St. Petersburg police released surveillance video on Friday of a man walking out of Walmart wearing a white shirt and khakis that detectives want to interview about the realtor kidnapping and robbery cases.
Meanwhile, the first realtor victim, a 59-year-old woman, talked publicly about her terrifying experience as long as Bay News 9 agreed to protect her identity.
"I’m really hoping someone knows who this is and can nail this guy," she said.
The realtor said she agreed to show a man a home on the 1700-block of Oxford Street North on Wednesday who contacted her through Zillow. That's a move she will no longer do and warned other realtors to be careful about setting up meetings with strangers.
"My purpose in speaking out is to get realtors to think carefully about going and meeting people. No matter how good a client they sound because I interviewed this guy 15 minutes before I agreed to meet him at this property," she said. "Get them to come to your office. Take a picture of their ID. That's not someone who's likely to hurt you."
The realtor said the man pulled a gun, handcuffed her and made her sit on the ground as he called her husband for ransom money.
"The first phone call, my husband thought it was our pool contractor playing a joke, a bad joke. And I think he hung up the first time," she said. "Then the guy called back and said, 'this is not a joke. This is serious and you need to come up with $50,000 and you need to do it quickly because you need to have it by 5 o'clock today.'"
The realtor said it took a third phone call to convince her husband it was not a joke.
"The third time he said, 'well, how do I know for sure that you have my wife?' And I think he allowed me to say, 'he's serious,'" she said. "I started to say, 'he's got a gun' and he stopped me from being able to say that loud enough."
The woman said she thought the man was going to kill her when he put some gloves on. Instead, the gunman took her phone and locked her in the house once he realized he wasn't going to get any money.
St. Peterburg Police said the man then did the same thing to another realtor about an hour later. That realtor didn't have any money and the man fled when other people started to show up at the home.
Detectives said the suspect drives a silver Nissan Murano and released a composite sketch of the man. If you recognize that man or the man on the Walmart surveillance video call St. Petersburg Police at (727) 893-7780.