On the evening of July 19, 1977, a seventeen-year-old girl was driving home along United States Highway 1, AKA Bird Road, in Coral Gables, Florida, five miles southwest of downtown Miami. The ride was uneventful until she saw a car’s flashing lights behind her. Believing it to be a police car, the girl slowed down, and the car pulled beside her car. The horror then quickly dawned on her that this was someone on the other side of the law.

Jumping out of his car, a man ordered the girl into his car at gunpoint. He then drove her to a construction site where he raped her. Afterwards, the man ordered the girl back into his car, drove five blocks, pulled over to the side of the road, and released her. The rapist then sped away, taking his victim’s driver’s license and panties, probably as souvenirs of his crime.

The attack was the first in a series of area rapes occurring over the following two years. From 1977-79, twenty-four rapes occurred in the Bird Road area.

Justice has not been served as the identity of the “Bird Road Rapist” is still unknown. An injustice was also committed in that a man was falsely convicted of the rapes and served over a quarter-of-a-century in prison before being exonerated.

A Composite Of The “Bird Road Rapist”

While working at a gas station two days after the attack, the first victim believed she saw the rapist’s car pull into the locale. As the driver was pumping gas, she wrote down his car’s license plate number and gave it to police.

The car was registered to Luis Diaz, a forty-one-year-old Cuban immigrant of little education who worked as a short order cook at a Lila’s Restaurant, a local Cuban establishment. He was a married father of three who had no criminal record. Investigators attempted to question him, but he did not speak English.

Luis Diaz With His Wife Caridad And Son Jose

Diaz, a small man, stood five feet-three-inches tall and weighed one-hundred-twenty pounds. The girl described her attacker as approximately six-feet tall with a large build. Because he did not fit the physical description, authorities did not initially pursue him as a suspect.

Diaz Is Not Initially Suspected

Meanwhile, Bird Road was fast becoming a hunting ground. The rapes continued at the rate of one attack per month. The prey were the same: young women or girls driving alone during the evening. The M.O. was also the same: the rapist flashed his car’s headlights after pulling behind the women’s cars. Many of these women pulled off to the side of the road, believing they were being stopped by a police officer or were being alerted to car trouble by a fellow motorist.

A man then exited his car and, at gunpoint, ordered the women out of their vehicles and into his. From there, he drove to another location, raped them, then drove them several blocks before releasing them.

The Rapes Continue

Despite the notable difference between Luis Diaz and the physical description she gave of her attacker, the initial victim was still adamant he was the man who had raped her and, at her insistence, police questioned him again. When they did so, they spoke in English and he could not comprehend what they were saying. He cooperated with the investigators once they brought in a Spanish interpreter.

Police then showed another rape victim a photo lineup of six men, one of whom was Luis Diaz. This victim, who had been attacked two months earlier, identified him as her assailant.  Based on the identification, Diaz was arrested on August 29, 1979.

Sixteen other rape victims were subsequently shown the same photo lineup; half identified Diaz as their rapist. As a result, he was charged with eight counts of rape.

Diaz Is Charged

Luis Diaz’s trial began on April 29, 1980. From the onset, a smorgasbord of reasonable doubt was presented by his noted defense attorney Roy Black.

In addition to no physical evidence connecting him to any of the rapes, the women’s descriptions of the cars driven by their attacker varied. Depending on the victim, he drove either a Buick, Chevy Impala, Grand Prix, Monte Carlo, or Oldsmobile, either blue, bronze, brown, or gold, in color. Luis owned a 1972 Pontiac Catalina, but prosecutors countered that because his brother-in-law was a used car salesman, he had access to several cars which he used in committing the rapes.

Many of the victims stated their attacker spoke English; everyone who knew Diaz testified he did speak the language. Lead detective Fernando Mendoza wrote in his report, however, that he found several former neighbors who said Diaz did speak English, and two other detectives testified that he spoke to them in English during a ninety-minute interview following his arrest. Neither detective, however, had an explanation for why the conversations were not recorded or videotaped.

The victims’ physical descriptions of the rapist varied widely. Some described him as white, others as Hispanic. Some said he was short, others said he was tall. Some said he spoke English with a Spanish accent, while others stated he had no accent.

Diaz’s coworkers testified he always reeked of grease and onions after working long shifts behind the grill following his evening shifts at the restaurant, but no victim recalled such a stench on their attacker.

Rampant Reasonable Doubt

Despite the inconsistencies and no physical evidence connecting him to any of the attacks, Luis Diaz was convicted of four rapes, along with four kidnappings, three aggravated assaults, two robberies, one attempted kidnapping, one burglary, one assault, one battery, and one count of using a firearm while committing a felony.

He was sentenced to thirteen life terms plus fifty-five years.

Convicted

Noted Private Investigator Virginia Snyder followed Luis Diaz’s trial and became convinced he was not the Bird Road Rapist. She submitted her report to the court.

After reading the report, Judge Joseph Durant, who had presided over the trial, authorized her to formally re-investigate the case. Snyder talked to the witnesses who had been questioned by authorities. She found the detectives were defective in their investigation.

Contrary to what the detectives had testified, the witnesses told Snyder they had never told the detectives that Diaz spoke English. In addition, Fernando Mendoza, the lead detective in the investigation, was later arrested for falsifying five police reports, although they were not related to Diaz’s case. Mendoza was fined and suspended, but he was later allowed to return to the police force.

Snyder also found one other instance of investigative and prosecutorial ineptness; Diaz’s brother-in-law was an insurance salesman, not a used car salesman.

Virginia Snyder

Private Investigator

Through her investigation, Snyder believed the Bird Road Rapist was actually three men, none of whom were Luis Diaz. An imprisoned gang member, Luis Nunez, also of Cuban descent, told her he was not involved in the rapes, but knew the men who had committed them.

Nunez gave Snyder an eight-page signed affidavit saying Luis Diaz was innocent of all of the rapes and naming the three members of the street gang who had committed them. One of them worked at a Miami upholstery shop, from which, Nunez said, the gang would drive various cars to and from the rapes, thus accounting for the multiple vehicle descriptions.

Diaz Is Proclaimed Innocent

The eggs of Luis Diaz’s innocence in the Bird Road rapes had been hatched and the birds were soon flying from the nest. A woman who had been approached by the rapist on December 20, 1978, but escaped without being harmed, said she did not believe he was the culprit. She described the man as at least six-feet-tall with dark blond hair; Diaz was five-feet-three-inches tall with black hair.

At Diaz’s trial, the woman had identified him as her attempted attacker, but she now had doubts. After the attack, when she was shown a police lineup that included a photo of Diaz. She said she recognized him but only from news reports and was led by police into identifying him.

After Diaz was convicted and jailed, however, the woman said another man, different from the first man who attempted to accost her, tried to attack her in the same way. Again, the woman escaped unharmed.

One Victim Has Doubts

Another victim came forward saying she could not remember Diaz’s face and actually needed the bailiff to point him out prior to the court proceedings. The victim said she was also not certain he was her attacker, but she had identified him under police pressure.

A third woman also recanted her testimony. She claimed when she was shown the photo lineup that included Diaz, she initially chose no one. After asking to see more mugshots, she says detectives Joe Daniels and Norman Shipes insisted she look at the photographs again. She believed the police were steering her into choosing Diaz, which she eventually did despite being uncertain he was her attacker. One week later, she was equally uncertain when viewing him in another police lineup. Once again, she eventually chose him, but after his conviction, she became certain he was not the man who had raped her.

Doubt Further Mounts

In 2003, advances in technology enabled new DNA testing on two of the victims’ rape kits. The same man was found to have attacked both women, but the DNA was not that of Luis Diaz. His convictions on those two counts of rape were overturned.

Because all of the other rape kits had been destroyed, the Dade County State Attorney’s Office decided not to retry Diaz on the other cases and filed a motion to dismiss his other convictions.

On August 3, 2005, Luis Diaz was released from prison after serving twenty-five years for crimes he had not committed.

A Free Man

Diaz sued the city of Miami and over a dozen Miami-Dade County Police Officers and Supervisors for his over a quarter-of-a century wrongful imprisonment in 2007. In July 2012, he was awarded $1.3 million.

Awarded Damages

Following Luis Diaz’s conviction in 1980, Judge Joseph Durant said, “I have never seen a case where I am more convinced of a man’s guilt.”

The Judge Is Forced To Eat His Words

Investigators now concur with Virginia Snyder’s belief that the Bird Road Rapes were committed by the three gang members identified by Luis Nunez. He died in 1994 without ever being interviewed by police. The gang members have not been named publicly.

I was unable to find a picture of Luis Nunez.

The Bird Road Rapist

Still Flies Free

SOURCES:

• Associated Press
• Fox News
• Los Angeles Times
• The Innocence Project
• Miami Herald
• The Miami New Times
• NBC News
• New York Times
• St. Petersburg Times
• The Sun Sentinel