of lies.
00:40Finding a handcuffed key is, it's interesting.
00:44And are these two that we rescued victims?
00:46Something went wrong. There's something wrong.
00:48As identities unravel and no one is who they claim to be.
00:52He wanted to work for the CIA.
00:54We're missing something.
00:56What else is going on here?
00:59Something really, really bad had happened.
01:01At 27, Jake Branham is living the dream.
01:20Less than a year ago, he launched his pride and joy, the Joe Cool, into Miami's glistening waters.
01:26It isn't just a boat.
01:29It is a dream come true.
01:32A charter business he founded all on his own.
01:35A Miami native through and through, he's been drawn to the ocean since he was a kid.
01:40As Jake was growing up, he just developed this amazing love of the water, but he wanted to be involved in all aspects of it.
01:49And he started as a young kid, around 12 years old, working on Captain Khan's boat.
01:53First time I met Jake, he came off his bike and started talking to me about going fishing.
02:01He was 11, 12 years old.
02:03And he just wanted to go out in the worst way.
02:06This is the boat that he started out on as a kid.
02:08He fit in great with us.
02:10He had it to the bone.
02:12He loved being on the water.
02:14So, and he was great with people.
02:19Every job Jake has leads him back to the water.
02:24Boats and the ocean, it's all he's ever known.
02:27But his nights are for unwinding.
02:30One evening out, Jake meets Kelly Vanlar.
02:33A chance encounter.
02:37Sometimes, a single moment is enough to change the course of everything.
02:43Kelly was working at the bar and this striking captain comes in.
02:49Jake, I mean, he was just such a Florida fisherman kind of guy.
02:56Like, he just, he had the look.
02:59They hit it all.
03:00Kelly is a small town girl from the Midwest.
03:05Had dreams of bigger things.
03:06And Miami is really a place that you can have these bigger things and have this exciting life.
03:13She was so much fun.
03:15She had such a big heart.
03:17We bonded over our love of animals.
03:19She was always there for you.
03:21And she was, she was really special.
03:23Over the next three years, Kelly and Jake's bond deepens into a partnership built on shared dreams.
03:32In October 2006, they exchange vows, imagining a lifetime together.
03:37They got married in a gazebo by the water.
03:41It was a small little ceremony.
03:44Just a couple of friends.
03:48The storybook ending.
03:51Them building this life together and a family.
03:54Yeah, of course you wanted them to, to succeed.
04:00Jake's family had a lot of money.
04:02His grandparents were actually owners of a manufacturing and steel company.
04:06But that wasn't something that people even realized when they first met him.
04:10He probably could have gone into the family business or something.
04:15But he just wanted to be on the water.
04:17And his dream was to be a charter fishing boat captain.
04:22Joe Cool was purchased by Jake's grandfather for $220,000.
04:27It was a used boat off the coast of North Carolina.
04:30And the dream was for Jake to be able to update it, add a ton of fishing stuff to it.
04:36So they'd be able to charter it and have this business.
04:38We're in September of 2007.
04:42The Joe Cool was a relatively new company, but it started to make a name for themselves.
04:47And it was like the Rolls Royce of fishing vessels.
04:50And so, you know, when you charter a boat, you want to go out on a nice boat.
04:54And you want to go out with a knowledgeable crew.
04:57To the charter fishing crowd, Jake is the guy you can count on.
05:01Steady.
05:03Safety obsessed.
05:04And the kind of captain who can turn a long day at sea into something memorable.
05:09His half-brother, Scott Gamble, takes care of the mechanics.
05:14While Jake's best friend, Sam Carey, handles the deck crew as first mate.
05:19They were the best of friends.
05:21And that was their dream job.
05:23They just wanted to be together, to fish, and to have a business where they could make money.
05:30Jake was working like crazy.
05:32And Kelly was with a newborn.
05:35So she was working like crazy, too.
05:38Plus, her daughter was a couple years old.
05:40So a toddler, a newborn, they were both stretched thin.
05:45And Jake convinced Kelly that it would be a great time for them to take a little vacation, be together.
05:54And that's why Kelly was on the boat.
05:55But for that, she would have never been there.
06:06After dropping the kids off at Jake's parents' house, Kelly steps aboard the Joe Cool.
06:11At 4 o'clock that afternoon, Jake, Kelly, Scott, and Sam set sail for Bimini, one of the most picturesque islands in the Bahamas.
06:22They're expecting nothing more than the sun, sea, and a break from the everyday.
06:28If only it were that simple.
06:30This is the gateway to the open ocean.
06:34And dead off our bow, about straight ahead, 52 miles away, is Bimini, which is where Jake went right through here, headed that way.
06:43It's 50 miles off of Miami, so it's a quick, you know, two, three-hour trip to go see and visit another country.
06:52You can snorkel, you can sip your lobsters, you pull up to a desolate beach if you wanted to.
06:57It's just a whole lot of wide open spaces.
07:00It's a huge fishing destination.
07:02It's just a really great place to go on vacation.
07:04And lots of people do.
07:06As they cross the vast Atlantic, their minds dance with fantasies of endless sunsets and carefree indulgence.
07:15Blissfully unaware that the horizon might hold more than just a promise.
07:21Of escape.
07:22You know, it takes two or three hours to get over, depending on how fast your boat is traveling.
07:31And they don't show up.
07:32They didn't dock in Bimini, and they're also not responding to any messages.
08:10How does a boat with incredibly skilled people on it, how does it go missing out of nowhere?
08:24I found out through one of my coworkers.
09:02How does it go missing out of character for them?
09:03When the Coast Guard is notified, they begin their search between Miami and Bimini, because
09:12that's where it was supposed to be.
09:13And the Coast Guard's out looking for the Joe Cool.
09:20All of a sudden, they see this boat bobbing in the water, and they see the name Joe Cool on the back.
09:29They find the boat, and it's nowhere near Bimini.
09:38It's actually, I guess, closer to Cuba.
09:41It was 140 nautical miles south of where it was supposed to be.
09:49And as they get closer, the door on the back is swinging open.
09:53They're calling into the boat for anyone to respond.
09:57They're blowing the horn, and there's no answer.
10:03They get on the boat, and there's nobody there.
10:22Automatically, 100%, something went wrong.
10:25There's something wrong.
10:26But there was no way in heck Jake was going to ever end up that, that's not even off course.
10:31That's a whole different planet.
10:33The front anchor is lowered.
10:35And they think, OK, maybe this boat had been anchored at K-South Bank, which is a land mass
10:40just to the north of where they encountered this boat adrift.
10:44And they're thinking, OK, maybe the people were on land, and then the boat sort of broke away.
10:51And so what they did was called a shore search.
10:57We had a Coast Guard helicopter scan the island for any kind of thermo imaging to make sure
11:02that there was anybody on the island itself.
11:05How do you, how do you begin to process something like that?
11:08So I was like, oh my God, please, may everything be OK.
11:13Tensions are always really high between Cuba and Florida and the Keys.
11:17And there's a history, a long history of piracy.
11:23So what shocks you is whether it's in people or situations, you don't know where evil lurks.
11:28The Coast Guard has located the Jokul adrift on the open ocean.
11:41But everyone on board is gone.
11:45A team is scouring a secluded island near the abandoned boat, holding onto a fragile hope
11:53that Jake Branham, his wife Kelly, his half-brother Scott, and their friend Sam Carey
11:59are simply exploring the Surian shores, oblivious to the chaos unfolding in their wake.
12:05So the Coast Guard sent up a helicopter off of their cutter to do a search of this landmass,
12:13this KSAL Bank in the Bahamas.
12:16But they don't find anybody.
12:18I still tried to hold on to some little bit of hope that they would be found.
12:28Kelly was just planning on just having fun and spending time with her husband.
12:33Helicopters continue to circle above the churning waters, scouring the waves for any sign of
12:39the missing.
12:40Meanwhile, a Coast Guard crew boards the Jokul, its decks drenched and deserted.
12:49Then they notice the simplest, starkest detail.
12:53The tank is empty.
12:55The Jokul had run out of gas.
12:58Systems on the boat depend upon power.
13:01So when you run out of fuel, your main engines run out of fuel.
13:05You can't go anywhere.
13:07As investigators are on the Jokul looking around, they realize that the lifeboat is missing.
13:13Investigators are completely dumbfounded by the situation.
13:18And the family's left wondering, you know, are they hurt?
13:23They could be floating somewhere.
13:26A biggest concern of a boater is you don't want to go overboard, right?
13:30Because there are shark-infested waters.
13:33You don't really want to be in the water.
13:37There's nowhere to go.
13:39When we found out the lifeboat wasn't there, our hope was that, okay, something happened,
13:45but they're all on the lifeboat, and they're going to be found somewhere.
13:51Forensic investigators methodically pick through the Jokul, searching for the smallest fragment
13:56of a story the boat might still be hiding.
14:01They see cameras, duffel bags, luggage, food, supplies, normal things that they would find
14:10on a boat going on vacation.
14:12But the boat, the interior salon, the cabin is in complete disarray.
14:17Like, everything's sort of thrown about.
14:23The Coast Guard, their law enforcement team, while on the vessel, while going through it,
14:28located amongst many items a handcuff key.
14:33Finding a handcuff key is...it's interesting.
14:39It certainly piques an interest.
14:41They also see blood on the back of the boat, but initially they think, well, it's a fishing
14:44boat, so it's not that out of the ordinary.
14:46But then, they find blood spatter on various locations inside the salon, the, like, living
14:55room part of the boat.
14:58As investigators comb through the eerily silent boat, a troubling question lingers.
15:06Has this vessel become the scene of something unspeakable?
15:10The discovery of Glock casings, scattered amid the emptiness, feels like an ominous breadcrumb
15:17trail.
15:19That's really when they realized that there was something else going on.
15:23Something more dark, something more sinister.
15:28Something really, really bad had happened.
15:31While search and rescue crews hunt the restless waters for signs of life, the Joe Cool makes
15:38its quiet return to Miami.
15:40When the boat got towed back, it sent shockwaves through the community.
15:46So much of the South Florida community are boaters.
15:50Everybody was sort of like, wow, this could have been me.
15:53The Coast Guard is out today looking for the four members who were on board this boat.
15:58But so far, they've had no luck.
16:00Within all the media coverage, they started calling it the ghost ship.
16:04The Joe Cool became the ghost ship.
16:09Here in Miami Beach, this is the largest and most popular marina in the state.
16:14Joe Cool was right over on the seawall where the silver vessel was right now.
16:21It's empty.
16:23Some people feel not comfortable in it.
16:26It's Monday morning, September 24th.
16:32It's first light, and the Coast Guard sends the helicopter up to begin to search.
16:38We launched the helicopter about 7 o'clock in the morning, and then heads to the position
16:43where the boat was found.
16:45About probably about another 12 miles downrange, it located a raft.
16:56The Coast Guard see two men hanging on.
16:59There's a tarp over top that's actually being blown away as the helicopter comes down to see
17:05who exactly is in there.
17:08The helicopter lowers itself.
17:10It lowers a basket.
17:11They're, you know, yelling instructions to the guys to get out of the raft, swim to the basket.
17:17It got them inside the cabin of the aircraft.
17:21The Coast Guard crew is so excited that they have found living people from the empty boat.
17:28Because it's very, very loud inside the cabin of a helicopter, rather than trying to talk to them,
17:34they had them actually write down on a piece of paper who they were and what did they see.
17:41And then they pass it forward.
17:43The note says, four others west of Bimini, hijacked, four killed.
17:49We were abandoned with the boat.
17:52The vessel name was the Joe Cool.
17:57This is now a criminal investigation.
18:02Maybe we have four people murdered, and now who did it?
18:06And are these two that we rescued victims or something else?
18:17In a twist no one saw coming, two men have been pulled from the waters off the Miami coast, alive.
18:25Their story, they'd been aboard Jake Branham's boat, the Joe Cool, when it was hijacked.
18:32But the real shock came next.
18:35According to them, the other four on board, Jake's wife, his half-brother, and their best friend, have been killed.
18:47Once the Coast Guard helicopter gets back to the ship, the two individuals are taken off,
18:54given food and water and blankets.
18:57The two men found in the life raft were Kirby Archer, age 36, and Guillermo Zarabozo, who was age 19.
19:06When we first start learning about Archer and Zarabozo,
19:10most of us were like, how'd they end up on this charter fishing vessel?
19:16And Guillermo's response and emotion was stoic.
19:20And he laid out in very, very detailed fashion the story.
19:25And the story kind of started with, you know, we were going, you know, from Miami to Bimini.
19:32Kirby Archer and Guillermo Zarabozo approach the boat.
19:42And Sam Carey happens to be on the boat, getting the boat ready for his vacation.
19:47Guillermo and Kirby have a conversation with Sam Carey, saying,
19:50Hey, we'd like to charter your boat.
19:53We need to go to Bimini.
19:55And Sam was like, why don't you fly?
19:59He and his friend need a ride to Bimini because their girlfriends have already left for this trip,
20:05and unfortunately, they had packed their passports.
20:08Jake and Scott and Sam were very excited about this, right?
20:11Business is relatively new.
20:13They charged them $4,000 because that would have been the price for a full-day charter.
20:18And the other thing I should mention, right, is that they paid cash.
20:22Was it pure coincidence that the men asked about Bimini?
20:27Or did they already know the captain's plans?
20:30That's a question that may never be answered.
20:33But for the crew, it felt like fate, a chance they couldn't afford to turn down.
20:39Yeah, so I get a call from Jake, and he said, somebody just walks up to him and says,
20:44Hey, can you take my buddy and I to Bimini?
20:47To me, it's very suspicious.
20:49He made me feel like he was absolutely fine with it.
20:51But I did talk to him about it a little bit, saying, hey, people don't do this stuff anymore.
20:55This is really weird.
20:56Paying cash, this is definitely strange, you know?
20:59Three hours after Kelly drops the kids off at Jake's parents' house,
21:03the Joe Cool, once a symbol of freedom and escape, becomes the backdrop for a nightmare no one could have imagined.
21:12Guillermo and Archer say, pirates, pull alongside the Joe Cool, and they pull guns, jump onto our boat, start shooting the people.
21:25Both Guillermo and Kirby were kind of directed to take care of the bodies and start driving the boat southbound to Cuba.
21:38So as you're getting this story, the next couple of questions that are going through your head is where along the line from Miami to Bimini did this happen?
21:50How far along your trip were you, could you see land?
21:54And why Cuba?
21:57In an FBI affidavit, agent Cesar Oboso claims the hijackers shot and killed the captain and then shot the captain's wife because she was hysterical.
22:08Kelly did not like to be on the water.
22:11And Kelly very rarely, if at all, was ever on the Joe Cool or any boat, for that matter.
22:18She didn't like being out somewhere where you can't see land, where all you see is water.
22:26Hijacking that takes place could be for a number of reasons.
22:30People could be looking to get money from the boat.
22:33They could be looking for the boat itself.
22:35There's also the possibility of drug trafficking.
22:43So when the Coast Guard realizes they have a murder on their hands, they bring in the FBI immediately,
22:49because the FBI, of course, has much greater resources and manpower and things like that.
22:53When I first saw Kirby Archer and Guillermo Zarabozo, it was sort of hard to know what to think,
23:01because according to them, four people had been killed by pirates who had hijacked the boat.
23:08But as a skeptical prosecutor, why would pirates hijack a boat and leave two witnesses alive?
23:16Investigators begin pulling back the layers of this mystery, fixating on the two men who may hold the answers to Jake, Kelly, Scott and Sam's disappearance.
23:28Separating the pair, they begin the delicate dance of unraveling their stories.
23:33Their attention turns first to the younger of the two, Guillermo Zarabozo.
23:38So when we ran the name Guillermo Zarabozo, not much came up.
23:42We knew he had come from, you know, South Florida in a community called Hialeah.
23:47But there was no negative information on him that would, you know, warrant more suspicion at this point.
23:53He immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba. He was really hardworking and he contributed money to his family.
24:00And he just was somebody that didn't cause any trouble.
24:04Guillermo Zarabozo was employed by a security company and he has his license to be an armed security guard.
24:12He was on a few Spanish language telenovelas.
24:16And he even had a picture of himself on his MySpace account.
24:19That was the social media of the day.
24:22And he had a picture of himself in a police uniform with a gun standing next to a police car.
24:28So I think he was very proud of his security guard work.
24:32And what we learned from some of his chats and some of his messages on social media at the time,
24:40that he wanted to work for the CIA.
24:45But why is he on this boat where now four people have been killed?
24:51According to Guillermo, he and Kirby actually met on a security gig.
24:56Guillermo was working at meets Kirby who says,
25:00I know people in the CIA. I can help get you a job in the CIA.
25:04Guillermo Zarabozo spins an unexpected tale for investigators.
25:08Kirby Archer, a former military officer turned CIA operative,
25:13had supposedly recruited him as part of a high stakes security detail.
25:18Their mission? A covert operation aboard the Joe Cool, complete with unnamed VIPs,
25:26a quick stop in Bimini, and an ultimate destination, Cuba.
25:32So for Guillermo, this is huge. This could be his foot in the door of the CIA.
25:37And so this is an opportunity he doesn't want to miss out on.
25:40The story has all the elements of a spy thriller.
25:44But something about it doesn't quite add up.
25:47You start to think to yourself, okay, hey, we're missing something.
25:52What else is going on here?
25:53Two men pulled from the sea might hold the only answers to what really happened aboard the Joe Cool.
26:08Guillermo Zarabozo spins a story that teeters on the edge of absurdity,
26:13claiming his companion on the life raft, Kirby Archer, is a CIA agent.
26:19We have these two guys who claim to have been hijacked.
26:23You have a vessel with nobody on board, blood on the vessel.
26:29Either they've witnessed something really horrific or they've been part of,
26:32but it's hard to tell at this point.
26:34The story doesn't make sense that you'd kill my whole family, but spare these two people.
26:38If the boat was to be hijacked, they'd kill everybody and take the boat.
26:42Investigators turned their gaze to Kirby Archer, pinning their hopes on his version of events.
26:48To untangle the chaos aboard the Joe Cool.
26:51As investigators are looking into Kirby's background, they realize that there's so much more to this story.
26:57Kirby Archer is an Army veteran. He had most recently been living in Arkansas.
27:06Back in 1998, he met and married his now ex-wife. That's where things really start to fall apart.
27:13His wife files for divorce. She claims domestic abuse and also claims that he had been sexually molesting their two children.
27:22We, of course, run a criminal records check and a warrant pops up for him from Arkansas.
27:31And what we learned was, while he's being investigated for a child sex battery offense in Arkansas, he realizes he's got to get out of town.
27:40And he was a manager at a big retail store, and part of his job was to collect the money each night from the cash registers.
27:47So when Archer decides it's time for him to leave town, he collects all the cash from the cash registers, and it's just under $100,000.
27:56And flees town.
27:58Archer's a fugitive from justice and on the run.
28:02Kirby Archer admits one thing. He's no G-man. Just a fugitive with a knack for spinning tails.
28:11As for what happened on the Joe Cool, he sticks to his story.
28:16Pirates hijacked the boat. And if you ask him, he's as much a victim as anyone else who was on board.
28:24But the details of this so-called hijacking don't quite fit the picture.
28:29His story was very, very discombobulated.
28:32And to get him to kind of focus in on the salient parts was becoming harder and harder to do as he became a little bit more emotional about what transpired.
28:41Archer and Zarabozo can't get a consistent story.
28:46They were asked to describe the pirates that hijacked them.
28:49They gave different descriptions of how they were dressed.
28:53They gave different descriptions of how they got on their boat.
28:57Something's not adding up, because these are details they would both know, and they're contradicting each other.
29:04When Archer and Zarabozo couldn't give consistent stories, we were pretty convinced that they were lying.
29:11Convinced that these two aren't hapless victims, but key suspects, investigators pivot to a more direct approach.
29:20The focus shifts from unraveling their tales to uncovering hard evidence.
29:25Something to tie them to the nightmare aboard the Jokul.
29:31Their search begins at Guillermo Zarabozo's home.
29:35There was lots of good evidence there.
29:38There was a gun lock box.
29:41Empty.
29:42There was a holster.
29:44Empty.
29:45We knew that Zarabozo had a Glock.
29:47Well, Guillermo's Glock wasn't at home.
29:50And we have Glock casings on the boat.
29:53The logical inference is that Guillermo brought his Glock on the boat.
29:58When the Coast Guard searches the luggage and backpacks and things that Archer and Zarabozo had taken from the Jokul when they got into the life raft, they find receipts.
30:08One of the receipts that we find in the backpack is to a local gun shop in Hialeah that shows that Archer and Zarabozo went in to buy a Sig Sauer magazine together.
30:21And also ammunition and receipts for ammunition.
30:25That was our strongest circumstantial evidence that both Guillermo and Archer were involved in the murders.
30:30That helped us very much argue that there were two guns on board.
30:34You'd never buy a magazine to a gun you didn't have.
30:37But we didn't find any guns.
30:39No guns on the Jokul.
30:41No guns in the life raft.
30:43We never found the Sig Sauer.
30:45We never found the Glock.
30:46That's the beauty if you're a criminal of being at sea.
30:50You just throw whatever you want overboard.
31:00Everything points to a chilling conclusion.
31:03These two weren't just along for the ride.
31:06They're the ones who killed the crew.
31:09Jake, he was very protective.
31:12I definitely think that had he had an opportunity to fight back, I think he would have.
31:19I think he would have done anything to protect not just Kelly, but also, you know, his brother, his friend.
31:27He was that kind of guy.
31:32I guess what I always wanted to know was why.
31:35I think that's what we all want to know.
31:37Why was it necessary to kill them?
31:41You have a weapon.
31:43Why not order them off the boat and put them on the lifeboat?
31:47I don't understand how you can just do that knowing you have to be really cold to be able to just kill them like nothing.
31:57As forensic teams scramble to uncover irrefutable proof, one question lingers, haunting everyone following the case.
32:07How does an ordinary, unassuming young man find himself entangled in the brutal murder of four people alongside a fugitive?
32:16Throughout the case, we tried to figure out why.
32:19We felt like Jerobozo probably really did believe that Archer could help him get a job with the CIA.
32:27I think there was something going on in terms of the idolization, you know, for Guillermo's idolization of Kirby.
32:33You know, to what extent, it was hard to tell, but you got the sense that maybe, you know, Kirby was calling the shots and Guillermo was kind of trying to follow along.
32:43They asked Zerobozo, were you ever like a spy film guy? Like, did you like James Bond?
32:51And Zerobozo answered, not James Bond, but we, I really like Jason Bourne.
32:58You picked a boat, picked a date, you tracked the crew.
33:03And if you remember, in the first Jason Bourne, their job is to kill people on a boat.
33:09But then he gets shot and gets knocked into the water.
33:12So, again, this is pure speculation, but I think Zerobozo thought he was Jason Bourne and they were going to act out the first movie.
33:31But this is not a Jason Bourne movie.
33:36It was a really shocking case.
33:39They killed four people.
33:41So we had to figure this out with evidence that was going to be admissible at trial.
33:46But it's hard to do a murder case without bodies.
33:55Law enforcement officials are steadfast in their belief.
33:59Kirby Archer and Guillermo Zerobozo didn't just accompany Jake Branham, his wife Kelly, Scott Gamble and Sam Carey on their ill-fated trip to the Bahamas.
34:10They ended it.
34:12The blood found in the cabin and on the deck whispers a grisly truth.
34:17When we found the blood evidence, it was sent to the lab for DNA testing.
34:23The final blow to the family is that when testing came back on the blood that was found on the boat, they find that it was Jake's, Kelly's, Scott's and Sam's.
34:36The family is just beside themselves.
34:39It's so hard to imagine what happened on that boat.
34:43But the only two people that know aren't telling us the truth.
34:48On September 28th, 2007, the search was called off and the missing passengers were presumed dead.
34:59When they completely called off the search, it was like time to kind of really face the facts that, unbelievably, this really happened.
35:11Their bodies apparently were just dumped.
35:14You know, unfortunately, you know, there really can't ever be a true closure other than you just know they're never coming back.
35:21There is no end. There is no end to this. The pain is always there.
35:2617 days after the Jokul departed Miami with its promise of a serene escape to Bimini, the FBI makes an arrest.
35:36Both Archer and Zarabozo maintained their innocence and said it was pirates who killed the four, not them.
35:41But we were able to charge Archer and Zarabozo with murder of Jake and Kelly, Scott and Sam.
35:48Nine months later, Kirby surprises everyone and he flips the script.
35:59Kirby, he knew the death penalty was on the table.
36:02And so he wanted to avoid that at all costs.
36:05So he ended up striking a deal.
36:07And he tells a story that seemed closer to the truth.
36:11We meet with him.
36:13He tells us he's working at this large retail store in 2007.
36:18He commits a theft of $100,000.
36:21He was now on the run.
36:23He ended up going to Miami.
36:25He had aspirations of taking this boat, hijacking it, and taking it places outside of the United States.
36:32The goal of this was to avoid prosecution, to get out of the country,
36:38and a place like Cuba would not extradite somebody back to the United States.
36:42And Kirby says he realizes he's just one person.
36:47How would he be able to hijack a boat on his own?
36:50And so he meets Guillermo.
36:52Kirby tells him, I can get you a job in the CIA.
36:55So Guillermo is gullible.
36:57He's a little naive.
36:58And he goes along with the plan.
37:02When Archer and Zarabozo boarded this boat,
37:05they knew they were going to kill the crew.
37:08You're not taking them to Cuba with you.
37:10There's nothing to do with the four people in the sea, in the ocean,
37:15other than shooting them and throwing them overboard.
37:21And according to Kirby, he shot Jake and Kelly, while Guillermo shot Scott and Sam.
37:27They pushed them overboard, and then they drove off.
37:31What they didn't know was that although the Joe Poole has two very large fuel tanks,
37:38the crew had emptied one of the fuel tanks in the days leading up to this.
37:43Because if you're only going to Bimini, you don't need as much fuel.
37:46So unbeknownst to Archer and Zarabozo, when they boarded the boat in Miami Beach Marina,
37:53they didn't have enough fuel to get to Cuba.
37:55The judgment these guys made in doing this, that just make no sense at all.
38:01Kirby Archer, you do not deserve to breathe the same air we do,
38:05much less life in prison.
38:07Hell is waiting for you.
38:10Honestly, the worst was Archer's sentencing, where I actually saw him in person
38:18and was able to look him in the eyes, and that was really hard.
38:24Because it was just the things that go through your head when you see this person
38:29and know what they did to somebody that you care about.
38:35It was hard. It was really hard.
38:41And then to have to hear him talk and basically go through what happened on the boat,
38:50what they did, and to have to hear all that was...
38:59It was really bad.
39:03Nobody wants to hear that.
39:12Archer was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences in federal prison.
39:16There's a life sentence for each of the four victims and then an additional count.
39:19of hijacking of the vessel.
39:22Making a deal so he wouldn't have to face the death penalty.
39:26It was incredibly frustrating.
39:28His family can always go see him in prison.
39:31But their family, their kids, will never see them again.
39:36I don't think it's fair at all.
39:38Guillermo Zarabozo went to trial.
39:41He was ultimately convicted and also received five consecutive life sentences.
39:46I mean, these two committed a horrific, very tragic murder of innocent people who thought they were leaving to go on an amazing boat trip and ended up being murdered.
40:05It's totally a cautionary tale and I think it kind of put a fear into a lot of people because boat trips from Miami are big business.
40:18But people are a lot more careful now and you check IDs so you're not going out there with God knows who and subjecting yourself to something terrible happening.
40:31So the Joe Cole used to be docked on this main dock since Jake's gone, there is no more charter boat for hire there in the marina.
40:44It kind of amazes me.
40:48A sadness hits me that he had to go through that horror, you know, seeing whatever he saw or, you know, whatever any of them did.
40:57You know, they're good people. They were good people.
40:59You know, just the evilness that some people could even do those things and ruin people's lives.
41:07On the next fatal destination.
41:14Of course, I was concerned about her hitchhiking.
41:18Why are there so many people missing from this event?
41:21Everybody has a different idea of what the rainbow gathering is.
41:24Something unthinkable and unfathomable had happened.
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