Oct 8, 2008 2:48 pm US/Eastern
"Joe Cool" Auction Postponed
Murdered Captain's Family In Bitter Feud
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
A Miami judge has postponed the auction of the Miami charter boat Joe Cool, more than a year after its Captain, his wife and two crewmembers were killed by a pair of pirates who had tried to hijack the fishing boat to Cuba.
The court-ordered sale of the 47 foot Buddy Davis vessel comes after a months long, bitter court battle among members of the murdered captain's family.
During the proceedings Wednesday in the chambers of Circuit Judge Ronald Friedman, the broker in charge of the auction requested the postponement so that the vessel could be put on display for potential buyers. All parties involved in the auction would then have to agree to the time and place.
Joe Harry Branam, Sr., grandfather of the slain captain, Jake Branam, forced the sale of the Joe Cool to recoup losses he says he suffered through co-signing on the loan that Jake got to buy the sport fishing boat for approximately $250,000.
He argued that any proceeds from the auction would be given to Jake and his wife Kelly's children.
The sport fisherman-type yacht, which has two staterooms and two bathrooms, was expected to sell at auction for a fraction of its original purchase price.
A friend of Joe Branam, Sr. told CBS4 reporter Gary Nelson the boat is essentially being sold for salvage value. Depending on the sale price, the Branam child may never see a dime of the proceeds.
"The FBI and Coast Guard tore it apart," the family friend said, explaining that "tens of thousands of dollars" worth of equipment and furnishings were removed from the boat as part of the investigation into the quadruple murder of Jake Branam, his wife Kelly and crewmembers Scott Campbell and Sammy Cary.
The forced sale of the Joe Cool was opposed by Jake Branam's uncle, Jeff Branam and other family members who claimed they had an interest in the boat after financing much of Jake Branam's charter operation.
But Joe Branam, Sr. "held the note" on the vessel, the family friend told CBS4's Nelson.
"He continued to make the payments on the boat," she said, some $2,800 a month, and had personally provided collateral for the loan from Banco Popular with a certificate of deposit.
The Branam family has been largely estranged since Joe Sr.'s divorce from his wife, Jeannette, Jake Branam's grandmother, eleven years ago.
Jeannette Branam and her son, Jeff, had battled the family's patriarch for custody of the murdered couple's two children, Taylor, who was three years old at the time of the murders, and her brother, Morgan, who was seven months.
After a court battle that raged for months, the judge awarded custody of the children to Kelly Branam's sister in Michigan.
Amid familial vitriol, Captain Jake Branam also suffered personal tragedy the year before the Joe Cool murders when his father, Joe Branam, Jr., died of a massive heart attack at the age of fifty.
In Miami federal court this year, Arkansas drifter, Kirby Archer plead guilty to piracy and murder charges in the Joe Cool hijacking. A jury found co-defendant Guillermo Zarabozo of Hialeah guilty of firearms violations, but was unable to reach verdicts on piracy and murder counts. He is to be retried.
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