To hear Newall Daughtrey tell it, the winds of change have finally breezed across Opa-locka. Gone are the fat cats who once ran Dade’s poorest city, who sopped up budgetary gravy with exorbitant salaries and pensions, then stuck taxpayers with the bill. Daughtrey should know. Opa-locka’s city manager from 1979…

Lionel Resnick’s appearance on 60 Minutes this past June was a high point in his career. The piece, narrated by Mike Wallace, examined the case of Dr. David Acer, the dentist thought to have transmitted the HIV virus to six of his patients in Jensen Beach. In his interview with…

The scene was, as Mike Wallace would later recall, “most bizarre.” The legendary newsman had come to Miami Beach this past June to work on a 60 Minutes segment about David Acer, the Jensen Beach dentist widely believed to have infected six of his patients with HIV before he died…

There were a number of odd things about the anonymous tip that was called into the Florida Marine Patrol on the afternoon of May 19, 1994. The patrol’s Lt. Angel Vega discovered odd thing number one when he arrived at Key Biscayne’s Crandon Marina and found Dr. Eric Prince, a…

Talk about hot. Jerry Powers had yet to unveil his magazine and already he was getting good ink. “Powers, the man behind Ocean Drive magazine, must have more credibility than most new publishers,” gushed Miami Herald columnist Gail Meadows in November 1992. “Without even a prototype to show potential customers,…

In San Antonio seven-foot Spurs center David Robinson glowers from an assortment of billboards. The image that towers over Seattle’s highways is that of fierce all-star forward Shawn Kemp. The Houston Rockets decorate their boards with a battery of NBA champions — Hakeem Olajuwon, Vernon Maxwell, Otis Thorpe. Here in…

(*NOTE: THERE WAS A CHART ACCOMPANYING THIS STORY) You think you’re sick of O.J.? Imagine how the news directors at our local television stations feel. For the past two weeks, they’ve been chin-deep in Simpsonalia, trying to find some new angle on the most overhyped story in the history of…

Obviously Hialeah isn’t the only municipality in Dade where ardor precedes murder. This county routinely tops Florida in domestic homicide stats, and, as might be expected, the emphasis is on the bizarre. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day (or Lupercalia, anyway), consider the following: In 1961 a South Dade man…

In ancient Rome the festival was called Lupercalia. It was held on February 15 and was designed to protect the populace from wolves. This was accomplished by dispatching young men to whack their beloved with animal hides. Women were said to encourage the whipping, which they believed made them more…

This past December 4, the Miami Herald published a front-page story declaring South Florida “America’s Crime Capital.” “Dade County ranked first in total crime among the nation’s large metropolitan areas in 1993, according to FBI statistics released today,” reporters Dan Keating and Charles Strouse noted. Next to the article, a…

Fredgie is colorful and funny like a clown; profound and pure like Chaplin! And as both of them Fredgie is a melancholic character — a poem by Martha Gonzalez, personal assistant to Fredgie Fredgie would like the world to know how the whole Fredgie thing began. This requires slipping a…

In 1814 Andrew Jackson — a freshly minted general on his way to an undistinguished presidency — chased the Seminole Indians into Florida. For most of the next century, federal troops continued to hunt Native Americans, pushing them farther and farther south, into the swampy fringe of the continent. Most…

Spatter: The process of the forceful projection of blood. Had this been a convention of insurance salesmen, or podiatrists, or even Shriners, the scene that unfolded in the Atlantis Room might have been avoided. But this being the annual conclave of the International Association of Bloodstain Pattern Analysts, the unpleasantness…

At age nineteen, Noah Tepperberg is a nightclub promoter in his native Manhattan, a student at the University of Miami, and a consummate salesman, the sort of fellow out of whose mouth the right words spill. On this particular August evening, he is selling his fraternity, Zeta Beta Tau, to…

Wade Harris used to join Joe Kostick and Bob Derosiers for dinner on most weeknights. The pair did yard work for him and lived a block away on a quiet street in North Miami Beach. Fellow aging divorces, they were among Harris’s closest friends, and they engaged him on a…

Most of the dozen defendants sitting in county courtroom 2-1 this past Friday had cause to celebrate. Though they had been cited by Miami Beach police officer Ambrose Sims for speeding, Sims urged Judge Allan Atlas to dismiss their tickets because of their “good attitudes.” The defendants were so grateful…

You’d never know it by looking at him, but Joseph Weinstock is not a well man. At age 73, he suffers from chronic pancreatitis, coronary artery disease, and reflux esophagitis, an inflammation of the esophagus that makes swallowing painful. Under a full head of wavy hair, he bears the scar…

While the vast majority of judges and lawyers view judicial elections as an abomination, there are others among us who may look upon the biennial circus as something more benign. Something intriguing. Something very much like a golden opportunity. The following ten-step guide is intended for those visionaries who would…

You don’t have to be a legal scholar to pass judgment on our judiciary. You don’t even have to be especially alert. In the past four years alone, ten Dade judges have been spanked for breaches of the public trust. There was the judge who took dirty money to fuel…