Recordings reveal ‘Master Jo,’ a Florida prison worker, sought to kill girlfriend’s husband

The secret videos, audios and testimony show a Florida prison worker named Jose Alcazar bragging to an inmate’s nephew about his connections to Mexican organized crime, dealing cocaine and trying to secure a .380 revolver to be smuggled into the South Bay correctional center.

And, prosecutors say, Alcazar also tried to get the man to kill his girlfriend’s estranged husband. “I’m doing this for her,” Alcazar said in Spanish in one audio recording. “I’m doing this for my family.”

But the inmate’s nephew was no would-be hitman. Instead, he was really an undercover Miami-Dade detective, who spent weeks gathering evidence against Alcazar, 49, who was arrested earlier this month on a slew of felonies, including solicitation to commit first-degree murder.

The recordings and evidence was unveiled in Miami-Dade circuit court this week as prosecutors asked a judge to keep Alcazar, a Mexican national who also runs a taekwondo studio in Clewiston, behind bars while awaiting trial. On Tuesday, Circuit Judge Diana Vizcaino agreed, despite supporters of “Master Jo,” as he’s known at his studio for kids, testifying on his behalf.

“The court finds the state has satisfied its burden that there are no conditions of release that can assure the safety of the victim,” Vizcaino said.

Alcazar has since been fired from his job as a “academic instructor” at South Bay Correctional Facility, which is located in Palm Beach County. The state facility is run by the Geo Group, one of the nation’s largest — and controversial — private correctional companies. According to Geo Group, Alcazar is “not part of the security staff.”

“As a matter of policy, our company is unable to comment further as this matter is currently under an ongoing investigation,” the company said in a statement.

Alcazar’s defense attorney did not return a call for comment. He has already pleaded not guilty.

The investigation into Alcazar began when an informant tipped off the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office that he was bringing contraband into the facility. Mining her informants, state investigator Jodi Schuster learned that Alcazar would regularly come to Miami to “pick up drugs and other contraband,” according to an arrest report.

A second inmate gave Alcazar a phone number for his “nephew,” which turned out to be the undercover Miami-Dade detective brought in for the undercover probe.

Their first meeting happened on March 12, at the Denny’s parking lot on the 11700 block of Okeechobee Road. Video taken by a surveillance team shows Alcazar getting into the undercover detective’s car.

Audio recordings caught Alcazar discussing all the help he gave the inmate in prison. The undercover detective then gave him $1,200 and three SIM cards to be smuggled into the prison, for use in contraband phones, the arrest report said. During that meeting, Alcazar talked to the detective about his girlfriend’s husband, whom she was divorcing.

He later told the detective that the girlfriend was pregnant with his child. Alcazar said he was upset that the husband, a wealthy businessman in Clewiston, wanted to have an invasive test done on the pregnant woman to determine the father of the soon-to-be born child.

The woman had not been charged with any wrongdoing.

During weeks of texts and calls — several of which were recorded — Alcazar also sought to secure the revolver from the undercover detective, one small enough to be smuggled into the facility, and agreed to sell him cocaine, according to prosecutors.

Finally, they met again on April 11 at the same Denny’s in Hialeah. In the video, Alcazar is wearing a uniform, smoking a cigarette and speaking through a car window. He hands the detective a container of Ice Breaker gum filled with cocaine. The detectives give him cash, the video shows.

He also talks about how he could get the man’s uncle moved to another prison facility, for a price: $10,000. Then, as they walked to Alcazar’s car, they apparently talk about killing the husband, the report said.

“Remember, he has two houses,” Alcazar says, also warning that the husband keeps many guns in one of his houses.

The detective, in Spanish, asks if he wants the husband to get taught “a lesson” or to “go away.” Alcazar says he wants him to “go,” suggesting it wouldn’t look suspicious. “He has a lot of enemies,” Alcazar says.

The undercover audio shows Alcazar complaining at length about the husband’s lack of child support payments and the bitter divorce and wanted him “taken out of the park so he leaves us all alone” and mused about him perhaps being beaten into a “coma.”

“He keeps escalating things,” he says in Spanish. “If I don’t knock him down, so he leaves me alone the rest of my life ... he’ll keep doing the same, or worse.”

This story was originally published April 27, 2022 at 7:00 AM.