Chico Forti

“	There are lies from these policemen that are way bigger than the lie that I did.	”
	— Forti

Enrico "Chico" Forti is an Italian former sportsman and entrepreneur who, in 2000, was convicted of the 1998 Miami shooting death of Dale Pike, son of legendary Ibiza hotel owner Anthony "Tony" Pike. Forti still proclaims his innocence, claiming he's been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.

Background[]

Sports Career[]

Forti was born and raised in Trento, Italy, the son of Maria and Aldo. He graduated from high school in 1978, and later moved to Bologna, where he attended Italy's Superior Institute of Physic Education (I.S.E.F.). From 1979, he began practicing windsurf thanks to Karl Heinz Stickl, a former world champion, and became a pioneer in the discipline. In 1984, while in Hawaii, he was among the first to back flip on a windsurfing board. In the same year, he designed the first windsurf jump ramp. Forti competed in a total of six windsurfing world championships (in 1985, he was the first Italian to ever compete in a windsurfing world championship) and two European championships. He also practiced base jumping, skiing, snowboarding, and wakeboarding. In 1991, he won the Italian sailing championship, later winning second place at the world championship.

TV Production and Entrepreneur Activities[]

In 1987, an automobile accident left Forti unable to pursue his windsurfing career. After his recovery, he began writing articles for sports magazines, and became the editor-in-chief of an Italian windsurfing magazine. All the while, he also began producing footage depicting extreme sports, creating his own production company, Hang Loose, in 1990, and broadcasting on ESPN. In that very same year, he participated to and won Telemike, an Italian quiz show featuring New York-born TV host Mike Bongiorno. With the prize money, he relocated to luxurious William's Island, Miami, Florida, in 1992. After divorcing from his first wife, he remarried with Heather Crane, a former model, and fathered three sons with her: Savannah Sky, Jenna Bleu, and Francesco Luce. He became interested in real estate, and bought several apartments in William's Island, establishing an exclusive network of acquaintances, including former Florida State Senator Paul Steinberg (who became his personal attorney), and Prince Rainier of Monaco. He also made a suspicious deal to buy the houseboat where Andrew Cunanan, the assassin of Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace, had committed suicide in July 1997. Forti utilized the houseboat for showing in a documentary named "The Smile of the Medusa", in which it was alleged Miami Beach Police had faked Cunanan's suicide to cover up a purported connection between the assassination and organized crime. He also arranged Miami Beach Police detective Gary Schiaffo to give him photos of Cunanan, in order to sustain his theory. When this didn't happen, the deal fell through (although the documentary was never shown in the United States, Forti would allege Miami police turned upon him because of that).

Murder of Dale Pike and Arrest[]

Tony Pike with George Michael — Tony Pike (left) with George Michael at Pikes, where the *Club Tropicana* music video was shot in 1983.

Forti had possibly enlisted the help of Thomas Heinz Knott, his German neighbor and a convicted fraudster, to obtain the houseboat from Matthias Ruhel and Siegfried Axtmann, the owners of the property. Knott and Chico shared several acquaintances on William's Island, including English-born Australian Anthony "Tony" Pike, legendary owner of the famed Pikes Hotel of Ibiza. The latter had hosted several celebrities over the years, including George Michael, Julio Iglesias, and Freddie Mercury. Pike had intentions to sell the hotel, as he was losing money at it, and Forti proposed to buy. It was eventually revealed Knott had been scamming Tony Pike all along, illicitly using his credit cards numbers for lifestyle expenses up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to Knott, Forti himself used Tony's cards for some expenses at least once, which enraged Thomas when the latter realized the purchases had been made in his name. Subsequently, Tony began suffering from AIDS dementia, and Chico took advantage of his illness to make him sign countless forged papers. According to Knott, Pike was nothing more than a puppet in Forti's hands, at the time. The pair travelled to Ibiza to finalize the deal before a notary, who declared Tony was mentally fit to sign. By then, the manager of Pikes, Antonio Fernández, had grown suspicious of Knott and Forti's activities. When Forti went to the hotel claiming to be the owner, Fernández called Tony's two sons, Bradley and Dale, and told them he thought Tony had been conned. Tony's older son, Dale, decided to fly to Miami to clarify the situation. When he landed, on the evening of February 15, 1998, he was picked up at the airport by Chico. The latter would later lie to his wife, telling her he never met with Dale.

On February 16, the nude body of Dale Pike was spotted by windsurfer David Suchinsky in the vegetation near Sewer Beach, on the island of Virginia Key. He had been shot twice in the head with a .22 caliber gun, and had been dragged in the sand until the point where he was eventually found. At first, police thought the murder to be related to homosexual activities on the beach, but later changed their mind after identifying the victim through several pieces of evidence recovered at the scene. The latter included: Pike's boarding pass, his visa form, a Pikes Hotel keychain, and a phone card with Forti's number on. Investigators tried contacting Knott, but to no avail. Instead, they reached Forti, and made him believe Tony was also found murdered to test his reaction. At that point, he repeated the lie he had told before to his wife, Tony, Knott, and his own lawyer: he never met with Dale at the airport. According to homicide lieutenant John Campbell, Forti asked an interesting question while on the phone with the detectives, before he was even told of the murder: "Is Dale Pike dead?", or something similar. On his part, Forti declared he had been told of Dale Pike's death by a friend of Tony, in New York City. When police discovered Forti's deceit, thanks to the airport paging service and his cell phone records, the latter presented himself to the police station, and admitted he had indeed picked up Dale Pike, after he was confronted with evidence. Forti would later claim police lied about this: he went to the station precisely to tell the truth, and he had intentions to do so even before he was confronted with the records. Most notably, police apparently acquired Forti's cell phone records on March 3, less than a month after this questioning. The interrogation was not recorded, so it's his word against the investigators'. Forti would also allege policemen threatened and insulted him while he was being interrogated.

Under further questioning, Forti began alleging Knott's involvement in the murder, claiming his life, and his family's lives, would have been in danger if he revealed details. He claimed Knott had forced him to hand over Pike to his men (specifically a German guy named Hans) at the Rusty Pelican, a restaurant near Sewer Beach, otherwise he would have hurt his family. Forti would later deny to have sustained this version, claiming it was Dale Pike who asked him to go to the restaurant in the first place. According to him, Dale said he was going to meet with Knott's men. The only problem is: Pike and Knott didn't know each other personally. According to Fernández, they only spoke once, on the phone, arguing about the credit cards fraud. When found and arrested, Knott denied involvement in the murder, and indeed had an alibi for the night in question: he was at a dinner party in his house. Knott claimed it was Forti who was actually trying to set him up. According to him, two nights after the murder, Chico presented himself to his apartment and gave him eight-hundred dollars to leave town, claiming he was searched by local police for the credit cards fraud. A .22 caliber gun was indeed registered to Thomas Knott, but it was actually bought with Chico's money, and the seller didn't know for sure whether it was Chico or Thomas who ultimately kept it. In the end, the investigators decided Knott was not responsible for Dale Pike's death. He had repeatedly stolen money from Tony, but he wouldn't have risked of being indicted on murder charges for what was a relatively minor fraud.

Again turning to Forti, police discovered the forged documents Chico had prompted Tony to sign. With the latters, Pike had basically undertaken to give the multimillion-dollar Pikes Hotel, and all of his assets, to Forti, in exchange for only a couple of tens of thousand of dollars. Allegedly, Forti had also been involved in several real estate frauds in the Miami area. As icing on the cake, an informant named Ibrahim Kilani (the husband of Knott's fiancee's sister) claimed he was hired by Chico to kill an attorney who had sued him, with the murder plan being remarkably similar to the way Dale Pike's was carried out. Amongst all this circumstantial evidence, detectives eventually found the "smoking gun": a small quantity of sand in Forti's SUV's trailer hitch, which, according to experts from the Miami University, came from the beach where Dale Pike was found murdered (Forti would later allege it was a planted evidence).

Trial and Aftermath[]

At his 2000 trial for murder (the felony murder rule was applied, meaning since the murder was sparked by the commission of a felony, fraud, it was first-degree regardless of intent), Forti's defense attorneys, Ira Lowey and Paul Steinberg, attempted to argue that Chico was a rich, family man who had no motive for committing this murder, and pointed their finger towards Thomas Knott. On the other hand, prosecutor Reid Rubin described Forti as a cold-blooded con man-turned-killer. Eventually, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Offered a reduced sentence in exchange for information on the accomplices both the police and prosecution agree he would have needed to carry out the murder, he preferred to remain silent.

Forti still proclaims his innocence, which is also sustained by a group consisting of several Italian professionals and television personalities, Chico's family and friends, his new lawyer Joe Tacopina, and a juror from his trial, Veronica Lee. The latter claims the trial wasn't fair, and that she was prompted by other members of the jury to vote guilty even though she thought there was a reasonable doubt. Over the years, policemen, attorneys, and even the judge involved in Forti's case have been blamed for sort of "conspiring" against the latter. The affair has recently resurfaced into the limelight both in the U.S. and in Italy, where public opinion is divided. Nonetheless, a newly-discovered evidence proving Forti's innocence shall be required for the 2000 trial to be invalidated, and it hasn't come up yet.

Thomas Knott spent some time in prison on fraud charges, and was then returned to Germany. Tony Pike buried Dale's ashes under a tree at the entrance of the Pikes Hotel. He died in February 2019.

Modus Operandi[]

It was never confirmed whether Forti premeditated Dale Pike's murder or not, or if he had any accomplices. Pike was brought by car to Sewer Beach, Virginia Key, where Forti possibly shot him twice in the back of the head with a .22 caliber pistol. The body was afterwards stripped, presumably in an attempt to make it look like a homosexual-related murder, then dragged to a secluded spot in the nearby vegetation.

Known Victims[]

Dale and Tony Pike — Dale Pike (left) and his father, Tony.

February 15, 1998, Virginia Key, Miami, Florida: Anthony Dale Pike, 42 (shot twice in the back of the head)

On Criminal Minds[]

Season Five
- "Parasite" - While Forti was never directly mentioned or referenced on the show, he appears to have been an inspiration for the episode's unsub, Bill Hodges - Both were con artists-turned-killers who began defrauding people approximately in the same period, operated in the Miami area, had at least two sons, and entertained relationships with two different women at some point in their life (though, in Hodges' case, it was because of an extramarital affair). Also, both killed their respective victims in order to avoid being exposed as fraudsters.

Sources[]

Italian Wikipedia's article on Forti
Chico Forti - Official Site
In Re Chico Forti: Brief as Amicus Curiae
Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justice - 1x03 Island Obsession
48 Hours - The Case Against Enrico Forti
Oltre il RAGIONEVOLE DUBBIO - il caso FORTI