Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

POLK COUNTY, FLA. - Can you remember your 10^th birthday—the cake, the anticipation of opening presents?

The twins, Mara and Nicole Dosso will sadly never forget their tenth. It was December 3, 1997.

Mara Dosso: I just remember that we woke up and then he sang us "Happy birthday."

He was their dad, 35-year-old Frank Dosso.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent: Any special plans for that day that you remember?

Nicole Dosso: That night, we were supposed to have cake and coffee with our grandparents and our aunt and uncle and my mom and day.

But their father was late getting back from work. It was unlike him.  Frank had promised his wife Maria he’d bring home Chinese for the party.

Maria Dosso Jacoby, Frank Dosso's wife: At a quarter to 6 p.m. I called him because I was actually annoyed with him. I was gonna say to him “What are you? Why aren’t you home yet? Of all days, you know, you’re coming home late.” And there was no answer already. 

Maria began to worry. Maybe there’d been car trouble, worse, an accident.

Frank worked with his father and his sister’s husband at a manufacturing business in central Florida, near Tampa. They made the kind of conveyor systems you see in dry cleaners that retrieve garments.  

But now—on the twin’s birthday—it was getting late. The last time they talked, Frank told Maria that his sister Diane would be picking up him and her husband George Patisso. They’d all arrive together.

But where were they?

Maria Dosso called her husband’s parents, Phil and Nicoletta. They hadn’t heard from their son or daughter either.  So the elderly Dossos got in their car about 6:30 p.m. and drove 20 miles to the shop, Erie Manufacturing.

The lights were on. They saw their daughter, Diane’s, car parked out front...

Nicoletta Dosso, Frank Dosso's mother: I walked in, the door was open.  It was not locked...I walked in there… and I saw Diane.  And I said, “Oh, my God.  Diane, who did this to you...who did this to you?” 

The parents saw their daughter, Diane, first in the hallway, her legs crumpled beneath her in a pool of blood. She’d been shot twice in the head.

Around the corner, more. Diane’s husband was murdered execution-style.

His body was slumped by Dosso’s longtime business partner, George Gonsalves.

And a few feet away lay their son, Frank Dosso—Maria’s husband, the twin’s father—like the others, shot in the head.

Nicoletta Dosso: So, when I walked in, I closed Diane’s eyes.  I said, “Diane, I was the first one to see you.  And I’m the first one to see you going.”  And I closed the eyes.  

It wasn’t long after, Frank’s wife, Maria, arrived to flashing lights and strung yellow crime-scene tape. Her father-in-law delivered the unbearable news.

Maria Dosso Jacoby: Phil came over to me and he held me so tight it hurt.  He held me so tight, and he told me, “Maria, we lost them.”

Four dead. Four murdered.

An extended family’s gaping horror became an urgent criminal investigation.

Polk county Florida, the town of Bartow, had never had a mass murder.

There were so many scenarios to run down.   Was it an act of passion, perhaps, or revenge?  Was Diane, the Dosso’s daughter — who happened to be a local prosecutor — the target?

Local police quickly called on the help of agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement—the F.D.L.E—the state’s counterpart of the F.B.I.  

FDLE agent Tommy Ray was put in command of a state-local task force.

Tommy Ray, Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent: When we first started the taskforce and we started looking at this, there was a FBI profiler. He stated that this was a career case. And I asked, ‘What do you mean, a career case?’ and he goes, “Hopefully, you’ll solve this.  But, you’re not gonna solve this overnight, you know?  This is gonna take a long time.”

Agent Ray knew all about crimes taking a long time to crack.  In his 25 years on the job, he had a well-earned reputation as a cop with a knack for solving stone cold cases.

Hopefully, the Erie Manufacturing massacre wouldn’t be one of them.

Detectives began their investigation by looking at what the crime scene itself could tell them, the warren of offices and hallways in the shop, where forensic technicians had recovered 12 bullet casings, eleven of them .22 calibre, the other a .32. That meant two different guns had been used.

Ray: Initially, we thought there was more than one shooter.  We thought there was probably two to three suspects.

From the trajectory of the wounds in the victim and resulting blood spatter no more than a foot or so off the ground, the investigators concluded that the three men had been forced to their knees or put on the ground and killed with a .22.

Ray: You could see how someone in the doorway with a firearm could hold three guys at bay, maybe force them down and as they’re getting down, you know, start shooting.

Diane, the evidence suggested, had apparently come in after the initial murders, been chased by her killer, and grabbed from behind by the hair. She’d been shot in each temple with both a .22 and a .32 caliber handgun.

But fingerprints? DNA? Hair? Fiber? The killer or killers hadn’t left a trace.

There was a chair with a dusty footprint of a man’s shoe on it and a drop-ceiling tile overhead that had been moved. 

But like so much else about the puzzling scene, detectives didn’t know what to make of it.

Four families were shattered. Maria Dosso was suddenly the single parent of three young girls.

Maria Dosso Jacoby: I remember we were all in my and their father’s bed just holding each other. And I didn’t even want to change the sheets for a while because that’s the bed that Frank had slept in.  I just wanted to hold on to whatever I could.  (crying) And I think the girls wanted that too. 

Murphy: How did you tell the girls?

Maria Dosso Jacoby: I told them one by one.  I remember Nicole was the first one.  And I told her, I said, “You know, daddy is dead.”  And the first thing Nicole asked me, “Did Nelson Serrano do it?”

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