The Miami Chronicles Fragomeni and Archer

I met Richie the day her move to Miami his Aunt and Grandmother lived around the corner from me next door and across the street from Tony Simmons. We use to ride bikes and watch TV holding hands at Tony Simmons house. His sister Lorraine and my sister Mary were best friends. I will never forget the day I got the news of what happened to him. I cried and cried. Went to his viewing with my sister I still have the old day pictures of him playing in the hose. I pray for Richie everyday. It was his sisters boyfriend at the time now husband who found Richie. Lorraine told us about Falco asking if he could come to the Funeral and Richie sister said if you show up at his Funeral I will put you in a little box like you did my brother. I will always remember the times we spent holding hands in the beanbag at Tony’s house watching TV riding our bikes etc. rest in peace always Richie

My father was good friends with Ritchie growing up but moved away from the neighborhood a little less than a year before this incident, which he learned about through his other friends. I always remember him telling me about his friend Ritchie and the booby trap story. Several years later I'm reflecting upon this story my father told me and decide to do some googling and see what came up. This podcast is really the only well developed archive of the booby trap incident and the narrator does a great job leading you into the story while also giving his own perspective as someone who hung out with Ritchie that summer. Thank you for making this podcast, it filled in a lot of blanks for my father and I.

This podcast is hard to review because the first three episodes are SO rambling and go down so many pointless cul de sacs that should have been cut or condensed. I would have dropped it if a friend hadn't highly recommended the podcast to me. Yet once it becomes clear in episode four what the story is actually ABOUT and why we're listening to this guy going on about his neglected teenage years and his pot-head friends, it becomes riveting and devastating. To its credit, the podcast does take on a horror movie-like quality where what seemed like quirky kid behavior early on becomes evidence of something deeply sinister going on below the surface. But there's still multiple hours of rambling that does not need to be included and adds nothing to the story. It could have easily started with the "selling pills on the beach" story which is a much better hook than the boring "missed the bus" story that goes nowhere and serves no purpose. It's unfortunate because with a good editor, there could be a really poignant story here about piecing together fragments from childhood and discovering the predator that was in your midst, but it's a diamond in the rough. I'm glad the childhood girlfriend of Richie is involved as well to provide another POV even if she wasn't directly involved or victimized herself. Very sad that so many people involved in this story are dead or out of contact and can't provide their own experiences except through police records and court depositicons.