In January 2010, an aspiring model named Paula Sladewski went missing in Miami after a night at Club Space. Fourteen hours later, North Miami police were called to a burning dumpster on a dead-end industrial street. The case made national headlines, ran on Dateline, and remains unsolved more than fifteen years later.
My father, David Wasser, was the private investigator hired by her boyfriend in those first frantic hours. I was sixteen years old. I went with him.
This is what I remember about that day, what I’ve learned about the case in the years since, and why the work my father did then still shapes how I run Wasser Investigations now.
How my father got the call
Paula Sladewski and her boyfriend, Kevin Klym, had flown into Miami from California for New Year’s weekend. They went to a Lady Gaga concert at the Fontainebleau on New Year’s Eve. They spent the rest of the weekend on Miami Beach. In the early morning hours of January 3, 2010, they ended up at Club Space in downtown Miami.
They got into an argument inside the club. Both were asked to leave, but separately. Klym left first, took a taxi back to the hotel on Miami Beach, and went to sleep. Surveillance footage from Club Space later showed Sladewski leaving on her own at 7:21 a.m., followed out of the club by an unidentified man.
That was the last confirmed sighting of her alive.
When Klym woke up at the hotel later that day and Sladewski wasn’t with him, he panicked. He tried to file a missing persons report and was told he had to wait twenty-four hours. He hired my father.
The hotel meeting
| When I was 16, my father, David Wasser, was hired by the distraught boyfriend of Paula Sladewski, who had gone missing after a night at Space Nightclub. I accompanied him in those early, critical hours. Together, we met with the boyfriend at the hotel that he was staying at on Miami Beach to understand the events leading up to her disappearance and to start piecing together the timeline. It was my first real exposure to the gravity and urgency of investigative work. |
That meeting is the one I keep coming back to.
It’s one thing to hear someone describe an investigation. It’s another to sit in a hotel room on Miami Beach with a man who hasn’t slept, watching my father work, quietly building a timeline, asking questions in a particular order, listening more than he was talking, separating what the boyfriend remembered from what the boyfriend assumed.
I didn’t ask questions. I watched. That’s mostly what sixteen-year-olds are good for in a room like that.
What I took away from those hours: the early window in a missing-persons case is unforgiving. Memory degrades. Surveillance footage gets overwritten. Witnesses scatter. Every hour matters. The investigator who shows up first and asks the right questions builds the foundation everything else gets built on top of.
What we learned later
Sometime that afternoon, about fourteen hours after Sladewski left Club Space, a North Miami resident called 911 about a burning dumpster. The dumpster was on NW 14th Avenue and 130th Street, more than 120 blocks north of Club Space, in an industrial area next to what was then a propane company. The body inside was so badly burned she had to be identified by dental records. An autopsy later determined she had been strangled before being placed in the dumpster.
Kevin Klym was initially named a person of interest. He was the boyfriend, the relationship had been turbulent, and he was one of the last people to see her alive. Police cleared him after surveillance footage confirmed he had taken a taxi back to the hotel before Sladewski left the club, and the location of the dumpster (an isolated dead-end street twelve miles from Miami Beach) was inconsistent with a man without a rental car or local knowledge.
Police later released a sketch of a different man (described by a witness as a heavyset Black or Hispanic male with a goatee) who was reportedly seen leaving a parking lot near Club Space with Sladewski. That man has never been identified.
The lead detective at the time, North Miami Police Cmdr. Michael Gaudio, has spoken about the case publicly several times since. He has said the killer was likely someone familiar with the industrial area where the body was left. He has also said, more than once, that this is the case that haunts him.
| It’s the one I didn’t solve. To be unable to give the family closure does bother me. I still think about it to this day.North Miami Police Cmdr. Michael Gaudio (ret.), 2020 |
Where the case stands today
The Paula Sladewski case remains open. Her sister, Kelly Farris, has continued to advocate publicly for new leads. The case has been featured on NBC’s Dateline (“Death of a Golden Girl”) and is currently streaming on Peacock. It has been the subject of true-crime podcasts, documentaries, and YouTube coverage.
Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers continues to offer a $3,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. The North Miami Police Department continues to accept tips.
If you have any information about this case:
- Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers: (305) 471-TIPS / (305) 471-8477
- North Miami Police Department: (305) 891-0294
- Tips can be submitted anonymously
What that case left me with
| Although I was just observing, that experience left a lasting impression. Seeing my father’s commitment to finding answers for his client helped set me on my path. That involvement became the foundation of a decade learning under him. Now, I carry that same dedication and care into every case I take on today. |
My father retired and turned the firm over to me. The cases I work now are different from that one in most ways. They’re litigation-support work for South Florida law firms. Surveillance for personal injury cases. Background and asset investigations. Process service on subjects who don’t want to be served.
But the framework is the same. Show up early. Ask the right questions in the right order. Build the timeline before assumptions calcify. Document everything in a way that holds up later, whether “later” is a deposition, a trial, or a conversation with a family that needs to know what happened.
Paula Sladewski’s family is still waiting for that conversation. I think about that, and about the hours my father put into the early days of that case, every time a new client calls.
If you need an investigator in South Florida
Wasser Investigations has been serving South Florida law firms and clients since 1985. We handle litigation support, surveillance, personal injury investigations, background and asset searches, criminal defense fact development, and corporate due diligence. Our office is in Coral Gables. We work cases throughout Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties.
If you’re an attorney building a case or an individual who needs answers, we’d be glad to talk.
Schedule a Confidential Consultation →
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SOURCES & FURTHER READING
NBC Dateline: “Death of a Golden Girl” / Streaming on Peacock
CBS Miami (2020) / Lead Detective Michael Gaudio interview, 10-year retrospective
Miami New Times (2020) / Murder Updates: Police Still Haven’t Solved Miami Cold Case
All That’s Interesting (Jan 2024) / Inside The Grisly Unsolved Murder Of Aspiring Playboy Model Paula SladewskiSoap Central (Jul 2025) / Dateline: 5 harrowing details about Paula Sladewski’s murder, revisited