‘One kick-ass homicide detective.’ Retired Miami-Dade cop dies after generator accident

As a longtime Miami-Dade homicide detective, Juan Capote had a relentless drive to solve murders. But he was also known for his compassionate touch with the families of murder victims.

One night in the mid-1990s, Capote delivered the news to a woman whose husband had been killed. She was so distraught that she attacked him, ripping off his outer shirt. He didn’t fight back.

“He just comforted her,” recalled his former homicide partner, Anne Bogen. “She wound up sobbing on him, as he’s standing there in his T-shirt. He had that humanity to him.”

Capote, who had retired from law enforcement, died this week at age 62 in Tampa. He’d been hospitalized with extensive burns and other injuries suffered in June while trying to move a generator that caught fire at a road work site, where he’d been working with a friend’s engineering company.

His death stunned old-time Miami-Dade police officers. “He was an amazing man. Everyone who knew him loved him,” said his fiancée Anita Carabine, a retired cop and one-time partner.

Born in Cuba, Capote came to the United States as a young child. The family lived briefly in Maryland, before moving to Tampa. A geeky kid in high school, Capote joined the U.S. Marines at age 17. After his service, Capote moved to Miami and joined the county police department in 1985. His first assignment was the Northwest District, chasing burglars and other small-time criminals on the midnight shift.

“They affectionately referred to us as Batman and Robin,” said retired officer Tim Smith, his midnight-shift partner. “I was Batman, he was Robin … for a couple of young guys, it was an exciting career and an exciting time.”

“We lost one of the good ones, that’s for sure.”

After a stint as a general investigations detective, Capote joined homicide in the early 1990s.

He was the lead investigator in the the murder of Dutch tourist Tosca Dieperink, who was shot to death by robbers in 1996, part of a spate of tourist robberies that marred Miami. The two robbers were convicted and sentenced to prison.

Capote and homicide detective Ken Ottley, who went on to become lifelong friends, also teamed up to arrest two men who robbed and murdered the wife of a high-ranking Miami police officer in 1999.

Other killers he helped catch: Harrel Braddy, who kidnapped a 5-year-old girl and left her to be eaten by an alligator alongside Interstate 75. Jesus Rodriguez, who murdered his estranged wife and was convicted even though her body was never found. And Danyan Mangham, who murdered two men in South Miami-Dade and spent 15 years awaiting trial.

“He was funny, affable, smart, and hardheaded. Yeah, we butted heads on more than one occasion. But when he got involved in an investigation he worked it until the events were clear and the perpetrators were caught,” said Miami-Dade senior prosecutor Abbe Rifkin.

Said Bogen: “He was one kick-ass homicide detective.”

Bogen recalled Capote’s generosity. In Mexico, while trying to find relatives of a man who had been murdered in Miami, they ran across the mother of another man who had been killed in Florida. The woman lived in poverty in a small village, and made her living selling blankets to tourists.

“He drops 100 bucks on Mexican blankets,” Bogen said. “That Christmas, every single one of us got a Mexican blanket.”

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In 2006, late in his MDPD career, Capote was the lead detective in a mass shooting at a child’s Spiderman-themed birthday party in Northeast Miami-Dade. Gunmen stormed the house, fatally shooting a 6-year-old boy and his mother, and wounding four others, including two children. The killers are all now in prison.

Even while working the case, Capote frequently visited the wounded children at the hospital, bringing them gifts, including a red Power Ranger doll.

He finally retired from Miami-Dade in 2008, after his father passed away. He moved back to the Tampa area, to take care of his mother. There he worked stints with the Hillsborough and Pinellas sheriff’s offices before leaving police work a couple years ago.

In Tampa, he had recently reconnected with Carabine. The two had plans to marry and travel to Italy.

“We fell in love all over again,” she said.

Capote is survived by his fiancée Carabine, son Sebastian Bell, his mother, Doris Capote, and sisters Ana Dubuque, Eli Rodriguez and Lissett Foreman.

A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday at Gonzalez Funeral Home, 7209 North Dale Mabry Highway, Tampa. The service will be for immediate family between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., then open to the public from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

This story was originally published September 1, 2022 at 1:47 PM.