For 29 years, the murder of a Cuban exile leader has gone unsolved. But his daughter, a Miami- Dade detective, won't stop trying to solve the most important case of her life.

BY AMY DRISCOLL

The eyes of the dead stare at detective Nelda Fonticiella as she searches for her father's face on the wall of photos at the Bay of Pigs museum in Little Havana.

She finds his picture down on the left, near the display case of tarnished bullets and worn Cuban flags. All around her are snapshots of other veterans: baby-faced youths, Elvis types in glamour shots, steely-eyed men who gave their lives in the failed 1961 attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

She studies the photo for a minute -- the man with the mustache regards the camera gravely -- but it reveals nothing new.

For 29 years it has been this way. A father frozen in time. A daughter frustrated by unanswered questions. A detective who cannot solve the one murder mystery that matters most: the assassination of her father, Cuban exile leader Juan Jose Peruyero, on the streets of Little Havana in 1977.

''I don't think it's a matter of closure. There is no closure when you have this hole in your life. But it's a matter of justice,'' said Fonticiella, 46, a veteran Miami-Dade cop who serves as a spokeswoman for the department. ``That's what I have come to understand in all these years of trying to make sense of it.''

Now, as the anniversary of Peruyero's murder approaches, some news at long last: His case is being reexamined by Miami police, with help from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. There's no statute of limitations in murder cases. The killer might still be caught.

''Do I have hope? Absolutely,'' Fonticiella said. ``I have to try.''

She was 17, a teenager in typing class at Miami Senior High, when her dad walked from their Little Havana house toward his green El Camino and straight into an ambush. The Bay of Pigs veteran and ex-leader of the famed Brigade 2506 caught six bullets in the back on Jan. 7, 1977.

He died with $3 and a tiny Cuban flag made of paper in his pocket.

The headlines read: Cuban Exile Leader Slain Outside His Miami Home; Castro Agents Blamed. Twenty-five hundred people turned out for the funeral, including a former Cuban president and Castro's sister, Juanita. Peruyero's name was added to a list of prominent exile killings in the mid-1970s that would remain unsolved nearly three decades later.

Miami back then was a place of turbulence, terror and intrigue, a hotbed for anti-Castro plots, the center of the world for Cuban exiles. Dozens of bombings and at least nine killings of high-profile exiles reportedly were linked to the political situation, with many of the murders instantly blamed on Castro agents.

For many, that's an era best left in the past, but Fonticiella can't. She became a cop in part because her father's murder had never been solved. Her family still keeps bits of his interrupted life in a plastic box: his green bottle of Brut cologne, his bathrobe, scrapbooks from the Bay of Pigs invasion, the watch and gold ring from Brigade 2506 he wore the day he died.

''If it were me, he would never have rested until he found justice,'' she said. ``So I can't rest.''

Fonticiella thinks today's technology may be key. For years, she's been reading stories about DNA tests and fingerprint databases breaking open old cases. In her dad's case, she knows the original investigators found fingerprints, bullets, even a jacket that was in a car police believe the killers used. Could there be a hair or some other trace evidence to be analyzed?

REINVESTIGATION PROBE EXAMINES OLD FINGERPRINT

The reinvestigation began this fall. Miami police's cold case detective, Andy Arostegui, already has sent the clearest fingerprint -- taken from the rearview mirror of the car -- to the FBI crime lab. That was about two months ago and he's still waiting for word. He also has requested the remaining evidence, long since boxed up, from police storage.

Is the case solvable? Arostegui, who cleared 22 cold cases in the last two years, is noncommittal.

''You never know,'' he said, with a shrug. ``You just never know. The print could come back tomorrow with a hit.''

That's all Fonticiella wants. A shot.

''Wouldn't it be great if technology could solve this? If a fingerprint they run through the database brings up something?'' she said. ``I mean, it does happen sometimes.''

Digging into a decades-old, politically sensitive case opens a door into the past, though, that some in Miami would prefer stay firmly shut. Many of those in the thick of Cuban political life back then won't talk about the Peruyero case on the record 29 years later. Elected officials, former Miami radio employees, ex-cops -- they say they don't have to look over their shoulders anymore. They don't want to start now.

''Miami in those years was much different than it is now,'' said Guarione Diaz, president of the Cuban American National Council, a non-profit human services organization founded in 1974. ``There were bombings to federal offices and also to homes of Cuban exiles, assassinations and attempted assassinations. It was the last remnant of a philosophy that the ends justify the means, all of it to topple Castro.''

Solving cases like Peruyero's, with the political complications and lingering fear, is no easy task, noted Raul Diaz, a former county detective who helped work many of the exile murders and bombings.

''There are still enough witnesses available where they can probably close one or two of those cases,'' he said. ``Peruyero? I don't know. Peruyero is a hard case.''

Fonticiella, who said she has heard her father was on a hit list along with other prominent exiles, knows ``there are people who don't want me looking into this, who don't want it brought up again.''

''Some of them are even friends of my father's,'' she said, sitting in the Juan J. Peruyero Museum and Manuel F. Artime Library. ``But I need to do this. I need to know.''

ANOTHER GENERATION GRANDSON SHOWS NEW INTEREST

She shows Peruyero's picture to her son, Danny, who graduated from the police academy last year and joined the Miami-Dade police, her department. A lot has changed in two generations, though. Only recently has he become more interested in learning about his grandfather's efforts to overthrow Castro.

''After my father was killed, I remember seeing men carrying ammunition out the back door of the house. We had it stored in the basement, things like bazookas and mortar [rounds] and bullets,'' Fonticiella recalled. ``I just thought it was normal. I thought everyone had that. That's how things were back then.''

In the cold-case office of the Miami Police Department, a crowded room tucked in the back of the homicide unit, two cardboard boxes with ''Peruyero'' written on their sides offer a slice of that world.

Inside, the reports begin with the day of the shooting and continue with daily dispatches in the weeks and months that followed. The documents, handwritten or typed with carbons, detail hundreds of leads tracked by detectives, many long gone from the department.

Edward Carberry, now working in the county inspector general's office, was the lead detective on the case initially.

''Most homicide cops have cases they still think about,'' he said. ``For me, this was one of them. The kind that just haunts you.''

He was on dayshift, 7 to 3, when he was called to the murder scene.

''It was total bedlam. Lots of hysteria, screaming, crying,'' he remembered. The shooting took place a few feet from the Peruyero house, 1761 NW Third St., near the Orange Bowl. For months after, no one would park there.

Witnesses saw a car slow down as it pulled alongside the 47-year-old man. They said Peruyero turned toward the car, then spun away, as gunfire erupted.

''It was a busy spot. There were a lot of people out and a lot of witnesses who saw a man's arm come out the window and start shooting,'' Carberry said.

Before Peruyero died, he was able to tell police that he knew his assailants and describe the car they drove. Two days later, police found it, a gold 1968 Cadillac Eldorado, at 2100 NW Seventh St. It had been purchased for cash seven days before the shooting.

In the ensuing weeks, records show, police questioned dozens of people, explored several different theories -- everything from Castro agents to drug dealers to a connection with the 1976 bombing of radio commentator Emilio Milian, a close friend of Peruyero's -- and compared fingerprints found at the scene to those taken from more than 50 potential witnesses. They administered lie detector tests to about half a dozen people.

Police also took note of Peruyero's politics. Ardently anti-Castro, he had spoken out against terrorist activities and a year earlier had lost control of the Bay of Pigs veterans' association.

Milian, who lost his legs in the attack on him, told police at the time that Peruyero had called him the night before the shooting to tell him he'd discovered new information about the bombing. The two men were set to meet the day of Peruyero's murder, Milian told police.

LINGERING QUESTIONS ONE STILL CONSIDERED 'PERSON OF INTEREST'

Early on, though, detectives publicly focused on two men, Jesus Lazo and Valentín Hernández. The men already were wanted for questioning in the 1975 shooting of Luciano Nieves, an exile leader who preached peaceful coexistence with Cuba, at the former Variety Children's Hospital. Both were believed to be members of the Pragmatista organization, an anti-Castro Cuban terrorist group.

Lazo was never found but Hernández was caught and convicted in 1979 for the Nieves murder. Two months after his life sentence was imposed, Miami police gave him a lie-detector test in the Peruyero case. Documents show the examiner found deception on four questions, including: Did you shoot and kill Juan Peruyero?

Arostegui said he considers Hernández "a person of interest.''

''There are a lot of avenues to pursue,'' he said. "That's one of them.''

Hernández, released on parole in 2004 and living in Naples, said he was not involved in the Peruyero shooting. He wasn't even in the country at the time, he said. He was in Colombia, trying to get a visa to live in Chile, he said. He also said he was given information from police, via his lawyer, that another man who was killed in a gangland-style shooting in March 1979 was the real killer.

''His face is my face -- exactly like mine, even the mustache, everything,'' he said.

His attorney, Nathaniel Barone Jr., said he remembered ''something to that effect'' but he couldn't recall specifics. He said he believes Hernández was in Colombia at the time of the Peruyero murder.

Hernández, now 63, said he failed the lie-detector test in 1979 because it wasn't correctly administered and also because he was upset by his conviction in the Nieves case.

He offered his own theory on Peruyero's death: The Bay of Pigs veteran was serving as a bodyguard for a man involved in drugs, he said. A dispute arose and Peruyero was caught in it. Hernández said the murder had nothing to do with him.

``I am a 1,000-percent anti-Castro person, not what is portrayed of me. I fight against Castro in Cuba. I am not a murderer. I never killed anyone in my entire life.''

Carberry, the former detective, said police were never certain who committed the murder.

''To this day I'm not sure,'' he said. ``We tried to keep an open mind. Back in those days, the first cry was always that Castro agents were suspected. While I'm sure that was happening -- there were Castro agents around -- it was only one factor. We had to weigh all of these things.''

Hernández said he is untroubled by questions about the past. He lives, he said, `` . . . in peace with my conscience and my children and all I care about is love and forgiveness. . . . God forgives me for my sins, I have to forgive everybody.''

He offered this for Peruyero's family: ``I feel sorry for what happened to him because he was my friend.''

The words are wasted on Fonticiella. ''What I want,'' she said, ``is for someone to answer for this crime. Justice. It's that simple.''