Young Brothers Massacre

Epilogue

EPILOGUE In pursuing desperate fugitives, hundreds of courageous law enforcement officers risk their lives daily, yet they are seldom heralded as heroes. In the saga of the young brothers massacre there were few heroes, only martyrs and disconcerted police officers. Fortunately, except for an occasional cumbersome contraband machine gun, there were then few of the rapid-firing hand guns, MACllS, Ar-'JS, and HK91S with the silencers that are now in the hands of many a berserk malefactor. More than fifty years would pass before dreadful events would erupt to challenge the Young brothers 'record. On October 4, 1985, eleven FBI agents converged on a Phoenix apartment to arrest a fugitive. "Special agent Robin Ahrens, 33, was killed by shots mistakenly fired by other agents," and, unfortunately, said the New York Times, she was "the first woman agent killed in the line of duty." Six months later, one agent was dismissed, one resigned, and three were disciplined. The fugitive was captured uninjured.1 On Friday, Aprllu, 1986, at 9:30 A.M., in the quiet Kendall residential area of Miami, the FBI achieved a new high point in ignominious defeat and humiliation. On that day a "task force" of eight experienced agents in four automobiles pursued tW9 gunmen in a stolen black Monte Carlo bearing an identified stolen license plate. The two gunmen in the Monte Carlo were suspected of having committed six or more vicious, fatal bank robberies withh the year. Joseph B. Corliss , the agent in charge of the Miami office, said that the gunmen, realizing that they were being followed, "slammed the car into a tree and came out firing an automatic weapon 137 138 Young Brothers Massacre (30 rounds a container) and a shotgun modified to hold more shells." FBI agents Benjamin T. Grogan and Donald Dove were killed instantly. In the ensuing ten-minute gun battle, hundreds of rounds were fired, and five agents armed with handguns and one shotgun were wounded. The wounded agents were Gorden McNeill, John Hanlon, Edmund Mirales, Richard Mannauzzi, and Gilbert Orrantia. The fleeing gunmen were William Matix, thirty-four, and Michael L. Platt, thirty-two, both dressed in army fatigues. Florida neighbors described Matix as a "born-again Christian who liked to give testimony in church to the memory of his dead wife" (whose life had been insured for $350,000) who, according to Columbus, Ohio, police may have been killed by Platt. One agent miraculously escaped the fusillade unharmed. Mirales, badly wounded in the left arm, "crawled about 20 feet, stood up, and shot the two suspects as they attempted to get away in a government car," the only vehicle not disabled , the Associated Press reported. According to New York TImes reporter Jon Nordheimer, "a transcript of FBI radio transmission in the minutes leading up to the shootout indicated that the agents who were trailing the suspects thought the pair was planning to stage a holdup. The agents debated whether to wait or try to set a trap to arrest the pair before they could begin a holdup."2 FBI director William Webster described the shootout as an "incident," not a "massacre," presumably since only two people died and five were wounded. The April 21, 1986, issue of TIme magazine mentioned this historic episode only incidentally in an article on the National Rifle Associations "powerful lobby [against all law enforcement organizations] push for lesser gun controls." The article concluded: "The casualties were the worst ever suffered by the FBI in a single incident."3 United States attorney general Edwin Meese, reacting to the episode, said, "This is a kind of thing that can happen. We're just glad these two men were stopped." Judge Webster responded to the suggested possibility of inadequate Epilogue 139 firepower: "This was a very good surveillance effort" by "brave and commendable agents" who "responded quickly and in a way to best protect innocent lives." When pressed by an Associated Press reporter about a "lack of matching fire power between his revolver-armed agents and semiautomatic weapons," the director replied that the agency "had no information that these guys had such high powered weapons." And, he concluded, "in robberies blamed on the two, they had used shotguns."4 In the hands of Harry and Jennings Young these lethal automatic weapons, II capable of firing at least 30 rounds in a single container, II would have wiped out a regiment of law enforcement...