Politics & Justice in the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office.

The Murder of Lynne Friend


Ed O’Dell tried to reach Lynne when he didn’t hear back from her that Sunday night. He called and left messages on her answering machine. In his soft southern accent the love and concern is audible.

The moving van arrived as scheduled first thing Monday morning. They left, documenting that they had attempted, unsuccessful, contact with Lynne.

Several calls were placed to the police reporting the abandoned car on the side of the road by the field.

It was Esther Sanchez however who made the missing persons report to police. That was on Monday. She had also left messages on Lynne’s answering machine. There was alarm in her voice. She knew what had happened.

And so the investigation, now 17 years old, began.

It began, as all murder investigations do, with concentric circles of interviews, starting with those closest to the victim and moving outward. Among those in the first circle were Esther Sanchez, Ed O’Dell and Clifford Friend.

As I recall* Clifford was interviewed on that first day, Monday. A uniform officer from one of the municipal departments that shared jurisdiction in the case conducted the routine interview and wrote a report. Cliff told the officer that he had last heard from Lynne on Friday night, August 26, when she had come over to pick up a child support check. The officer didn’t know then about the phone call with Ed O’Dell on Sunday night, the one that was interrupted by a call from Cliff at approximately 8:15. No one in law enforcement knew about that call then.

Esther Sanchez was interviewed by a different officer from, as I recall, a different law enforcement agency. She told the police about the divorce, about threats that Lynne had told her Cliff had made, about the bitter custody battle over little Christian, about Lynne’s fear.

Ed O’Dell flew down from Tennessee to be interviewed. Mr. O’Dell is the nicest of men and very successful in business, which requires shrewdness. Mr. O’Dell must be shrewd or he wouldn’t be so successful. You didn’t have to be shrewd though to have realized, say at about 9 pm on Sunday, that Lynne had been murdered. Yet Mr. O’Dell did not contact the police, not Sunday or Monday. The police contacted him. Once they did, Mr. O’Dell couldn’t have been more cooperative and forthcoming—later he ended up spending many thousands of his own dollars financing a continuation of a misconceived sea search for Lynne’s body. I think the murder of Lynne was well-planned enough that even if Mr. O’Dell had called the police at 9 pm on Sunday the murder wouldn’t have been prevented nor would the perpetrators have been caught immediately thereafter, but the police got a later start than they need have.

This case was never a whodunit however. By the time that first, immediate, circle of people had been interviewed the main subject was known, Clifford Friend. The investigation has dragged on for seventeen years not because the case has gone unsolved, but because of a hard-to-believe series of events that delayed it, and by neglect, laziness and incompetence on the part of (in alphabetical order) the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Miami-Dade Police Department, and the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.

*This is written from memory. When I am reasonably certain of something I will write it without qualification. When, as here, I am not, I will qualify it. Clifford Friend was interviewed by police but whether or not it was on that first day, Monday, I am not reasonably certain.

-to be continued