Joseph DiMare Murder: Son Speaks Out After Stepmother ID'd as Killer

Wealthy Miami businessman Joseph DiMare was shot dead on March 24, 1961, and the case went cold for more than six decades

On the evening of March 24, 1961, the body of 53-year-old well-to-do businessman Joseph DiMare was found dead in the passenger seat of his Cadillac Fleetwood in North Miami. He was shot four times in the head.

Joseph's wife Frances, 33, told police they were driving to dinner at Mike Gordon's Restaurant around 7:15 p.m. when two armed men hopped into the backseat when they were stopped at a traffic light. According to Frances' account, the men pointed a gun at her head and told her to drive to an empty lot. She claimed they pistol-whipped her until she blacked out and when she came to, DiMare was dead.

She ran barefoot through bushes to a gas station where police were contacted.

"Everybody was investigated," says attorney Paul Novack. "They looked into whether it was a mafia hit. They looked at Frances. They had a list of suspects, and around and around it went."

The case remained cold for 62 years until earlier this month when the Miami-Dade Police Department with the help of Novack revealed that Frances, who died at the age of 82 in 2006, was "responsible" for his slaying.

"It's a blessing," DiMare's son Richard, 81, tells PEOPLE.

DiMare was a widower with four children when he met Frances, a bank teller. The marriage became rocky and DiMare changed his will, stating that his wife, who was living on and off in Ohio, had to be living at home at the time of his death to collect an inheritance. The week before the murder, Frances returned to Florida and DiMare went to Boston to speak with his family about his crumbling relationship with his wife.

"It was decided Joe was going to divorce her and sever those ties," says Novack. "He flew back from Boston with the intention to start divorce proceedings. What we believe is he told her that day or that night about the divorce."

Miami-Dade homicide detective Jonathan Grossman, who collaborated with Novack, believes DiMare was killed at home before they went out to dinner and then Frances drove the Cadillac to the field.

Frances described running barefoot from the scene for help, but police found no scrapings on her feet and her shoes were "neatly placed" next to the car, says Grossman.

Frances alleged she was pistol-whipped, but neither doctors nor DiMare's family found any signs of an attack.

"On the day of the funeral, her hair was being done at our home," says Richard, a then 21-year-old business student at the University of Miami. "And I stood over her, and I looked in her face and there were no injuries whatsoever."

Even more telling, police found two casings in the back of the Cadillac that were traced back to a gun DiMare bought Frances months before. It was Richard who provided police with the evidence.

"Richard says to the detectives, 'Hey listen, I took my father's gun [months before] and I shot it into the pool and I have the casing," Grossman tells PEOPLE. "Over the course of the years, the firearms unit was able to determine that the casings from the car were in fact fired from the same gun that Richard fired into the pool, which was his father's gun."

"I knew the next day and I told the police, 'My stepmother was the shooter,' and they just looked at me," says Richard.

Novack says Frances at the time was mostly treated as a victim. Novack, who recently solved the 1966 disappearance of 17-year-old Danny Goldman, who was killed by mobsters as part of a money laundering scheme related to the bank where his father served as an officer, says many of the old Miami murder cases "involve an element of corruption, undue influence and intentional derailment."

After DiMare's slaying, a high-up government official began coming by the family home and started "pushing police to leave Frances alone," he tells PEOPLE.

"She's a victim, she's a widow, she's upset. Don't even think about her being a suspect," he says. "You have political power pushing against what seems to be a tide of evidence."

DiMare's death shattered his three college-aged sons and 9-year-old daughter, who lost their mother to breast cancer a few years earlier.

"It was pretty devastating," says Richard. "We lost our mother in 1956. What children lose one parent and then five years later the other parent is dead."

Richard says after the funeral Frances gave them 24 hours to leave their family home.

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"My 9-year-old sister ended up living with my brother and his wife," he says.

Frances inherited around $250,000, he says.

"It's hurtful," says Richard about his stepmother never facing charges. "All the evidence was right there. This should never have gone on this long."

He credits Novack for reinvestigating the case and pushing for a resolution. "He was my family's guardian angel."