In the summer of 1991, Lisa Ann Bado, a 20-year-old aspiring culinary student, and her mother, Rita Ann Bado, 45, moved from Torrington, Connecticut, to Lantana, Florida, seeking a fresh start. Rita found work as a cashier at a Walmart in nearby Delray Beach, and the two settled into an apartment in the Runaway Bay complex. They were building a new life, enjoying the sunshine and the promise of their shared future.
That future was brutally extinguished on August 22, 1992, just as South Florida began bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Andrew.
That day, after Rita failed to show up for her shift, her brother and his wife went to the apartment to check on them. Inside, they made a horrifying discovery. In the master bedroom, they found the bodies of both Rita and Lisa. They had been bound, sexually assaulted, and shot to death. The scene was one of extreme violence, yet there were no signs of forced entry, and few valuables were taken. The only significant item missing was Lisa's black Honda CR-X, which was found abandoned a few days later outside a warehouse in Hypoluxo.
The timing of the murders severely hampered the initial investigation. As Hurricane Andrew bore down on the state, resources were diverted, potential witnesses evacuated, and the focus of the media and law enforcement shifted to the massive storm. The case, which some investigators initially believed was committed by an acquaintance, quickly went cold, leaving the Bado family with immense grief and no answers. For years, the brutal double homicide remained one of Palm Beach County's most baffling unsolved mysteries.
The break in the case came nearly a decade later, thanks to advancements in forensic science. Investigators had collected crucial evidence from the crime scene, including a hair and four cigarette butts smoked by a person who was not a resident of the apartment. In 2003, DNA from this evidence was entered into the national CODIS database. It matched a man named James Anthony Frederick, a transient criminal with a long record who was known to use aliases such as David Anthony Fenton and Jay Frederick. At the time of the murders, he had been living in the Palm Beach area.
By the time of the DNA match, Frederick was already in prison in Wisconsin, serving a 97-year sentence for an armed robbery committed in 1995. Investigators had suspected his involvement early on due to the similarity of a weapon used in another robbery, but they lacked the evidence to charge him. Now, armed with the DNA link, Palm Beach County authorities indicted him on two counts of first-degree murder, burglary, kidnapping, sexual battery, and grand theft.
In November 2005, James Anthony Frederick, then 45, pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder with a firearm for the killings of Rita and Lisa Bado. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors dropped the other charges. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, to be served after he completes his lengthy term in Wisconsin. His confession brought a final, grim closure to a case that had been overshadowed by a natural disaster and haunted by years of uncertainty.
The investigation also revealed the full scope of Frederick's violence. DNA later connected him to the December 1991 stabbing death of Martin Gatto, a 40-year-old courthouse clerk who was also found bound in his Lantana apartment. While charged with Gatto's murder, Frederick was never tried for it, as he was already destined to spend the rest of his life in prison. He remains incarcerated in Wisconsin, having left a trail of terror that ended the lives of a mother and daughter who had only just begun their new chapter.
