Murder on Tape

By Deborah Bowie

It’s a journey no one wants to take: Enduring life after the tragic passing of a loved one. But, unlike the untimely death of those who succumb to cancer or car accidents or some other untimely demise, murder is the most difficult to survive. I should know, I lost my sister, Sharon Anderson, in 1994 to a brutal home invasion caught on tape.

Her death was heinous and cruel and took me and my family on a winding odyssey for justice over more than three decades in what would become the longest trial in the history of criminal cases in South Florida.

In the years since, I have had to endure lie after lie told by people who parrot the inaccuracies of a desperate family unwilling to accept the evidence or the outcome of a senseless triple homicide.

This is my truth.

1994: The Murders

Sharon was my eldest sister, my only sister, just 11 months my senior. She was beautiful, fun-loving, and very trusting. The morning of June 26, 1994, Sharon was closing out her night at Casey’s Nickelodeon Bar and Grill in Miramar. It was a popular spot for the locals. A place that stayed open late, served cocktails over typical American bistro-style food and featured a gregarious and well liked bar owner, Casimir Sucharski. Everyone called him “Butch.”

In the late hours of Saturday night, June 25th, Sharon and her friend, Marie Rogers, caught his attention. Sharon and Marie had visited Casey’s before, for a quick bite to eat and a drink, but they weren’t bar regulars.

On this night, Sharon scooped up Marie who lived just around the corner, and they headed to Casey’s to celebrate Sharon landing a role in a murder noire dinner play at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. She was to play the famed voodoo priestess, Marie Laveau. She was nervous, and Marie knew just the place to calm her nerves: Casey's Nickelodeon. They had no idea it would be their last night on earth.

Also at the bar that night, Pablo Ibar and Seth Peñalver. Witnesses at the restaurant would later tell investigators both Ibar and Peñalver had a verbal tiff with Butch who questioned them about an alleged stolen credit card. To settle the dispute, Butch comped their drinks and they called it a night and left, they said.

Business in the bar was slow that night so Butch closed up early, but not before inviting my sister, Sharon and her friend Marie, to join him for a drink at another establishment. Sharon and Marie agreed, said goodbye to their friends, and trailed Butch to another place, which was apparently just as slow. Eventually, the three ended up at Butch’s house in Miramar on East Shore Road.

What happens next is only known because a hidden home security camera captured the next hour or so on tape: More than a half hour after the three entered the home, settling around the dining room table and drinking what appeared to be champagne, two men, both wearing makeshift disguises covering their faces burst in.

Butch, who was in the middle of telling a story to his house guests, freezes. One guy wore sunglasses and a baseball cap and rushed Butch, slamming him across the face with a large black tech 9 gun.

Sharon, clearly shocked by the violence, took off for another room, which was a bedroom just off camera. Running behind her – a man donning a shirt over his face who we would later come to know as Pablo Ibar. Marie, Sharon's friend who moments before was seen on tape laughing at Butch's storytelling, sat frozen in the chair. She was eventually pushed over by the baseball-cap wearing bandit, who was now beating Butch with his gun as he writhed in pain on the floor.

In what seemed like an eternity, Sharon emerged minutes later from the room. The guy behind her was now brandishing a gun. Sharon’s ankles were tied together by a phone cord although from the black and white surveillance tape, it looked like rope. The guy shoved Sharon to the floor and joined the other guy in brutally beating Butch as the women lay motionless beside him on the dining room floor.

The beating was punishing and unrelenting, but thankfully, silent. In fact, the entire video tape had no audio. Despite the muted images of terror capturing the home invasion in real time, the silent home invasion flick spoke with a heart-pounding thunder into the hearts of anyone watching it.

It was horrific to watch, yet it was hard to look away.

After nearly 25 minutes, Pablo and the other guy started shooting the people in the house. Butch first, then Sharon, and next, Marie.

Butch, who had already been shot once while on the floor, suffered the most violence as seen later on crime scene photographs blasted on an overhead projection showing the graphic images in the court room. Busted teeth, fractured ribs, broken fingers and scuff marks to his head.

Other photos from the scene showed Sharon had a single bullet to her head, and another blackened hole to her neck. The hole was surrounded by gun powder, the remnants of a close contact bullet. Marie was shot once where the spine connects to the neck. It was a fatal shot.

Back to the video: Before the women were shot, I watched Pablo menacingly grab my siter's waistband, pulling her away from Marie on the floor next to her and then pointing the gun at her head and firing. His first attempt failed as the bullet backfired. I remember thinking, “why he didn't just stop and leave.” No sooner had I wished for that miracle, he continued his firing line.

All of a sudden, Sharon moved – picking herself up off the floor, obviously stunned and bleeding profusely from the gaping bullet hole in her right eye. Baseball cap guy stooped close over her, hovering over her back to shoot her again. Marie, who had miraculously missed the first round fired by Ibar, was shot in the neck by the guy wearing the baseball cap.

Both women died next to each other on the dining room floor of a man’s house they’d never been to before that night. Afterwards, the guy wearing the cap and sunglasses calmly stood up, stuffed the gun down his pants and headed out of frame toward the front door.

Following close behind him was Ibar, who by now, had removed the towel from across his face and in full view of the mounted hidden camera, walked out to join Peñalver in Butch’s parked black Mercedes Benz. Together, the duo fled the scene.

Left on the walkway outside the residence - a blue shirt donning the name Consolidated Electric Supply. The shirt would be pivotal in the years to come (keep reading).

Meanwhile, the silent unflinching camera continued to roll showing the still eerie images of three people now dead from multiple gunshot wounds in the house that was alive with storytelling and laughter just 40 minutes earlier.

The Trials

In 1997, my mother and I attended the first of many criminal trials for Pablo Ibar and Seth Peñavler. Little did we know the trials would occupy the next few decades of our lives, and the twists and turns associated with the case would make for the craziest, most expensive trial in the history of South Florida.

Due to the heinous and clearly pre-meditated nature of the crime, the triple homicide made Ibar and Peñalver prime candidates for Florida’s death penalty and that is where the journey to get justice became even more complicated.

Death cases are long, difficult and very painful to endure. In most cases, the verdicts are relentlessly challenged and the families suffer through endless retrials. Unfortunately, this would be our fate, as well.

One of the shooters, Ibar, was born in the US to immigrant parents, a Cuban mother and a Spanish father, later appealed to Spain to get involved in his case in what he characterized a case of mistaken identity. Spain was already involved in another death penalty case involving one of their own, Joaquin Martinez.

Initially, Spanish officials said they were only interested in getting the death penalty charge removed from Ibar’s case but over the years, the quest to drop death instead became a campaign to challenge Ibar’s guilt and recast him as an "innocent" despite the overwhelming physical and corroborating evidence to the contrary.

Later, those same Spanish officials lobbied then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and really, anyone who would listen to them. The only problem is, this is the United States and despite Ibar’s now so-called dual citizenship, he was born and raised in the United States and subject to U.S. law. It was certainly his legal right to question the grainy video although still images from the surveillance tape yielded positive identifications by his friends and his own mother, who at the time she was shown the photo, had no idea it was culled from a video that captured a triple homicide.

She told the police, “That’s Pablo.” (She would later recant that statement in court via a thick Spanish accent essentially declaring, "I no speak English").

Of course, the video was a central piece of evidence in these trials, but so was the T-shirt left outside. Consolidated Electric Supply, as it turns out, was a vendor to the business where Ibar’s mother worked. Heck of a coincidence!

Needless to say, the case was a bust as the jury was deadlocked on Ibar’s and Peñavler’s guilt. Word was, the jury believed more in Ibar’s guilt than in Peñalver’s. So, we saddled up for round two as now both men had separated and with their own legal counsel, held separate trials. So, round three times two as the cases meandered through Florida criminal courts for another 15+ years.

From 1997 to 2000, my mom and I endured three more trials – a hung jury, and two guilty verdicts for Peñalver and Ibar, convicted separately and each sentenced to death.

We lived our lives until we got a call about another trial. This time, years after the initial 1997 mega-trial, it would be only one defendant. And, the trial after that one, the other defendant.

Over the years, I'd had three more children – triplets whose lives were being lived out in the shadow of this marathon journey to get justice for my sister, Sharon, and her friends. My first child was born three days after Sharon was murdered in 1994. I missed her funeral giving birth to my first born in the hospital. The shock of the dual experiences kept me under my doctor's care for a week.

By 2012, we were in our fourth trial – one that saw Peñalver stunningly acquitted by a jury who struggled with what they termed “inconsistencies in the evidence presented.”

I won't try to explain it, but suffice to say, the state's case against Peñalver, who remained in sunglasses and a baseball cap throughout the homicides, was never as strong as it was against Ibar. The prosecutor had always feared as much when we learned the defendants would have separate trials before the court.

When I reflect on the entire ordeal today, I guess Peñalver was right when he allegedly told a cell mate back in 1994 that Ibar removing that shirt from around his face on camera was a bad idea for Ibar, not for him.

The reality is, after so many appeals, subsequent juries do not often hear the same testimony (for e.g., people die or testimonies change). Other times, juries don’t get to hear about the same evidence, particularly if defense attorneys are successful in having that evidence barred during re-trial.

With this new development, Ibar’s new legal team leaped at Peñalver‘s acquittal to seek a retrial for Ibar.

In 2019, they finally got it and we prepared ourselves for trial #5.

The Evolution of Science and That Pesky Little Blue T-shirt

Remember the blue shirt? The one left on the front lawn of Butch's house after the homicides? The shirt worn by one of the shooters? Well, now that shirt was key evidence.

On the shirt was a logo bearing the name Consolidated Electric Supply, a vendor to the company where Ibar's mother worked. That part was not the new evidence; it was the DNA on the shirt that would steal the show this time.

In 1994, DNA testing was not as robust and advanced as it is now so when the shirt was sent to a lab in North Carolina some 20+ years later (a lab Ibar’s attorney’s selected, by the way, though they never volunteer this information to the public when speaking about this case) to be re-tested for DNA evidence, we waited with baited breath to see if science had finally caught up with the truth. We soon learned it had!

Touch DNA, as it is called, was found on three areas of the shirt in the re-testing. What is touch DNA? Touch DNA, or trace DNA, refers to the DNA that is transferred from a person to an object or surface when they touch it. This DNA can be shed via skin cells, bodily sweat, or other bodily fluids containing the person's unique genetic material otherwise known as DNA.

In this case, the lab results showed a mix of two or three contributors that turned out to be none other than Ibar and my sister, Sharon. The match between the genetic traces on the shirt and Ibar was 353 trillion times “more probable than coincidence.”

Read that again: 353 trillion times...

So, with that new development, a stronger case against Ibar was finally made. This time, scientific evidence linking Ibar to the murders – along with the damning videotape – sealed his fate with the jury, which convicted him and imposed a sentence of life without parole.

As the case ricocheted through Florida’s courts, it also mirrored the state’s dizzying swings over how death sentences are decided. Since 1994, Florida has lurched from allowing majority jury recommendations for death, to requiring unanimous verdicts, then back again – each shift rewriting the rules midstream for defendants and victims’ families alike.

Years later, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting would again tip the balance toward majority verdicts, reviving the debate and leaving families like mine suspended in a kind of death-penalty purgatory – trapped between evolving laws and elusive justice.

After Ibar’s latest conviction, the jury learned he was arrested in Miami, FL, two weeks after the Miramar triple murder in another home invasion where a family, including a very pregnant woman, was tied up by home invaders at gunpoint. In that Dade County case, it was revealed that Ibar shot and killed the family’s two Rottweiler dogs before a family member escaped and called police.

Despite his attorneys' casual dismissal of this incident as nothing more than a dispute between former friends, two family dogs were fatally shot and a heavily pregnant woman was told by one of the invaders to "shut the fuck up, bitch or that baby is gonna get cut out from your belly."

“Who said that to you?” a prosecutor asked.

“Pablo,” she replied, her voice cracking as the courtroom fell silent.

Ibar was arrested at the scene, along with the others who terrorized the family. Yet, the jury could not be told about the crime until after they deliberated on the Miramar case. Under U.S. law, jurors must decide guilt or innocence based solely on evidence tied to the specific crime charged. Introducing unrelated acts — even those that seem to establish a pattern — risks unfairly biasing jurors. Only after conviction, during the penalty phase, can such evidence be introduced to weigh aggravating factors and determine whether a defendant should face life imprisonment or death.

I have wondered since if the previous juries knowing what was learned by this jury would have rendered a different sentencing recommendation.

The International Campaign of Lies to Recast Ibar as a Hero Victim

In spite of the facts of the case, the scientific evidence and the Dade County home invasion, Ibar and his family have remained steadfast in their pursuit new trials — the latest one launched in 2025 with another so-called emerging witness — portraying Ibar as an innocent man caught up in the “Hispanic” commonalities of South Florida's Latino population where they accuse police of arresting him because he “looked like the guy in the video.”

These are, of course, all lies.

For one, Ibar was already in jail in Dade County, awaiting arraignment on the brutal home invasion where he shot the two dogs there when Broward County investigators received a tip. He wasn’t randomly selected as they allege.

Then there’s the alibi: In a failed attempt to create an alibi for Ibar in 2000 — as told by his then-girlfriend and now wife, Tanya — the trial took an incredulous turn when Tanya claimed she remembered three years later that she was with Ibar on the morning of the murders.

Her testimony and the testimony of her sister was ruled as perjury by the judge in the 2000 trial after a hotel manager flew in from Ireland and testified that international long distance phone cards the sister claimed to have purchased there and used to call Tanya who was supposedly with Pablo on the night of the murder, were not available for sale in his hotel in 1994.

Not available... meaning, they simply made it up.

The whole story was crazy to begin with. Purchasing a card in a hotel and claiming to have phoned your sister in the U.S. does not prove Ibar was there... in fact, the call never happened. Luckily, the jury saw through this charade.

Today, Ibar’s defense continues to mislead people that there is no DNA evidence linking Ibar to the crime, that the surveillance video is too grainy to make out faces and that Ibar was not present at the scene. Lies, all of it.

Over time, social media has become a breeding ground for conspiracy loyalists who know nothing about this case. They’ve never sat through the testimony, never seen the evidence, yet speak with the confidence of experts and even blame the victims for their own death.

I don’t have an international advocacy group defending my sister’s memory. Sharon was my Irish twin — just eleven months apart in birth, inseparable in life. My mother never recovered from watching her first child murdered on tape. She carried that pain through years of cancer — Stage IV in her lungs, breasts and bladder — a slow, punishing death she helped along with every cigarette she lit in the years since losing Sharon.

I know my mom was consumed by guilt for staying with an abusive man who terrorized her, my sister, and me for years. And, then she lost Sharon.

Aftermath

It’s now just me, but in no universe will I ever be quiet and defenseless about my sister’s death. Sharon had a life. She had friends and family who loved her, dreams of a future as an actress, or an entertainer and definitely hopes to someday be a mom. Her friend, Marie, also only 25, left behind her daughter who was only three years old at the time of her death and a mother who mourns her still. And, Butch, an only child himself, leaves a family scarred by his loss. These three souls didn't deserve to be murdered by home invaders.

This case is not at all as complicated as the Ibar campaign would have you believe, and he is no form or fashion a hero or someone to be admired via a television show that simply lies about who he is and about the facts of this case. The television portrayals that sanitize him and twist the facts are a disgrace. Pablo Ibar is a cold-blooded murderer. Watch the video yourself and decide what word fits him best.

The reality of this marathon case is that it's simply a home invasion robbery that became a triple murder. Two men believed the homeowner — a bar owner with cash, drugs, and a reputation — would be an easy target. When they didn’t get what they came for, they killed everyone inside.

Sharon and Marie? They were collateral damage — innocent women in the wrong place at the wrong time.

My Promise to Sharon

Sharon has been dead now longer than she was alive. She died in 1994, when she was only 25 – the best part of someone’s life when they are young, joyful and full of hope. A part of me died that day, too. And, I am forever scarred by watching my sister die a tragic death at the hands of two people who didn’t even know her name.

The tape may live on in the halls of the Broward County Courthouse, but it can never overshadow the beautiful, vibrant life of the young woman silently featured in it. I promised Sharon I would never let that happen, and this is me keeping my word.

*content updated November 2025 to include latest attempt at new trial