Mesa, likewise, says the deal was legit. He says Baldwin was a "known drug user" and unreliable witness. "He would come to me on occasion asking me to loan him money," Mesa says. "Now he's making allegations because I stopped talking to him."
Also bolstering Baldwin's claims about the deal: Records show that Wallace purchased a Key Largo mansion — complete with a dock and boat lift — for $1.7 million three years later, in 2006. It's just the tip of a vast real estate holding he has acquired while working as a public servant making only $59,000 as recently as 1996. Wallace now owns at least 15 properties, according to financial statements he filed in 2010. They include two houses in Florida City, two properties in Cutler Bay, three properties and four lots in New Smyrna Beach, an empty plot in Jacksonville, and undeveloped agricultural land in Hawaii. Mesa, meanwhile, owns a $3.4 million home on the opposite end of the island.
City of Homestead
Former Homestead mayor Roscoe Warren (left), an unnamed youth, and Mayor Otis Wallace at a Martin Luther King Day ceremony.
Michael E. Miller
South Dade High School teacher Israel Andrews in front of city hall last month.
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Wallace says he paid for the Key Largo mansion with two mortgages, not a shady land deal. He says he inherited property in New Smyrna from his wife's parents and that he purchased the Hawaiian land during an expo at the Miami Beach Convention Center. "It cost $17,000 — not very expensive property," he says. "I can afford that in my sleep. I'm not apologizing for being an entrepreneur."
Baldwin's description of systemic bribery in Florida City, meanwhile, is supported by additional evidence. On January 7, 2011, detectives interviewed Mary Rivera, owner of several rental property management companies in town. She told them that she had applied for permits to remodel her properties in 1998. Mesa — then the director of building and zoning — demanded $25,000 for the permits, she said. Rivera paid and began construction, but Mesa was back a month later asking for another $15,000. This time, she secretly recorded their meeting. She asked if the bribe was for him, Mayor Wallace, and Bill Kiriloff. Mesa replied it's the way things are done.
(Rivera, reached by phone, admits meeting with investigators but now claims she didn't tell them anything. Mesa, meanwhile, says Rivera concocted the story because "she wanted to have a relationship" and "she's unhappy I turned her down.")
Finally, there is also evidence backing up Baldwin's claim that finance director Mark Ben-Asher laundered bribe money flowing into Florida City. According to investigators' records, Ben-Asher's own former payroll manager, Dorothy Henderson, said large sums of city money were inexplicably paid to companies owned by or in partnership with Mesa and Kiriloff.
Henderson declined to comment for this story. Ben-Asher denies any involvement in bribery and says he's named because he was "instrumental" in getting Baldwin fired. "So I can expect some fallout," he says. He also says Henderson was just a "bookkeeper [who] would not have the ability to determine what transfers... were improper."
Wallace, meanwhile, insists he and his administration are clean. Asked what he thinks of Henderson's and Rivera's statements corroborating Baldwin's claims of corruption, the mayor says, "The word bullshit comes to mind. It's a fairy tale."
The evidence wasn't enough for prosecutors. On January 11, 2011, two detectives from Miami-Dade's public corruption unit met with Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Senior to discuss the case. They asked the prosecutor to subpoena Wallace's bank statements, which would "provide the necessary evidence needed to verify the allegations," Det. Ashley Thomas wrote in a memo.
But Senior refused. Instead, he said the statute of limitations had expired on many of the charges and there wasn't enough evidence to proceed. The case was closed February 22, 2011.
There's a bloody coda to Baldwin's accusations. On November 10, two days before his 62nd birthday, Bill Kiriloff was found slumped over the wheel of his black sedan in Florida City's Fasulo Park with a hole in his head. He was wrapped in a blanket. Two silver handguns rested on the city official's lap, and an empty can of Heineken lay on the floor in the back. Police ruled the death a suicide.
Kiriloff had long faced allegations of drug use and corruption before he became a member of Wallace's inner circle. While working as a Charlotte County administrator, his secretary twice found cocaine on his desk. Kiriloff was arrested February 12, 1989, and pleaded no contest to the drug charge.
Just a few years later, Kiriloff was hired in Florida City. Wallace says then-city manager Dick Anderson hired the ex-con. The mayor also claims he learned of Kiriloff's past only in December 2003, when Gov. Jeb Bush pardoned him. By then, Kiriloff had spent "ten to 12 years at the city doing a good job," Wallace says.
Marlene Kiriloff, Bill's ex-wife, says she knew of his cocaine and gambling problems long before he left her in 1980. After their divorce, people began asking her if he had taken bribes. Eventually, she began wondering the same thing herself.
She was shocked by her ex-husband's apparent suicide, but not by news of investigations in Florida City. "After all his problems, there must have been somebody holding a candle for him to get into government again," she says.
James Brady stands on the corner of Lucy Street handing out cards with his name, photo, and "Vote #50" on them. Hip-hop thumps from a nearby car as voters trickle past on their way to the polls. It's January 24, Election Day in Florida City. And Brady, a tall, lanky 29-year-old with dark skin, a shaved head, and a gold cap on one tooth, has a sales pitch that's hard to forget: Elect me and I'll send Otis Wallace to jail.
