Nevin Shapiro: Miami's Caligula

Maria Elena Perez, Shapiro's lawyer, didn't respond to multiple calls and emails from New Times. But his mother, Ronnie, reached in Canada, spoke candidly about the book and her son. "I told him for years he needed to get out of Dade. It's just a little blip on the map full of Cubans... I've hated it for 35 years," she says.

UM should be concerned about her son's book, she says. "There are some people over at UM who are real worried, some really scared people there," she says, chuckling. "He knows some things about some people, I'll tell you that."

Nevin Shapiro displayed this autographed Hurricanes helmet in his $6 million mansion.

Tim Elfrink

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More About

• Nevin Shapiro
• Miami Hurricanes (Football)
• Larry Shapiro
• College Football
• New York Crime

Ronnie goes on, her husky, Brooklyn-accented voice rising with emotion. "They don't mean nothing to me down there," she says. "It's a good thing 99 percent of those people know how to throw a ball. You know where they'd be otherwise: Opa-locka, Liberty City, selling crack on the corners. I don't want to sound like a racist, but you know where I'm going with this. Once you're from there, you're always from there."

Shapiro, she says, for once — maybe for the first time — will shake the world by telling the truth.

"He's not in a nice place now, compared to where he was coming from," she says, speaking quietly now. "But every dog has its day. There's a lot of skeletons out there. And they'll all be coming out now."