The Murder of Joe Pelusa Diaz

In 1958, Joe Pelusa Diaz, a 44-year-old Bolita operator, was shot to death by a man with a 12 gauge shotgun as Diaz moved from a taxi cap to his Cadillac. The killer, who waited just feet away from Diaz's Cadillac, made his getaway in a black car into the night with the lights off as Diaz fell to the pavement.

Diaz was seen shot by Robert Van Auken, the cab driver who took Diaz to his 1957 Cadillac parked alongside Woodland cemetery after his visit from the home of a female friend, Mrs. Lois Nunez.

Diaz never reached his car, getting shot with 26 of the buckshot, each the size of a 32 caliber, hitting and tearing a large hole in his right side above his waist. The cab driver said it happened so quickly he could only determine the killer was a white man driving a black car. He couldn't identify the killer, and he couldn't see the car's license number.

Diaz had been waiting for sentencing in both Hillsborough and Polk County criminal courts on numbers racket convictions. He had bragged during the last few days he wouldn't go to prison by himself.

He left behind a letter dated December 28, 1956, that read, "to be opened in case I disappear or die by accident, or I'm shot to death." In the letter, Diaz named a member of the city vice squad as the man responsible "if anything happens to me."

The letter said the vice squad member had been putting pressure on Diaz and his friends, "so we will turn our Bolita business to a group that has him tied up. He does everything they tell him." The letter also named

Diaz's alleged gambling associates and members of the other gang.

To this day, the brutal murder of Joe Pelusa Diaz is still considered unsolved.