Experts on probate law and legal ethics agree that various aspects of the Marie Zimmer guardianship case -- from Elias's private conference with Judge Newman that led to his appointment as monitor to his request that his report be ignored -- are worthy of scrutiny. Professor Richard Mendales, who teaches legal ethics at the University of Miami School of Law, points out that the Florida Bar prohibits such "ex parte" conferences except in emergency circumstances. "The rules are intended to preclude not only actual improper influence," he says, "but the risk that the general public will suspect there's improper influence."
The Florida Bar has already examined another facet of the case: the conduct of attorney Derek Aronovitz when he had Zimmer sign a new will and grant power of attorney to Lois Rosenzweig. In a ten-page complaint to the bar, the Verikioses accused Aronovitz and his father, Alfred Aronovitz (who oversaw his son's work), of having "conducted themselves in an improper, unethical, and illegal fashion.... The Aronovitzes were responsible for engineering and implementing Rosenzweig's grand design to capture what remained of Marie Zimmer's fortune."
In a response filed with the bar in late August 1993, Derek Aronovitz denied participating in any fraud associated with Zimmer's estate or in the signing of the new will. But before bar officials could hold hearings, Aronovitz committed suicide by poisoning himself with carbon monoxide in his Coral Gables garage. He died on his 32nd birthday, June 30, 1994. (Alfred Aronovitz says his son's death had nothing to do with the Verikioses' bar complaint. A police report noted that Derek had been severely depressed, and the medical examiner's report revealed that he had been drinking heavily.)
Four months after the young Aronovitz's suicide, the complaint against his father was heard by the Florida Bar's grievance committee, which found no probable cause to discipline the elder Aronovitz. The committee did, however, find that Alfred Aronovitz's conduct "was not consistent with the high standards of our profession.... The totality of the facts reviewed by the grievance committee indicated that your conduct in assisting the execution of the will came close to violating the rules governing attorneys, although not one particular act was deemed to be violative of any particular rule."
Although Zimmer lived until the spring of last year, she never regained enough coherence to settle the questions raised by her feuding relatives. According to medical records and interviews with the Verikioses, her last years were spent under heavy sedation at the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, also known as Douglas Gardens, a large nursing facility in Little Haiti. She died on May 3, 1994, and was cremated, her ashes buried near the graves of her parents in New York.
Zimmer's friends from South Beach had quickly lost touch with her after Lois Rosenzweig moved her to Douglas Gardens and left no forwarding address. Dona Zemo says shortly after her last visit to the Hebrew Home on Collins Avenue, she called and was told that the nursing facility had no record of a Marie Zimmer.
Zemo's last reliable link to Zimmer had vanished when Jake Hagopian left town following the financial collapse of the Royale Group, whose Art Deco hotels were sold at auction in late 1990 and whose chief executive, Leonard Pelullo, was later indicted on federal racketeering and wire-fraud charges. (This past Friday Pelullo was convicted in Philadelphia on one count of racketeering and 46 counts of wire fraud. He also must forfeit more than $1.3 million and a 2000-acre ranch in Montana.) "Every couple of months I would do a search for her," sighs Zemo. "I don't know why I couldn't find her." In 1992 she finally gave up. "I can't believe she was still alive all these years," she says. "I thought she died."
Drinking coffee in the dining room of Jane Dee's Miami Beach home on a breezy December morning, the two old friends discuss Jake Hagopian's relationship with Zimmer and the courtroom efforts to deny him access to the money she left him.
Was Hagopian after Zimmer's assets all along? "Oh, his love for her came long before he knew she had money," Dee says emphatically.
"I'd like to call [her relatives] and give them a piece of my mind," declares Zemo.
"Just to sit them down and tell them," interrupts Dee. "Maybe they don't understand. I'd tell them: 'This man took care of your relative for years when you were nowhere to be found.' It's greed. It's the same thing that happened with Ocean Drive."
Soon after losing touch with Zimmer, both Dee and Zemo distanced themselves from Ocean Drive. Dee quit her real estate job to have a child, and Zemo started her own company, Tropical Marketing, based on Lincoln Road. Zemo also moved to Coconut Grove. Ocean Drive had finally lost its magic. "I love the area," she says, "but there's too much neon. They're going to lose the character of why people came here in the first place."
Dee is even more blunt: "Now when I go to Ocean Drive, I almost want to cry."
"They've ruined it," says Zemo, softly adding, "It was like paradise.
