Edwin “Eddie” Heath Sr. (King of Hearts, Delaware)

Our card this week is Edwin Eddie Heath Sr., the king of hearts from Delaware. For the last 11 years, the mystery of whom murdered 33-year-old Eddie has haunted the New Castle County police. It looked to them like Eddie had been targeted, shot just steps from where he lived in front of his children, but a few big questions remain. Who was the man possibly in disguise that shot Eddie that day? And was this the same man caught on a surveillance camera near the scene? And why would anyone want this otherwise normal-seeming dad dead? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. On the afternoon of May 13, 2015, Eddie Heath's mother, Dr. Crystal Heath, who prefers to be called Dr. Crystal, was off work recovering from knee surgery. She'd had a physical therapy appointment that day and then picked up some take-out Chinese on the way home for her and her partner. And while they were eating that meal, she got a call from her son's fiance that would change her life. She said Eddie was shot, and I said, "I said you got to be kidding me. I said not my Eddie, you got to be kidding me." And she said, "No, she said no, no, so I didn't have any shoes on, I left the food on the table, got in the car." Her partner started driving her, brum her home to Eddie's place in Bear Delaware, where he lived in an apartment/town home community known as Fox Run. That's where she was told the shooting had occurred. It was a long, 40 or so minute drive for Eddie's mother as she replayed the last time she saw her son, just the night before when she'd stopped by his place. And I said, "I will see you tomorrow, which was the next day. I didn't know that that day was going to be the last day that I would see him." While still in the car on the way to Eddie's, Dr. Crystal received a second call from Eddie's fiance, and this one was even worse. And she said, "Um, Eddie's dead." Dr. Crystal dropped the phone in shock and just started screaming. She was in disbelief all the way until they pulled up to Eddie's townhome, and that's when reality stood in. The yellow line was out there, all of these people are out there, and I see the house where they live, and I see a person laying on the ground. And I knew it was him because of the pants that he had on and the boots that he had on. I knew it was him, so I go around, me while I had my surgery, I'm walking with the cane, I couldn't get this fast enough, so I'm walking around to the back of the house, and I get met by an officer and he says, "Well, ma'am, you can't go back there." So I said, "Well, this is my son, and I need to get back there to make sure that it's him. I need to get back there." They escort me back to the where the crowd is, and I was angry because my child is laying on the ground like an animal in the street, and I felt like he was out there for hours. Dr. Crystal was accustomed to doing the hard things in life. She had raised Eddie as a single mother and had dropped out of high school only to earn her PhD eventually. As she stood in that crowd, watching and waiting, this was another level of heart. The whole thing felt like a nightmare that she'd never wish on anyone. And on the other side of the police tape that day was Sergeant Matt Disabotino of the New Castle County Police. He was the chief homicide investigator at the time, so it was going to be his job to figure out what happened. Now, what they'd pieced together so far was that Eddie had been hanging around the house most of the day, between shuttling his children to and from school. And most of his days appeared to revolve around that routine. Take care of his kids, then go to school at night to become a phlebotomist. And while he had a passion for things like music and writing, his real passion was his kids. Three of Eddie's four children lived with him, some were from previous relationships, and Fox Run offered more space for his family. And at least according to Sergeant Disabotino, an area with little criminal activity. That day, Eddie had gone to pick up two of his young kids from school and was arriving home with them at around 4 p.m. It looked like he had parked in front of his townhome, gotten out of the car, and headed for the passenger side to let his kids out when someone took him by surprise. He has then shot on the passenger side of the vehicle, and that's where he was ultimately pronounced to cease. And where he was shot, or at least where he fell, was in the parking stall in front of the townhome. So from where his final position was, to the front door was maybe 10 feet, 15 feet. It was very close proximity. Eddie had been shot multiple times, right in front of his children, who were still inside the car. And his fiance was inside the townhouse when the shots rang out. With so many people right there, when this happened, police were hopeful for a quick lead early on. But his children, spoken to with the help of the children's advocacy center, couldn't offer them much. And according to Sergeant Disabotino, despite the proximity to the townhome, Eddie's fiancee Helena told them that she didn't hear the gunfire. So we spoke to her very briefly the night of, but again, between emotions, we were very limited in the information that we could get, totally normal, totally understandable. Though those closest to the actual crime scene couldn't provide much, there were plenty of other witnesses that the police were able to rely on. So because this happened a little bit after four in the afternoon, because there's multiple people walking around, school buses just let out, because it is a tightly packed, dense townhome community, we received multiple 911 calls from our neighbors who had all either heard gunshots or witnesses who had actually seen shooting or had seen somebody on the ground that they soon had been injured from the sounds that they had just heard. Those witnesses who saw the shooting described it as happening fast. Without any big commotion or struggle, a 20-something blackmail, 510 in height, maybe 180 pounds, approached Eddie next to the car and just began firing. But the one thing that consistently stood out with all of these descriptions was the suspect with some type of larger beard, whether it was a bushy beard or some type of scraggly beard, they were all consistent that it was either some type of beard or maybe a mask or a fake beard, but something that really developed along the suspect's chin and facial area. Based on the witnesses' accounts and with the help of a canine unit, police were able to track the suspect's possible escape route. And that led them to nearby Route 40, which bordered the Fox Run community. It's a busy road lined with strip malls, other neighborhoods, and a large public park. There was a car that one of the witnesses had seen parked along Route 40, that we believe the same person had entered into that vehicle and fled Westbound along Route 40. Gold Sedan was the initial description. We were fortunate enough to have a red light camera at the next closest intersection from Route 40 and 896, so when we were able to look at that red light camera, we found a vehicle that generally matched that description. The video quality was poor enough that we couldn't identify any suspects or even the registration played on the vehicle. That poor quality forced investigators to think outside the box. Maybe there was a way to enhance the footage somehow. The department at the time was a little lacking in the tech department, but a lot of these investigators were football fans, and someone in the department had an idea. NFL Films did all their production nearby. They had the latest and greatest enhancement technology. They could literally zoom in to see whether a player's foot had stepped on the out of Boundsline. Surely, they could help clean up that red light camera footage. So someone from the Investigations Division made a phone call. Fortunately, they're about an hour drive from our headquarters. They are very law enforcement friendly. They did all the work free of charge. We called them up and said, "Hey, we have a video that we'd like you to help us enhance. We took it up on a USB drive. They did it within the hour while we waited there." The Wizards at NFL Films did enhance the video, but it still wasn't enough. Now, luckily, they'd been parallel-pathing, trying to find more footage, something that might be better quality. And they hit the jackpot. And this video actually showed a person. Witnesses told police that on the day of Eddie's murder, they noticed a suspicious person hanging around the Foxrun community. playground close to Eddie's place. There was a security camera pointed right at that area, so police pulled the footage and it too was enhanced by the NFL. It's a little blurry and pixelated, but it shows what appears to be a man in dark baggy pants and a grayish top alone, quickly strolling past some swings and other playground equipment towards a bench. You see he sits down on the bench and then flees right away. We believe that is when the shots were actually fired. Those Sergeant D. Sabatino believes this man was involved in some way. He has a working theory that this is not the man who pulled the trigger that day. You can see in this video the suspect with his right hand up to his right ear, approaching the blue park bench. We believe this is at the point where he actually calls the shooter to enact the homicide. Now, the one thing to note is that the playground where the suspicious guy was seen doesn't have a direct line of sight to Eddie's place. There's a row of town homes in between. So for instance, if he was acting at some kind of like lookout, he couldn't do it from there. Others we've spoken to in the department and what's been put out publicly in the past suggests that the playground guy and the shooter are one in the scene. And Sergeant D. Sabatino readily admits that is a possibility. He even admits it's a possibility that this guy had nothing to do with Eddie's murder at all. But if he did have something to do with it, whether or not he was the shooter, this footage suggests that there could be a second suspect involved because. Witnesses told us that this individual was using a either a walkie-talkie or an old school cricket phone because they heard the chirp from the phone. Right after the shooting, witnesses said they heard the shooting and then they saw this individual flee right away. Whoever this guy in the footage is an accomplice, a trigger man, or somebody else, it doesn't change another part of Sergeant D. Sabatino's working theory that this was all well planned out. They would have had to know when Eddie was going to approximately arrive on what day he was going to arrive and being in a position to be able to witness that. They have to coordinate with a second person to actually be the shooter and then to formulate their escape route, they have to know the general area where they're going so they would have had to have either knowledge of that area or done some pre-planning before that. This also opens the possibility that whoever killed Eddie might have known his children were in the car, especially if they were tracking Eddie's schedule or even following him that day, making this all the more horrific. Now police did try to figure out who that guy could be. They released the footage publicly, but no one came forward to ID him, which I guess isn't all that surprising considering the quality. They also looked at cell tower data in the area, but that led nowhere either. Though as Sergeant D. Sabatino notes, if the people involved were using phones with walkie-talkie type capabilities, as some witnesses suggested the man in the playground was, that makes things tricky for police. They're not analog per se. They're a lot more difficult to track and a lot more difficult to obtain information for versus typical cell phone records. They even tried getting fingerprints and DNA from the bench that the man was sitting on in the video, but nothing they pulled pointed to someone in particular, which is not surprising given that it was a public bench in the middle of a playground exposed to the elements. With so little to go on, a nagging question was still at the center of this case, unanswered. Why would anyone want to kill Eddie Heat? From everything we know about him, he really seemed like an average guy just trying to live his life, get an education, and raise his family. Eddie was not a rich man. This was not a target of a robbery. Somebody trying to store him for money, anything along those lines. We don't believe he was involved in anything with drugs or any other illegal activities or anything that we would suspect. Hey, this is part and parcel for being involved in some of those criminal activities. There was nothing that gave us any kind of that level of indication. Nothing was found on Eddie in his vehicle or at his home that suggested any illegal activity either. Police never found any evidence that Eddie had any conflicts with neighbors, and there was also no evidence that Eddie had any issues with his fiance, Helena, whom police interviewed at least three times. But she did suggest to the police someone else she thought they needed to look at. Someone who did have an ongoing dispute with Eddie. She was fixated on Eddie's children's mother, Alexa, as being the suspect or being somehow involved or in some way complicit with his homicide. Eddie and his ex, Alexa, married in March of 2009. But less than a year later, the relationship was over. According to Sergeant Disabotino, at the time of his death, Eddie and his ex had limited interaction. But they had been locked in a custody battle over their two children, the same children who were in the car when Eddie was murdered. The custody fight went back to a violent incident involving someone close to Alexa. Alexa was involved with an individual. Her boyfriend, common law, has been at the time who had been shot. And our local division family services had determined that the children were better off in Eddie's custody. She didn't believe that just because her boyfriend got shot, that that should equate to her losing the kids. Sergeant Disabotino didn't have details around Alexa's boyfriend's shooting, as it was with another police agency. But he does know that the boyfriend survived. And to be very clear, he does not believe that Eddie had anything to do with that shooting. According to Sergeant Disabotino, Alexa was interviewed more than once about Eddie's case. But she told the police very little in those interviews. Alexa distanced herself as much as she possibly could from being involved with the homicide. And truth be told, she didn't match the suspect description, although a motive did exist with respect to the custody. She did not match the suspect description. So we know at least from that sense she was not involved in the homicide. We asked Sergeant Disabotino if Alexa or her boyfriend had alibis on the day of Eddie's murder. But like some other things in this case, it was something that he refrained from getting into. We tried calling and texting Alexa, but so far we've had no luck reaching her ourselves. When the police tried to talk to Alexa's boyfriend, he wouldn't even speak to them. We weren't able to confidently say he was involved. There was nothing that let us definitively say. He's a suspect that we need to follow. As a working theory, it would not be surprising, but nothing that we could really hang our hat on before we're with no. We wondered if the police had tried to match the suspect's description to anybody in Alexa's or her boyfriend's circle. But Sergeant Disabotino said that the descriptions were too general to make a definitive call. We also asked whether Alexa's boyfriend had a beard, but he couldn't recall, though that might not matter if the man who shot Eddie at the time was wearing a fake beard as some witnesses thought. And police tried to corroborate those witness accounts about the fake beard by visiting no fewer than two dozen stores, including one not far from where the shooting took place. We found one store they confirmed. Yes, we do sell fake beards. This is a common product we do sell. Unfortunately, there's no way they track it. They don't have a point of sale, register detail or anything along those lines. There'd be no way for them to track it. They don't keep video surveillance inside the store that we could have reviewed and said this person would have lined up with our suspect or time frame. When investigative lines into Alexa didn't go anywhere, police even explored the possibility that maybe Eddie wasn't the intended target. There's nobody who is similar description build age that would look like Eddie, who somebody might be confused, where they targeting another neighbor who was in proximity and they accidentally shot Eddie rather than that neighbor. I don't believe that it was accidental in that sense. By the fall of 2015, now some six months after the shooting, the Newcastle County police ran out of investigative leads. And that's when Eddie's case went cold. There was no new information developing. No new forensic evidence had panned out, no technical evidence had panned out where we would identify a suspect or anything along those lines. And while this was all disappointing for the police, it was far more disappointing to Eddie's mother who was trying to cope with the loss of her only child. Eddie had been killed on a Wednesday. And from then on, Dr. Crystal's weeks would come and go marked by a terrible moment of dread. You know, I wanted it to be from Monday and Tuesday. Please skip Wednesday and go right to Thursday Friday Saturday. So that's where I was because I didn't know how to deal with this. Her grief led her to a place that many people often end up. We start asking herself, what if? She wondered if she had made different decisions along the way. Could she have protected her son? The one that stuck out in her head was the decision. She made when Eddie was a teenager to move from New York City to Delaware. What if they'd never moved? It wasn't a challenge because he really didn't want to leave. But I said, "You know, it's better for us. I think we just need to go." So, you know, now that he's no longer here, I feel like, you know, I should have listened to him. Maybe I should have just stayed there. Eddie had his ups and downs like any young man. And while his father wasn't always in his life, one thing that remained steady was his relationship with his mother, who continues to be a voice for her son. I mean, I'm at a point now where I just want to keep Eddie's name alive. You know, he was my child, and again, he didn't deserve to die like this. Dr. Crystal believes more than one person was involved in her son's murder. I just save the people, and I say, "They, I don't know. You know, I just, again, just my thought process and how I feel about this. I just feel that I just feel that the way they killed my son, I felt like it was one and one person. The way he was killed, I felt like it was more than one person. I wasn't there, but that's just what I feel." Eddie's mom wouldn't go into detail about the custody battle Eddie was involved in with his ex Alexa. All she would say is that his two oldest did come to live with her for about two months after his murder. Then, they went to live with Alexa, who has no criminal record that we've come across and has never been named a suspect in this case, nor has her boyfriend. Today, Eddie's case is pretty much exactly where it was when it went cold in the fall of 2015. There isn't any physical evidence or even much in the way of ballistics that we've been made aware of. And the police haven't publicly named any suspects or made any arrests. They still haven't been able to track down the gold sedan that could have been the getaway car. They never even released footage of it because they don't feel the footage they have is specific enough. And most importantly of all, they're still left trying to figure out who that man at the playground was. I think with this one, we need somebody from the general public who was either made aware of what occurred, who has knowledge, of what occurred, who was a witness to the shooter and the suspect and looking back and say, "Oh, I do remember that suspect. I do remember that person that day." It's going to be, unfortunately, with the benefit of hindsight and somebody having the courage and fortitude to say, "I'm going to help Eddie's family get some closure. I know what happened." Brady's mother, she's done what she's always done, pushes on. She keeps some of Eddie's ashes in a necklace that she wears. It's in the shape of a musical note, a nod to one of Eddie's interests. She's also kept a collection of Eddie's hats and sneakers and even had some of his clothes taken and made into a quilt. Eddie, who once considered becoming a broadcast journalist, was also writing a book about parts of his life which she hopes to finish and plans to add a chapter about what happened to her son in May of 2015. In my heart, I don't think his case is going to ever be solved. That's where I'm at. That's where I'm at. But I have to still have a little, little, little bit, an ounce of faith that maybe somebody would wake up with a conscience and say, "You know what? I need to go and report what I saw. Just maybe. I just need some peace when it comes to my son. That's it. That's all I need. That's all I want." This episode is being released just two weeks after the 11th anniversary of Eddie Heath's murder. If you have any information or if you lived in or near the Fox Run Apartments and Town Homes community in May of 2015 and saw something, anything. Please get in touch with the New Castle County Police Department at 302-573-2800. You can also submit an anonymous tip by calling the local crime stoppers at 1-800-TIP-333 or visit their website at dellaware.crimestoppersweb.com. The deck is an audio chuck production with The Music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.