Miami-Dade Detective Mike Reiter’s Divorce and Tensions with State Attorney Over Epstein Case

To hear the Epstein camp tell it, Reiter, 48, is a loose cannon better suited to be the sheriff of Mayberry. They whisper that he's embroiled in a messy divorce. Reiter did in fact file for divorce from his wife, (NAME REMOVED), last year, after 24 years of marriage. They have a son, 18, and a daughter, 14. The couple is scheduled to go to mediation next week, Aug. 16. Nothing in the court file suggests their split is particularly ugly. Reiter incurred the wrath of the Epstein camp as well as the state attorney's office for two reasons. First, he pressed for Epstein to be charged with the more serious crimes of sexual activity with minors. Second, he slammed State Attorney Barry Krischer in blunt language seldom used by one law-enforcement official concerning another because of what he perceived as that office's mishandling of the case. In a letter to Krischer written May 1, Reiter called his actions in the Epstein case "highly unusual." He added, "I must urge you to... consider if good and sufficient reason exists to require your disqualification from the prosecution of these cases." In short, Reiter told the county's top prosecutor for the past 13 years that he ought to get off the case. "It looks like a departure from professionalism," Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said of Reiter's letter. Following Epstein's indictment, Reiter referred the case to the FBI to determine whether the super-rich, super-connected defendant had violated any federal laws. Reiter won't discuss the case or the broadsides aimed at him. But others almost uniformly use one word to describe the chief: professional. "I have always been impressed by Mike's professionalism and his leadership," said Rick Lincoln, chief of the Lantana Police Department and a Palm Beach County cop for 32 years. "The town of Palm Beach has a very professional police department. We all consider Mike to be our peer and a man of integrity." Juno Beach Police Chief H.C. Clark II agreed. Although he doesn't know Reiter well, he has met with him on countywide law enforcement issues. "I've never seen him lose his cool. I've never seen anything but a professional demeanor from him." Reiter joined the Palm Beach Police Department in 1981, leaving a $20,000-a-year patrol job at the University of Pittsburgh. His personnel jacket shows consistently excellent job evaluations. Posh Palm Beach is no hotbed of crime, and in his first year on the job, a resident confined to his home with a sick child thanked Reiter for delivering a few Cokes to the house. Reiter refused payment for the beverages. Another resident thanked Reiter for shutting off his car's headlights in his driveway, saying a valet must have been at fault. Reiter worked everything from road patrol to organized crime, vice and narcotics. And he's no novice at investigations involving the island's rich and famous. He was the lead detective probing the drug overdose death of David Kennedy in 1984. He also was one of the officers who worked the investigation of William Kennedy Smith, who was charged in 1991 — and later acquitted — with raping a woman at the Kennedy family compound in Palm Beach. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021782