On July 17, 1979, my parents and I climbed into a red four-door Toyota bound for Condega, a rural town in northern Nicaragua. We had missed the last commercial flight out of the country after the Sandinista-led revolution, so we made our getaway on the ground. In Condega, we planned…
To some people it might seem weird that a 27-year-old dude has collected 35 Han Solo frozen-in-carbonite action figures over time. But at least as far as superficial presentation goes, Ralph Vega is about as odd as a one-dollar bill. A husky chap with an encyclopedic knowledge of today’s most…
In late 2004 the Humane Society of the United States released a report condemning deplorable conditions at Miami-Dade County’s animal shelter in Medley. Healthy creatures were being caged next to sick ones. Dogs were choking on short leashes. Shelter workers violently thrashed cats around. And many of the animals were…
On a recent blistering, sticky afternoon, the corner of NW Seventh Street and First Avenue is teeming with vagabond men and women looking for a free meal or an empty cot inside the Camillus House shelter in downtown Miami. The sidewalk smells like a pungent cauldron of salt-crusted dry urine…
Sometime after 3:00 p.m. this past October 27, Miami City Manager Joe Arriola ministered to Hurricane Wilma-weary residents at the Orange Bowl. He also relayed a message to citizens in District Five, which includes much of Overtown and Liberty City. A vote for Richard Dunn II will get nothing done…
She came from the West, a demure Category One, letting us think she was steady, docile, and relatively harmless. But when Hurricane Wilma blew ashore and crossed Florida in a flash, she was a bitch. She toppled a multistory dry dock in Sunny Isles Beach, launched a 30-foot sailboat and…
Click here for the map. 1. Harold Ackerman Cali cartel’s man in Miami. Busted in 1992 along with seven subordinates and 6000 keys of cocaine. Seized ledgers indicated Ackerman’s outfit did $56 million in business in Miami in the ten months before his arrest. He kept a low profile at…
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Real Estate 101. My name is Carl Fisher. Just so you know, I’ve been dead for the past 66 years. Yes, I am an apparition, a figment of your morose imagination. I was one of the legendary hucksters who bamboozled hundreds of hopeful snowbirds out…
On August 30, nearly seven weeks after Sonia Castro filed for divorce from her estranged husband Harry Castro, a suspicious fire raged through the couple’s house on SW 102nd Avenue and 58th Street. No one was injured, but fire inspectors did find traces of an incendiary device, and as a…
For the past several months Keith Wilson has been waging a one-man war against Miami-Dade County’s governmental bureaucracy. It began when building officials condemned his dilapidated warehouse on NW 79th Street and Eighth Court, which Wilson had recently purchased and was slowly refurbishing (apparently too slowly) to house his roofing…
Art Teele is a man of very big appetites, and because of them he is now in very big trouble. As the investigative report below indicates, the once-powerful politician is possessed of a seemingly insatiable craving for all things illicit — adulterous sex, illegal drugs, bribery and extortion. Three weeks…
Roy Thomas McDade, a 60-year-old mortgage broker, lives in the Village of Biscayne Park, a suburban oasis of some 3500 residents tucked between Miami Shores and North Miami. He and his wife Jane, who is also 60 and an insurance company executive, moved into the village back in 1975 and…
Ronald Gotlin has been a law-enforcement officer with the Village of Biscayne Park for 21 years. He began as a part-time patrolman and worked his way through the ranks to captain. In 1998 the Biscayne Park Village Commission, which hires the village’s department heads, rewarded Gotlin by naming him police…
Titus Berry, a 34-year-old former math and physics teacher at Miami Beach Senior High School, is so fearful of that city’s police department he fled town two weeks ago and has gone into hiding. He took this extraordinary step on the advice of his attorney. Before leaving, however, Berry related…
Doumic Romain sneered when he read a recent op-ed piece in the Miami Herald by Miami Police Chief John Timoney touting the department’s recent role helping Haiti’s interim government assess security in Port-au-Prince. “He talks about providing a safe environment for Haitian citizens,” the 42-year-old amateur filmmaker said. “Yet he…
Juan Carlos Zapata, the dashing Colombian state representative from Miami-Dade County, insists during a recent interview he has no need to carry a pistol on his person. “I own some firearms, but I generally don’t have them on me,” Zapata says. Yet the 39-year-old Miami Sunset Senior High School graduate…
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office has opened an investigation into a taped conversation between a successful real-estate developer, his lawyer, and a third party in which the three men discuss retaining the services of state Rep. Rafael “Ralph” Arza. The recording was the subject of last week’s cover story (“Caught…
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office has opened an investigation into a taped conversation between a successful real-estate developer, his lawyer, and a third party in which the three men discuss retaining the services of state Rep. Rafael “Ralph” Arza. The recording was the subject of last week’s cover story (“Caught…
In May of last year, Shoma paid $39 million for the former Ryder System headquarters in Doral. Masoud Shojaee, president of Shoma Development, had ambitious plans for the 45-acre property — a pedestrian-friendly town center that would combine 900 residential units with 200,000 square feet of retail space and 150,000…
When Miami-Dade County Police Ofcr. Chad Murphy was shot in the line of duty October 24, 2003, he relied on his sweetheart Elena Rosen and her family to tend to his physical and emotional wounds. “The shooting brought us closer together,” Rosen, 28, revealed during a recent phone interview. “But…
Can things get any worse at the Miami-Dade Transit Agency? In early February county Mayor Carlos Alvarez killed a bailout plan that would have used $143 million from the half-penny transit tax to cover a decade’s worth of operating deficits and looming shortfalls at the beleaguered agency. That came after…
Donald David Diener believes he is a messenger of God. The 67-year-old former Los Angelino is here to unite his Christian brothers and sisters across the world for the Second Coming of his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. “I was called to wake up the Christian community,” Diener explained in…
