The MacIvor Murder Story

1991

Written 2011 Re-written 01/09/2012* 3,310 Words

By Howard Yasgar

This story is about the murder of Mike and Mitsy McIver.

It is interesting, for me to write about it because the Detective that solved the murder was Chuck Visco our neighbor and our friend.

On Aug 22, 1991, Susan (Mitsy) and Michael MacIver were found murdered in their Key Largo home.

My relationship with Mike MacIver went back quite a few years, as Mike was once rebuilding light aircraft alternators and starters.

Mike came to see me every so often at my company in Miami.

He wanted me to supply him with various components that he used in rebuilding.

At the time we were in the automotive electrical parts business, but in the 1990’s, we were selling

lots of surplus Prestolite aircraft alternator parts.

When Mike came by to look for something, he would come into my office and we would sit and have long conversations regarding the business he was doing.

I found Mike to be a very interesting and intelligent guy, he was working on manufacturing

several aircraft alternator parts that utilized items that we were making, and he was trying to get FAA approval on them.

There was never a hint of Mike doing anything unusual.

Mike was about 6 foot tall; with blond hair he was handsome and had an athletic build.

To my knowledge, Mike, neither smoked, drank, or swore, and it seemed to me that he was an example of the ideal “All American kind of guy”.

Mike told me his father was a pilot flying for Delta Airlines, and Mike himself was a light aircraft pilot.

His hobbies were buying, fixing up and selling light aircraft.

One day Mike came by and told me that he had sold his starter and alternator repair business.

After that, I didn’t see Mike until he stopped in to see me in the late 1990’s

I asked Mike what he was doing and he said he was involved with several things.

He was working with a fellow that was rebuilding light aircraft engines at Opalocka Airport, which he said he really enjoyed.

He said he also was working as a manufacturer’s representative selling warehouse and packaging equipment.

Mike knew that my wife Katherine and I had a condominium at Executive Bay Club in the Florida Keys and he asked my opinion about a house he was looking to buy in Tavernier which was located on a grass air strip called Tavrnaero.

He said the house was selling for only $150,000.00.

I told mike that the price was a bargain, and he shouldn’t let it go.

I thought that the house was especially good for Mike as he usually owned a small airplane, and if he bought the house, he could park his plane right in front of it.

Mike said he was going to buy the house and move to the keys with his wife Mitsy, (Susan)who was going to get a job teaching in the local school.

They bought the house.

The house came with a boat slip located in a boat basin on the Tavernier Creek.

At the time, my wive Katherine and I always used Tavernier Creek waterway to get to the ocean.

As we went down Tavernier Creek, we always passed by Mike and Mitsy’s house, and I always

kept an eye out for Mike.

On several occasions we would see Mike, on Tavernier Creek on his 22-foot yellow center consol boat.

Once, I told him that we would call him at 5 AM, in the morning, and he could get on his plane and fly over the ocean until he spotted where the weed line and fish were.

Then he could fly back to the boat slip at his house, where we would be waiting for him with our boat, and we could all shoot out to the weed-line together and catch fish.

Mike said he had always dreamed about doing just that.

One day Mike came by my office in Miami to talk.

Mike said that he was sorry he had gotten out of the aircraft alternator and starter repair business.

He said that, when he sold the business, he had also sold all his reference books and catalogs.

Now he was thinking of getting back into the rebuilding business and without the reference and parts books, he was at a big disadvantage.

I showed Mike a quantity of new surplus Prestolite aircraft alternators that I had and offered him all of them for $8000.00.

Mike said yes, he wanted them, and he would call me back to let me know about when he could come and pick them up.

After discussing business, we sat down and talked about fishing in the Keys.

Mike said that he had recently anchored his boat in shallow water on the Oceanside, and he was doing some free diving, using only a mask.

On one dive, while underwater, he heard a loud thump noise from where he was, he couldn’t imagine what the noise came from.

As he re-surfaced, he saw a giant kingfish about 4 feet long. It was unconscious and sinking gently to the bottom.

The fish had obviously jumped out of the water and banged its head on the side of Mike’s boat.

Mike said it was the biggest Kingfish he had ever seen or caught.

A few days later, Mike did call me back, and he said he would stop by the following Friday.

The next Friday, Mike called to say that he couldn't make it. He said he was going to Belize to bid on a light aircraft that was being auctioned off.

Mike said would try to make it in to see me the following week.

On the following Friday, Mike called to say that he had bought the airplane in Belize, but he was now having troubles getting the plane back to the U.S.

One of the problems was a leaking fuel bladder on one side.

I offered Mike some patching cement to repair the bladder, but he said he thought if he got the plane running, he could make it home on only one fuel tank.

I told Mike to stop worrying about picking up the alternators, as I would hold them for him whenever he had time to come by and pick them up.

Mike thanked me and said he would be by as soon as he could.

On the following Thursday, I was busy and I did not get to sit at my desk until about 1:30 in the afternoon.

I saw that there was a note on my desk saying that Mike MacIver had called.

I returned the call but got only Mike’s answer machine.

I left a brief message that I had received his call, and for him to call me whenever he could.

The next evening, I was sitting in the living room of our Condo at Costa Del Sol in Miami.

When the nightly News Program came on, and they said that there had been a double murder in Key Largo, a man and his pregnant wife had been killed.

Before I could even turn around, I had a bad feeling that it was Mike and Mitsy MacIver.

As I turned to look at the TV, they were showing pictures of the MacIver home on Tavernaero.

The news stated that Mitsy MacIver was raped and murdered in an upstairs bedroom, and she was 8 months pregnant.

Mike was found downstairs in the living room in his underwear. Mike’s face was wrapped in duct tape. Because of the unborn baby, it was classified as a triple murder.

The following morning I tried calling the Police Dept in the Keys to report that I was the voice on the answer machine at exactly 1:30 on the day before the murders. I thought that perhaps the police would be interested. I also wanted to mention to them about the airplane in Belize.

I received quite the run around, from the police dept.

Eventually I was told that the Sheriffs Dept was in Key West, but not to call them as a Miami task force was handling the murder case.

Everyone I spoke to was so disinterested in my information, that I finally thought it best to wait and see what was going to happen.

I felt that the way the Police were acting, they possibly already had the killer, and my information was of no value to them.

We watched the newspapers every day, hoping for more details, and an arrest, but the case seemed to drag on forever with little happening or being done.

After several months a billboard went up in Key Largo with Mike and Mitsy's pictures on it asking for information regarding the murder.

At that point I realized that the police hadn’t arrested anyone.

I started cutting all the stories about the case, out of the newspaper and saving them.

According to what I read and heard, the case was being treated as a drug related crime and it was, as far as the Police were concerned a hit on Mike, by Colombians, for some reason or other. They felt Mitsy was killed just because she was there.

One of the articles referred to a retired Miami judge that was a family friend, so I tried to call him

On the phone, as perhaps my information on the time of my call to Mike was of some relevance and perhaps the information about the plane in Belize would be helpful.

I tried to call the judge twice, but he never returned my call.

At the time, I didn't know if the information regarding the plane in Belize would be of any value to the Police.

One day, a friend called to tell me that the MacIver case had been on television the night before and they were looking for information.

So I called channel 10 in Miami, and spoke to the Police Sergeant that put the program on the air.

What a disappointment, he said his job was putting it on TV not taking information.

It was difficult to get him to tell me who the lead Detective was, or anyone to talk to.

When I finally found out who the contact was, I called him on the phone.

The Police Detective said that they were fully aware of the airplane in Belize and didn't need any information regarding it. He never even asked who I was, or what information I had.

About a year or more passed, with no new information appearing about the case, either on the news or in the papers.

But I did hear from friends and customers in the industry that also knew Mike.

They said that the families involved were fighting over which person was killed first, was it Mike, the baby, or Susan (Mitsy) as the estate went to the last one killed.

Then finally, it was announced that a local criminal named Thomas Overton was arrested and charged with the double murder.

Apparently there was DNA evidence left by the killer, which was never mentioned to the public.

We read the story in the Miami Herald news paper, and it said Thomas Overton, a cat burglar that lived in the Keys, was caught, and eventually tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in 1999, for both of the murders.

It was apparent that the police had a lot of things going on that no one was aware of.

Mike MacIver had been arrested in 1987 for being involved in flying drugs into upstate Florida.

That didn’t surprise me as Mike liked to fly, and he probably did fly the plane, but I doubted that

Mike had ever bought or sold drugs.

But the Police said that Mike was more seriously involved in the drug trade, as well as several other illegal things.

I couldn’t believe many of the things I heard, but it just goes to show, how little we know about people.

Mike comes up on the police computers as a person of interest in the drug trade. And I learned that he was involved in the illegal repackaging of imported perfumes.

Besides that, Mike was said to be a drug plane refueler, hauling aviation fuel to a Bahamian island and refueling small drug planes coming into the U.S.

He did this using his small boat, and refueled the planes with a hand pump.

I eventually learned that the airplane that Mike bid on in Belize was a former drug plane, and that was the reason he couldn’t fly it back into the U.S. It wasn’t mechanical problems like he told me.

The police actually went to Belize to look at who was involved with the aircraft, and that was why they had no interest in my information. They were already investigating it.

While the police were focusing on the drug angle, Detective Chuck Visco was focusing on Thomas Overton.

Overton was a cat burglar in the Keys. At night he would swim to a house, and steal whatever he

could.

Overton would hide his loot under a porta potty at various construction sites.

The police knew all about Overton because his girlfriend, 20 year old Rachelle Surrette would come to them to file complaints against Overton. She did this several times until one day she simply disappeared.

The police tried to set up stings to catch Overton and get his DNA, and finally they caught him with stolen merchandise.

Then Overton was locked up in the Stock Island jail, but wouldn’t give his DNA sample.

He then cut his own neck with a razor, hoping to get transferred to a hospital, where he could

Possibly escape.

The police now had the blood soaked towels to use for checking his DNA.

It was a positive match. They had it checked twice, and it was stated as another identical pattern was one in 4 trillion.

It wasn't until 2001 that we heard anymore about the case.

When Katherine and I bought the property at 160 Palo De Oro Drive in Venetian Shores, we walked over to visit a neighbor, as we wanted to talk about finding a local contractor.

That’s how we met Charlie and Borodel Visco.

It turned out that Charlie, known as detective Chuck Visco, of the Monroe County Sheriffs Dept, was the detective that solved the Mike and Mitsy MacIver murder case. What a small world.

I was very curious, as not only was Mike McIver my friend, but we had been following the case for over 2 years.

While Charlie Visco, admitted he was involved with the arrest of Overton, he was reluctant to discuss the case.

I told Charlie, what bothered me the most, was if Mike was involved with drugs in any way, why didn’t he have any money to go into the rebuilding business, or buy my alternators.

Drug dealers have money.

Charlie’s answer was that Mike’s hobby of buying and fixing up aircraft, was an expensive hobby.

So I guess I will never really know everything about my friend Mike MacIver.

Charlie, knew that Thomas Overton was working at a gas station, near the Maciver home, and when

Mitsy came in for gasoline, she paid by check, giving Thomas Overton her address.

On a dark rainy night, Thomas Overton put up a ladder and broke into the second floor of the house on Tavernaero.

He heard Mike MacIver in the kitchen downstairs and he overcame him and wrapped his face with duct tape.

He then brutalized and raped Mitsy MacIver, finally killing her.

It appears that while it appears all the investigators were working on the assumption that Mike was the target of Colombians, Charlie Visco was the only one that suspected Thomas Overton, and it was he that solved the case.

Overton was convicted and appealed the case saying that Detective Visco planted his DNA at the murder site.

The appeal was rejected and Thomas Overton remained in prison.

I found most of the information about the case on the internet.

It was certainly a surprise that our neighbor and friend, Charlie Visco was the person to solve the murders of Mike and Mitsy MacIver.

But, that’s not the end.

Thomas Overton in 2012, is now 54 years old and despite all his appeals being turned down, has now used the state’s Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, to make his appeal.

Overton has claimed that a witness from the Stock Island jail that had testified against him was given drugs, money and sex to do so.

Also it appears that Mike and Mitsy MacIver were under surveillance by a private investigator

At the time, and a women that worked for the investigator has said he boss was possibly the murderer.

Overton’s attorney’s claim his case was mishandled by detectives and prosecutors.

Even though the two DNA tests say that the chances of the murderer being someone else is 1 in

4 Trillion.

It’s been 20 years now, since Mike and Mitsy were murdered. I guess we will just have to wait and

See what happens.

I think my friend Detective Charlie Visco, could write a book on what he knows, about the secret life of Mike MacIver.

To me, Mike was just a clean cut nice guy, that was my friend.