Daughters of Slain Miami Springs Officer to Hear Their Father's Voice for the First Time

Natalie and Katherine Stafford have never heard their father speak. That is expected to change with the recovery of a roughly three-minute radio recording of Miami Springs Police Officer Charles B. Stafford, who was killed in the line of duty more than three decades ago.

Stafford was shot and killed on June 11, 1991, after pursuing a suspect along the Airport Expressway near Liberty City. He was 28. He remains the only Miami Springs officer to die on duty.

The effort began in 2024, when Albert Sandoval, then an assistant chief and now the department's chief, asked a freelance reporter for the Miami New Times for a copy of Stafford's last radio transmission. Sandoval wanted the officer's daughters to be able to hear their father at last.

The reporter had gathered Stafford's radio records in 2021 while covering the case for the Miami Herald. But the audio file had been lost in a hard drive failure, and the reporter could not remember where it had originally been found. The search started over, with a new round of public records requests. This week, those requests produced the recording.

On it, Stafford is heard following a white 1978 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. "We're, uh, eastbound on 112, approaching 27," he tells dispatch. His last call came at 8:49 p.m. Backup officers arrived about 10 minutes later and found him struggling to breathe.

Merrit Sims was convicted of Stafford's murder in 1994 and sentenced to death. Sims acknowledged the shooting but said he acted in self-defense. The Florida Supreme Court reversed the conviction in 2007. In 2011, Sims accepted a plea deal that will keep him in prison until 2037.

Tim Elfrink, then a Miami New Times editor and now a supervising editor at CNN Investigates, covered that 2011 sentencing. He reported that Stafford's widow, Cecilia Stafford, described it as "a bittersweet day." Her words to Sims in court were more pointed: "On behalf of my family, my children and myself, may you rot in hell."

The reporter credited the Florida Center for Government Accountability and the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office for help in obtaining the records.

The recovery comes as police leaders in the area work to strengthen ties with the press. In Hialeah, where Stafford grew up, police spokesperson Lt. Eddie Rodriguez recently spoke with journalism students at Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus about the relationship between the media and law enforcement. "We have to work as a team," Rodriguez told the students.

The recording has never been heard by the public. The Miami New Times is sharing it so the community Stafford served can hear him in his own words, doing the job for which he gave his life.