Outside of the 1963 Kennedy assassination, no 20th Century homicide by gunfire has been

more extensively examined and generated more speculation than what has come to be known
as the "FBI Miami Firefight." Indeed, one would have to travel back to October 1881 and the
O.K. Corral to find a shootout which has so assumed the mantle of the Epic.
The 1986 FBI Miami shootout was a gun battle that occurred on April 11, 1986 in an
unincorporated region of Dade County in South Florida (renamed Miami-Dade on November 13,
1997) between eight FBI agents and two serial bank robbers. During the firefight, FBI Special
Agents Jerry L. Dove and Benjamin P. Grogan were killed, while five other agents were
wounded. The two robbery suspects, William Russell Matix and Michael Lee Platt, were also
killed.
The incident is infamous in FBI history and is well-studied in law enforcement circles. Despite
outnumbering the suspects 4 to 1, the agents found themselves pinned down by suppressive
rifle fire and unable to respond effectively. Although both Matix and Platt were hit multiple times
during the shootout, Platt fought on and continued to wound and kill agents. This incident led to
the introduction of more powerful handguns in the FBI and many police departments around the
United States.
The violent crime/bank robbery squad was deployed throughout the City of Miami that day on
surveillance, anticipating a possible robbery being committed by these suspects. At the time
Grogan and Dove fell in behind the suspects was pure "happenstance." They were enroute to a
bank when the suspect vehicle appeared in front of them. No other squad members were
nearby. There was no time to deploy the long guns in the trunk of the Bureau car when the
incident began to unfold. Now, some of you are thinking, "well they should have had them
within arms reach....." valid thinking but at the time in history that this event occurred most
agencies that carried long guns in unmarked vehicles kept them in the trunk until the time of

use.
The contrast in lighting affected the agents that arrived after the shooting began. The large
trees where Mattix and Platt's vehicle came to rest provided dark shade. The agents outside
were in bright sunlight and had difficulty identifying the suspects/agents. One of the FBI Agents
that investigated the incident remarked how difficult it was to see and shoot because of the
bright sunlight and the contrast.
Special Agent Ben Grogan was past retirement age and could have easily either retired or
moved on to a less dangerous squad. He wanted to be where he was. Sadly, he lost his
glasses in the car crash and I think his last words were, "where is everybody?" Emphasis on "I
think."
Special Agent Ed Mireles said as he was lying there with his arm hanging by a thread, he began
to get very angry, he believed he was dying and he did not want them to get away with it! He
began shooting the shotgun at this point..........he could feel his vision fading from loss of blood.
The Incident
Sometime after 0900 hours that Friday, Special Agents Ben Grogan and Jerry Dove spotted the
suspect vehicle and alerted SSA McNeill that they had surreptitiously slipped behind the black
Monte Carlo on the South Dixie Highway. McNeill immediately alerted the rest of his squad that
they had their bad guys and gave the coordinates as he, SA Richard Manauzzi in a solo car,
SAs Edmundo Mireles and John Hanlon in another vehicle, and SAs Ron Risner and Gil
Orrantia in a fifth sedan closed in on the mobile surveillance.
About the time that Manauzzi fell in behind Grogan's and Dove's vehicle with Hanlon and
Mireles joining them, Platt and Matix got the notion that their game might be up. Using the
classic counter-surveillance tactic of making three consecutive right-hand turns in the
semi-residential neighborhood of Kendell4, the criminal duo confirmed their suspicions and
instead of making a run for it back onto the South Dixie Highway, prepared to live it out with the
five FBI agents in low speed pursuit.
At that moment, SSA McNeill arrived on the scene from the opposite direction and passed the
"mini-convoy," observing passenger Platt in the lead vehicle loading a high-capacity magazine
into a Ruger Mini-14. McNeill would later state that driver Matix's intense demeanor appeared to
be that of "a man on a mission."
Still, they were, after all, the FBI, and they already had the bad guys outnumbered six to two,
with reinforcements rapidly closing in on the rolling scene. Besides, Grogan and Dove, in the
lead pursuit vehicle, were both SWAT-qualified, and Grogan, widely acclaimed as the best shot
in the Miami field office, had been, it was later said, preparing his entire law enforcement career
for just such a situation as was now developing.
SSA McNeill evaluated the situation and made a judgment call that many have subsequently
second-guessed a felony car stop would be attempted.
It all went horribly wrong from there on in, for when the five vehicles had come to rest one block
from the South Dixie Highway behind the Dixie Belle Shopping Center at 12201 SouthWest
82nd Avenue, Ben Grogan's glasses went flying in the impact of the crash, and SAs Manauzzi

and Hanlon had lost control and possession of their issue Smith & Wesson revolvers. And as
the bad guys both began shooting immediately, never was my colleague Mark Moritz' brilliant
aphorism more chillingly brought home: "First Rule of a Gunfight Have a Gun!"
Manauzzi, who had been driving the vehicle which had finally ridden the Monte Carlo off
Southwest 82nd Avenue and into a large tree, his passenger side door just inches from the
driver's side of the bad guys' car, was the first of the FBI agents shot, taking a 5.56mm round
into his side and body as he dove unarmed out his door and onto the street.
While Platt with the Mini-14 was firing in front of his partner's face at Manauzzi, Matix brought
his folding-stocked S&W Model 3000 12 gauge pump shotgun into action, turning and
discharging a round of #6 shot at the white Buick to his rear, the vehicle in which Grogan and
Dove had been riding.
Grogan, nearly blind without his corrective lenses, had dismounted and begun firing his S&W
Model 459, discharging a total of nine rounds of issue 9 X 19mm Winchester 115-grain Silvertip
hollow points at the recalcitrant felons inside the Monte Carlo. On the other side of their Buick,
Jerry Dove was also shooting his Model 459. He would reload and shoot some more, a total of
20 rounds.
SSA McNeill had taken a position with the left front of his Olds angled into the rear of
Manauzzi's vehicle. Managing to throw his (handgun-rated) soft body armor quickly over his suit
and tie, he exited his car, leaving his Remington 12 gauge in the back seat. Running over to the
front of Manauzzi's car, he immediately went into action with his 2-inch Model 19, firing across
the hood and into the driver's window of the Monte Carlo.
Responding to a 1987 inquiry about his "cognitive thought processes during the event," McNeill
stated that he had never felt calmer.
I was the calmest I had ever been when I exited my vehicle. I saw everything clearly in my
peripheral vision, I did some shooting, I got shot, I bore down and took two more shots. When I
realized that I was out of ammo and that it was still going on then I got scared!
While McNeill was firing across the hood, SAs Mireles and Hanlon left their vehicle which had
crashed into a concrete wall on the far side of the street, and rushed to aid their fellow agents
under heavy fire. Hanlon, his primary weapon lost, retrieved his backup five-shot J-frame from
an ankle holster and went to support Dove. Mireles, his Model 870 at port arms, came up
behind McNeill just in time to take a .223 round in his left forearm, the shock of which impact
toppled the 6'5" agent into the street where he quickly realized that his ruined left arm was all
but useless. Platt's round, however, had not reached Mireles' chest where it had been aimed.
After McNeill expended his six rounds of 38 Special 158-grain +P, his right hand grievously
wounded, he returned to his Olds sedan to reload as Mireles struggled after him. After only
managing to get two fresh rounds into his gore-covered revolver, McNeill arose to reach in the
back seat for his shotgun, took a .223 round in his neck, and fell over onto his back, paralyzed
and out of the remainder of the firefight. He was intensely aware that he had just looked right
into the face of Michael Platt and had the murderous thug smile at him as he squeezed off a
fast three rounds at McNeill's head!
Platt had extricated himself from the penned in Monte Carlo and was able to move about as he

rained fire upon the agents. What he would almost certainly have been unaware of was that he
was already a dead man; from a distance of 30 feet, Jerry Dove had delivered a difficult hit on
Platt while he was exiting the passenger window of his car. Mireles would later describe it as "a
million dollar shot" on the scrambling Platt who had presented a narrow target profile exposed
for such a brief time.

Sometime during the preceding 45 seconds, Risner (another SWAT-qualified SA with an S&W
Model 459) and Orrantia with a four-inch S&W K-frame, had rolled on the scene to take up a
covering position across the road where they would fire approximately two dozen rounds
between them, scoring two hits on the wily Platt from a distance of 30 yards. Orrantia would be
wounded in return.
At that point, with McNeill paralyzed and helpless on his back, Mireles fighting the effects of his
avulsed forearm, Grogan unable to clearly locate his target without his glasses, and Manauzzi
still unarmed after losing control of his revolver from the impact of the improvised felony stop,
the mortally wounded Michael Platt made his daring bid for freedom. Exsanguinating from the
FBI hits, he slipped from the cover of the Monte Carlo and moved on the position occupied by
Dove and Hanlon. The latter saw him coming and fired all five rounds from his backup S&W
Model 36 Chief's Special before ducking down to attempt to reload. Before he could accomplish
that, Platt was upon them, and stood over the helpless Hanlon with his folding-stocked Mini-14
aimed at his head. Then, changing his mind, Platt shot the FBI agent in the groin and turned his
attentions to Grogan and Dove, shooting the former multiple times in the body and the younger
SA twice in the head. Both men died on the spot, while Hanlon lay stricken beneath the rear
bumper.
Military-trained, Platt having neutralized the more immediate points of hostile fire, then moved
toward his ultimate objective, the open driver's door of the vehicle recently occupied by the two
Special Agents he had just murdered. SAs Risner and Orrantia 25 yards across the street were
now more concerned about hitting their comrades as Platt stepped falteringly among them.
But Ed Mireles by sheer dint of his formidable will had "regrouped," determined that the killer
not escape. As Platt entered the FBI's Buick and his partner appeared out of nowhere to slip
into the passenger's seat, Mireles carefully supported his Remington 870 on the right rear
bumper of McNeill's Olds, and fired a round of 00 Buck at Platt, hitting him in the feet. As the
man slumped into the driver's seat and sought to restart the car, Ed deliberately pulled the 12
gauge shotgun down between his thighs in his sitting position and with only one hand, worked
the action to rearm his weapon, then painfully rolled out and somehow managed to fire at Platt.
Four times Mireles did this.
Realizing that someone was posing a threat to his escape, a weakened Platt yanked Matix's
six-inch Dan Wesson revolver from his partner's shoulder rig, slowly staggered from his victims'
vehicle and attempted to neutralize this last point of fire. There is some contention about which
agent Platt was firing at, whether it was the incapacitated McNeill or the partially recovered
Mireles, but he fired three .357 Magnum rounds at close range.
Miraculously, he missed.
Platt then lurched back to the Buick and flopped down in the front seat, trying to summon
enough strength to get the car started and away from the killing field.

Mireles, however, was determined that this would not be an option. With great difficulty, he
levitated himself from the ground and, discarding his Remington 12-gauge, walked stiff-legged
toward the Buick as he withdrew his own S&W revolver and fired two 158-grain +P lead hollow
points at Platt, three at Matix curled in a vain attempt to avoid the deadly fire, and a final one at
Platt.
Five of the rounds struck home, Matix was killed on the spot, and Platt, the man who didn't die
fast enough, died a little faster although he showed enough vital signs some minutes later that
the responding EMTs dragged him from the Buick and inserted an endotracheal tube in his
mouth, and an intravascular tube in his left arm.
But the firefight, the bloodiest in the FBI's history, was over.
The repercussions, however, were massive and as far-reaching as any other event in the
annals of Law Enforcement.

Ultimate After Action Report (AAR)

Concluding the analysis of the FBI's 11 April 1986 Florida firefight
That infamous Friday morning in Florida's Dade County also quickly took on historical
significance, for it directly led to the FBI's convening of its first Wound Ballistics Seminar over
15-17 September 1987 to see what direction the Bureau should pursue to more effectively arm
its Field Special Agents. In the wake of the tragedy in which agents Grogan and Dove were
slain, and five others wounded, John Hall, who 28 months later took over as head of the
Bureau's Firearms Training Unit, had made the startling pronouncement, "All else aside, Miami
was an ammo failure.
The Weapons Advisory Committee of the FBI Academy had been conducting an evaluation of
many semi-auto pistols in both .45 ACP and 9 x 19mm in consideration of issuing them to FBI
Field SWAT teams and Special Operations Groups (SOG) such as the Hostage Rescue Team
(HRT). In an attempt to resolve the contentious question of caliber selection and substantiate
the final selection recommendation, a decision was made to seek "outside expertise to analyze
the factors involved in handgun wounding and the relative effectiveness of the two calibers."
And from that Quantico conference6 emerged the name of Dr. Martin L. Fackler, Colonel,
U.S.A., as a major force in the literature of what has regrettably come to be known as "handgun
stopping power." With his battle cry of "Penetration is paramount" and his heavy reliance on
ordnance gelatin as a test medium, Dr. Fackler and his growing legion of "jello junkies" set up in
opposition to the "morgue monsters" led by former Detroit Homicide Detective Evan Marshall,
who for years had been publishing after-action reports in various police and popular gunzines,
explaining how sundry individuals had reacted to being shot with different handgun rounds,
often illustrating his texts with projectiles recovered during post mortem exams.
Aside from the foundation of the Fackler-led International Wound Ballistics Association, and the
1991 publication of an inordinately successful volume by Marshall and Edwin Sanow, "Handgun
Stopping Power," the Miami shootout and subsequent Wound Ballistics Seminar paved the way
for Hornady's debut of the first of the "designer" handgun rounds, the XTP-HP, whose most

pronounced attribute, not coincidentally, was its formidable penetrative abilities.

Frequently in discussions, the author has also expressed a grudging awe of the huge "stones"
possessed by VERY bad guy Michael Platt, who, mortally wounded early on, single-handedly
carried the firefight with the eight FBI agents. I had put forth the notion that had his partner in
murder William Matix held up his end of the battle (Matix fired just that ONE round of
Winchester-Western 12 gauge #6 without effect from his S&W Model 3000, compared to Platt's
48 rounds from a Mini-14 and two .357 Magnum revolvers), the two murderous thugs would
have escaped from the Southwest 82nd Avenue kill zone in the vehicle of slain SAs Grogan and
Dove, although Platt, and probably Matix, would have expired shortly thereafter.
In 1987, the details still vivid in his mind, David Rivers, supervisor of the crime scene for
Metro-Dade Police Department, went one step farther.
"If Matix had done his part, more FBI would have died, as well as some uniforms"
(responding local police).
There had always been curiosity about what Matix had been doing during the furious four
minute action, reasoning that perhaps it was planned that Platt lay down a field of fire with his
folding-stock blue Mini-14 while Matix broke for another vehicle in which they might escape
except that he wound up in the front passenger seat of the Grogan/Dove fleet car, and it was
Platt who got behind the wheel.
Hmmmn! Well, maybe Matix, his ear drums (according to the most popular recounting of the
event) ruptured by Platt's 13 rapid-fire .223 shots right in front of his face in the enclosed space
of their Monte Carlo, in excruciating pain and possibly partially blinded, was so disoriented that
he just couldn't function.
However, thanks to Forensic Analysis of the April 11, 1986, FBI Firefight, a truly remarkable
128-page volume privately published by W. French Anderson, M.D. and professor of
Biochemistry and Pediatrics at the University of Southern California's School of Medicine, some
startling new information about that infamous firefight has come to light, not the least of which is
just why Matix was unable to hold up his end of the deal. The fifth round of 38 Special +P fired
by SSA Gordon McNeill from his 2-inch S&W Model 19 in the furious exchange hit Matix with
a penetrating wound of the right lateral face, fracturing the right maxillary sinus and middle
cranial fossa, and causing a contusion of the right temporal lobe.
In Anderson's marvelously detailed narrative, the wound
"must have been devastating. It fractured the base of the skull and contused the brain. It
should have knocked Matix unconscious. It is difficult to compre-hend how an individual
received this wound, laid unconscious for one or more minutes, and then managed to become
sufficiently alert to leave (his vehicle), move around for 1-2 minutes, figure out that Platt had
entered Grogan/Dove's car, travel to that car, and get in. Matix's ability to function with that
head wound was extraordinary."
And for the record, the Mini-14 blasts right in front of his unprotected face and ears7 seem to
have not influenced Matix's actions in the slightest
"despite the fact that Platt fired 13 rounds from his .223 directly in front of Matix's face in

essentially a closed car, the concussive effect of these muzzle blasts apparently did not
damage Matix's eyes or ears. The corneas of Matix's eyes were intact at autopsy, and the
absence of blood in Matix's ear canals suggests that his eardrums were also intact."
A perception that many have held the intervening years is that the eight FBI agents'
marksmanship was gravely lacking. Not so, argues Dr. Anderson, and presents a persuasive
brief that a number of FBI hits were good ones; they just happened to run up against two highly
trained (military police, 101st Airborne and Rangers), well-practiced (approximately 750-1,500
rounds per week which they had purchased or robbed from several unfortunate civilians plinking
in the Everglades), and extremely focussed individuals in Platt and Matix. The FBI fired a
verified 70 rounds (possibly as many as 77 or 78) and delivered 18 wounds to the bad guys,
firing at extremely hostile targets obscured by gunsmoke, considerable amounts of dust and
debris from the crashing, careening cars, and the deep shadows of the trees beneath which
their vehicle came to rest.
Among those wounds, McNeill hit Matix with that head shot plus a neck/chest shot early on in
the fight; Dove delivered that difficult hit as Platt was wriggling from the passenger window of
the Monte Carlo, as well as two others; Risner (from 30 yards!) also made a lethal chest wound
on Platt in mid-fight; and Mireles, after his shotgun blast had delayed Platt with four 00 foot
wounds, had one-handedly put three rounds into Matix's head and two into Platt (one central
nervous system, one scalp) all while himself gravely wounded.
An adversary gets hit square in the head with a 158-grain +P, and he isn't stopped, you are
having a bad day! McNeill, Mireles and Hanlon had bad days only Grogan and Dove had
worse ones. In light of this information, perhaps John Hall's "ammo failure" assessment has
some merit but then as a war veteran chum with more than three dozen confirmed kills
continually asserts, "the more I see of this stuff, the more I'm convinced that nothing hand-held
is absolutely reliable."
This is one reason why Dr. Anderson undertook such a time-consuming labor of love, as he
related in an interview with the author. "I've been fortunate in life," he avers simply and with
characteristic modesty. "And the law enforcement community has taken good care of me,
witness that I am still alive after a number of death threats I have received." (Bio-chemists
involved in genetic engineering are viewed with considerable alarm in many fundamentalist
sectors.)
So, long fascinated with the "nuts 'n' bolts" of the Miami Massacre, Dr. Anderson set about to
answer some lingering questions in his and the minds of many who have studied that bloody
suburban firefight.
Through interviews with the six surviving Agents, Sgt. Rivers and P.O. Martin Heckman of the
Metro-Dade P.D., civilian witness to the firefight Sidney Martin, and the post mortem reports,
photographs, x-rays, slides, notes and ancillary materials provided by Dr. Jay Barnhart, the
Metro-Dade County Medical Examiner who actually responded to the crime scene between
120th and 124th Streets, and subsequently performed the autopsies, Dr. Anderson uncovers
some previously obscured "truths" about that bloody Friday morning, all of which are
documented and substantiated in his fully detailed volume.

Forensic Analysis of the April 11, 1986, FBI Firefight is truly a magnificent achievement, with
never-before seen full color crime scene and autopsy photos, as well as painstakingly detailed
graphic illustrations of not only the Miami killing field, but the wounds Platt and Matix received.
At the risk of sounding like a certain writer who opined that the Colt's All-America 2000 "instantly
made the 1911 design obsolete," it is my view and others with whom I have consulted, that Dr.
Anderson's oeuvre has immediately taken its position as the standard text in this benignly
neglected genre.
Certainly it is an indispensable adjunct of every wound ballistics student's bookshelf, or that of
those interested in gun fights, and the volume is finally available to the general public.
What Dr. Anderson's extraordinary artifact shows in graphic and detailed color, is that on 11
April 1986 there were three huge pairs of balls on Miami's Southwest 82nd Avenue
fortunately for the good guys, the biggest set belonged to Ed Mireles and with the aid of some
solid hits from Gordon McNeill, Ron Risner and Jerry Dove, the good guys won, but at a terrible
expense of life.

Scene diagram April 11, 1986

Information contained herein gleaned from The FBI AAR on the 1986 Shootout, Forensic Analysis Of The April 11,
1986, FBI Firefight, W. French Anderson, The Gun Zone, The Ultimate After Action Report!