Chronology
Under construction…
At present, the chronology is rather sketchy. While it contains most of the major events, we hope to add more detail. If you have corrections or suggestions, please contact us.
1969. Fuster is convicted of manslaughter at 20. Fuster says he shot the man accidentally while trying to perform a citizen’s arrest.
December 19, 1980. Fuster suffers a gunshot wound to the head. Subsequently he seems more irritable and emotionally volatile.
1981. Fuster is convicted of fondling a 9-year-old girl. Sentenced to two-years-probation, but to 15 years if he violates. Fuster adamantly maintains his innocence in the case.
1982. Fuster and his then wife, Martha Gonzalez, purchase a house in a development in a development, Country Walk. Fuster and Martha were already divorced.
January, 1983. Fuster ends his relationship with Martha. He retains custody of their son, Noel.
June, 1983. At a flea market, Noel meets a young Honduran woman named Iliana. Noel gives Iliana their phone number, and Iliana begins calling, initiating a relationship with Frank.
September 24, 1983. Fuster marries Iliana. She moves in with Frank and Noel at Country Walk.
November, 1983. Joan, the Country Walk Club House manager, asks Iliana if she could babysit a boy and girl overnight, because the parents were celebrating their wedding anniversary. Other neighbors begin calling Iliana to babysit.
January, 1984. Iliana’s cousin Mariza moves in with them.
February, 1984. Mariza quits her job as a waitress and begins to help Iliana with the care of children. Iliana places an ad in the Country Walk Monthly Newsletter advertising their services. Frank has business cards made up.
Spring, 1984. A three-year-old boy who attends a baby-sitting service run by Fuster’s 17-year-old wife, Iliana, tells his mother, “Iliana kisses all the babies’ bodies. (A common practice in Iliana’s native Honduras.) Jan Hollingsworth, a news-assignment editor (not a journalist) for station WCIX becomes very interested in ritual day-care sexual abuse.
June, 1984. Mariza moves back in with her mother.
August 1984. Jan Hollingsworth, who also lives in Country Walk, receives a call from a neighbor who shares rumors about the Fusters being child molesters, inspired by the claim that Iliana kisses babies’ bodies. Hollingsworth calls Chris Rundle at the State Attorney’s Office, and the investigation begins.
August 9, 1984. Fuster arrested.
September 1984. Hollingsworth quits her job at WCIX and begins doing paid investigative work for Laurie and Joseph Braga, who would interrogate the alleged victims. Hollingsworth was now a full-time child advocate.
Early May 1985. Frank and Iliana’s cases legally separated. They had been represented by Michael Von Zamft and Jeffrey Samek. Samek would represent Fuster and Von Zamft would represent Iliana. Von Zamft then effectively became one of Frank’s prosecutors. His strategy was to portray Frank as undeniably guilt and Iliana as one of his victims. Iliana is put into isolation.
Early August 1985. Von Zamft hires psychologists Michael Rappaport and Merry Sue Haber to coerce a confession from Iliana. They see Iliana at least 34 times, Reno herself visits Iliana at least 30 times.
August 15, 1985. Jury selection begins.
August 22, 1985. Iliana pleads guilty to 12 counts of sexual abuse.
October 2, 1985. Fuster convicted and sentenced to a minimum of 165 years. Fuster’s young wife, Iliana, was brutalized into signing a confession and agreeing to testify against Frank by Janet Reno and zealous but unqualified interrogators. Iliana held out for eleven months of solitary confinement in unsanitary and degrading conditions. Iliana is sentenced to ten years. She becomes a born-again Christian in prison.
1986. Jan Hollingsworth, portraying herself as an objective journalist, published Unspeakable Acts, a book that convinced many of Fuster’s unquestionable guilt. Janet Reno writes Hollingsworth praising the book’s accuracy.
1988. Researchers at the Center for Disease Control (CDC) warn that the gonorrhea test used in the Fuster case – and many others – is highly unreliable.
1989. Iliana released from prison and deported to Honduras.
1990. ABC creates a made-for-TV movie based on Unspeakable Acts. More damage is done to Frank’s case.
1991. Ofra Bikel produces a series on The Little Rascals case for PBS’s Frontline.
January 1993. A gang of fellow inmates nearly succeed in choking Fuster to death.
1993. Journalist Debbie Nathan publishes a long, thoroughly investigated article, “Revisiting Country Walk,” in Issues in Child Abuse Accusations.
April 19, 1993. Janet Reno orders the attack on the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas. 76 Branch Davidians were massacred. Reno believed the children were being sexually abused.
August 1993. An inmate stabs Fuster with a pen. The instrument’s steel tip lodged in Fuster’s neck, millimeters from a main artery.
December 1993. Attorneys Arthur Cohen and Robert Rosenthal file a motion for a new trial. For Fuster.
1994. Iliana gives a deposition to Fuster’s lawyer, stating that “nothing had really happened.”
March 18, 1995. Iliana recants this deposition. Her recantation was written by the district attorney’s office and brought to her by a Baptist minister who could withdraw needed support from Iliana in Honduras. The recantation effectively ends Fuster’s appeal.
April 19, 1995. The Oklahoma City bombing.
April 24, 1996. President Bill Clinton signs the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty act, which drastically reduced the ability of federal courts to correct injustices committed by the states.
1998. Frontline broadcasts “The Child Terror,” exposing the problems of two other Janet Reno Cases: Bobby Finje and Grant Snowden.
2001. PBS airs Frontline segment, “Did Daddy do it?” Ilena describes how her accusations against Fuster were coerced. She also claims that her recantation of the 1994 deposition was coerced.
2012. The Innocence Project of Florida investigates the Country Walk case.
January 23, 2014. Fuster is informed that his first parole interview has been scheduled for March 2134.
November 7, 2016. Janet Reno dies.
January 2018. The Innocence Project of Florida declines to take Fuster’s case. No explanation is given. (That is standard policy for innocence projects.)
July 2018. Fuster badly beaten by a group of inmates while being transferred to another prison.