FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Broward County prosecutors dropped a domestic violence case against a 62-year-old healthcare executive after his defense showed he had passed a lie detector test and the alleged victim retracted her accusations.
In March, Lighthouse Point Police Department officers arrested Ernest “Ernie” Varvoutis and he appeared before Broward County Circuit Judge Elijah Williams in bond court.
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“Allegedly you used a dog collar around the individual’s neck,” Williams told Varvoutis, and ordered him to have “no contact with the young lady.”
A close-out memo by the Broward County State Attorney’s Office reported the woman who had alleged domestic battery by strangulation later stated that there had never been any physical violence — in the 27 years that they had been together.
According to Assistant State Attorney Marcie Zaccor’s memo, the woman requested that the case be dropped at the police station after his arrest and in statements on April 2 and April 12. Also, records show Varvoutis’s defense provided a polygraph examination on April 5.
“No deception was indicated,” Zaccor wrote referring to Varvoutis’s answer in the negative to the question about him allegedly putting the dog collar on the woman’s neck.
Zaccor also reported police had no witnesses in the case and Varvoutis did not have a criminal history.