They were supposed to have dinner there the night Ellison was murdered. Michaels became nervous when his friend didn't show up — the 68-year-old Chicago transplant had never been this late for their usual Sunday-night meal. So Michaels walked the two blocks to Ellison's townhouse while thinking back to Ellison's last phone call, a few hours earlier, when his friend had sounded rushed.
Maybe he had met someone? Michaels didn't want to interrupt, but something felt wrong. When he found his friend dead in the kitchen, his instinct was validated.
Kyle Alcott/Newscom
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Police quickly linked Nock to the murder through Ellison's stolen credit cards. Without getting a warrant, they tracked Nock's cell phone. The suspected killer, they quickly learned, was already in police custody and his phone was in a property room in South Beach, where he had been caught illegally hawking coconuts. They arrested him on murder charges hours later.
There's little doubt police nabbed the right man. Ellison was known for risque dalliances with younger men, and Nock is a bearded, curly-haired Delaware native 40 years his junior.
But Williams, the public defender, now argues that tracking Nock to South Beach without a warrant was wrong — no matter how certain police were that he was the killer. A BSO spokeswoman declined to comment about the case, but police will likely argue that the "imminent danger" Nock posed should have allowed cops to bypass the courts. No hearing date on Williams's challenge has been set.
Dohn Williams is at the forefront of challenging cell-phone tracking in South Florida. He has filed two other challenges, including a recent motion challenging the arrest of Andre Delancy, a 25-year-old Bahamian charged with helping two other men hide from police after they shot two BSO deputies during a traffic stop; one of the deputies, Brian Tephford, died in the shooting. Williams contends Delancy's phone was illegally tracked to a hotel.
Lawyers representing a former client of Williams' have also filed a similar motion in a case against Justin Donald, a 27-year-old from Fort Lauderdale arrested in July 2009 after he stole a gun and a wallet from a BSO colonel's car.
"The laws have not kept up with the technology," Williams contends. "Police should not be able to see you and track you remotely without a warrant. The privacy issue is what concerns me the most."
For Michaels, the legal wrangling opens fresh the emotional wound of finding his friend dead on the floor. Ellison's brothers and nephews, who live in Chicago, won't be able to move past his murder until Nock is convicted and sentenced.
"There are so many loopholes in a lot of the laws today that allow anybody to go free," Michaels says, taking a break from his shift at the front desk of a Fort Lauderdale hotel. "We just want justice for Larry."
