The Suitcase Murders

Then Rivaflecha handed police another clue, the name of another local at the motel: 21-year-old Sia Demas.

Demas was born in Chicago but as a young girl relocated with her family to Hollywood, Florida, where she was raised.

Her mother, Pam Saiger — who declined an interview with New Times — described her daughter to local media as a sensitive girl who would bring home stray cats and dogs.

"Once she even brought home a stray man," Saiger told reporters. "She said, 'Mom, I feel sorry for him.'"

Saiger claims her daughter began abusing drugs as a teenager, grew addicted to crack, and eventually dropped out of high school. A string of arrests in Broward and Miami-Dade counties followed, for prostitution and possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia.

"Sia first came before me as a juvenile," recalls former Broward County Circuit Court Judge Melanie G. May, who presided over at least three Demas hearings. "I saw her many times over the years. She had a very supportive mother who also pleaded with me to give Sia another chance." Judge May, who left for the Fourth District Court of Appeal in 2002, says she got to know the five-foot-seven brunette well over the years. "To be quite honest, I felt sorry for her. She wasn't particularly attractive and always seemed so uncomfortable in her own skin."

In 1996 Demas gave birth to a son, of whom Saiger now has custody. But motherhood didn't stem her wild ways. In the years that followed a 1998 drug charge, she violated probation six times.

"It was sad because her mom kept trying to help her," says May, "but we would always find her hanging out in Tent City with these much older homeless men." In May 1999, May sentenced Demas to eighteen months in prison and ordered her to complete an eight-month drug treatment program and parenting course. "I felt it was the best thing for her," she says.

In a handwritten note Demas penned to May shortly before leaving prison, she said, "Sorry for all the trouble I have caused you. You have helped me a lot and I thank you, but you can believe me, I'm not going to mess up again."

Demas was released on July 2, 2000, after serving thirteen months in the Pembroke Pines facility. She was 21 years old. She was sober. She had a four-year-old son and a loving mother.

"I never stopped loving her," said Saiger. "I never stopped trying to help her. People think she was a throwaway person, but they forget she had a family who loved her."

Within two weeks Demas was begging friends for money. She wanted to buy drugs, according to family friend Joe Keane. "If she was a really bad person, I wouldn't have tried to help her," Keane told reporters shortly after Demas's death. Demas used Keane's Wilton Manors address on occasion to receive mail, but he refused to fund her addiction. "You can't help someone who won't help themselves," he said.

"Drug addiction is a chronic illness," says Chip Hobbs, who supervises South Miami Hospital's Residential Addiction Treatment Program. He is also a recovered crack addict, sober since 1984. "The drug literally hijacks the human being and their life and it tells them, öGo get more.' It tells a person what to do and when to do it. Forget the dangers, forget the consequences; addiction says, 'Go feed me.'"

On August 8, another prostitute, Nicole Bullard, told police she and Demas were on the 6700 block of Biscayne Boulevard. Shortly before 3:00 a.m. Bullard says a man in a dark color Chevy 1500 truck pulled up and flashed a wad of cash. She claims the pickup had tinted windows, an extended cab, a thin chrome sun visor, chrome rims, and big tires.

Demas climbed in next to the driver, whom Bullard described as a white male, approximately 40 years old, with a stocky build and a mustache. Twenty-four hours later, her battered body was discovered in Dania Beach.

The homicide cases of Kim Dietz Livesey and Sia Demas are still open.

The blood-stained carpet at the Knight's Inn turned out to have come from a menstruating dog. Like every other tip police investigated, it failed to lead to the man who killed the two young mothers.

To date, there are at least fourteen unsolved prostitute homicides in Miami-Dade and Broward counties for which investigators have no reliable eye witnesses, obvious suspects, or jailhouse confessions to help track the killer. None have been positively linked to the Dietz and Demas murders.

In the months and years since the murders, the bodies of nine more women were found dumped in various spots in and around Miami-Dade and Broward.

Two were discovered in containers.