On a still night beneath Biscayne Boulevard’s sagging palm trees and dull streetlights near 54th Street, Heather Klinker offers redemption in the form of size-three blue jeans. About 8:30 p.m. the 40-year-old Colorado native sees two young prostitutes by the side of the road. Krissy, a pale blond 33-year-old, and…
By 1997 Vincent Bonitto had been smuggling drugs through Miami International Airport for at least a year, prosecutors say. But the 27-year-old American Airlines ramp worker’s alleged foray into the criminal underworld didn’t prepare him for the events of July 14 that year, according to what he told police and…
New York City lawyer Russell Carbone and his paralegal, Henry Mejia, stumbled out of the federal courthouse in downtown Miami Friday somber and stoop-shouldered. Their suits were wrinkled. As they walked to the parking lot, they smiled wanly at their children. It was the end of a long, disappointing stay…
The stretch of Biscayne Boulevard that slices through the Upper Eastside has long been Miami’s version of skid row. Near hotels with bright neon signs that are totems of some bygone era of tourism — the Seven Seas, Sinbad, Shalimar, Star Dust, Vagabond, and Sunshine Motel — hookers ply their…
As he walks across the lawn of Miami Beach’s Bass Museum, Leprechaun, a stocky drifter with a shaved head, apologizes for trespassing. Then the 30-year-old chuckles, realizing that he’s about to commit a more serious crime. “We’re going to pop meters,” he declares. Leprechaun, who declined to give his real…
Off Miramar Parkway, in a community studded with pricey identical houses, Trick Daddy sits in his living room watching the Lifetime channel. Trick (his given name is Maurice Young) is a rapper whose latest album, www.thug.com, is a national hit. Although the past six months has been a succession of…
When defendant Albert Scaletti looked out into the gallery in Judge Jeffrey Swartz’s courtroom on August 4, it must have been a comfort to see his pal and colleague James Hird. “I felt bad for the guy,” Hird says. “Of course I was there.” Scaletti, a 33-year-old bail bondsman, had…
The crowded Carnival cruise ship that left the Port of Miami on June 20 carried hundreds of giddy passengers. Some were celebrating momentous family occasions. Gloria Hernandez was on board for her daughter’s quince. Deborah Osgood took her eighteen-year-old son along as his high school graduation gift. An Italian couple…
On a steamy June evening, as the sun set on acres of avocado trees surrounding Tomas Mestre’s $1.8 million hacienda-style home, the outdoor patio swelled with well-heeled visitors. In this rural section of South Miami-Dade known as the Redland, they mingled by the tiled pool, nibbled on paella, and listened…
About 1:30 a.m. on June 29 Daniel Walker, Jr., says he was driving through South Miami-Dade when a man in a burgundy sedan forced him to stop, pointed a pistol at him, and growled, “Don’t move, nigger.” Before the 27-year-old baker could comply, the stranger smashed him in the face…
The largest public-housing project in Florida stretches from all sides of Trena’s front porch like the garrison of some battle-fatigued army. The beige walls and brown roofs of the two-story buildings that make up the James E. Scott Homes replicate in staggered rows across 50 acres of former landfill. This…
It was a sight that would make any hotel manager blanch, especially one at Miami Beach’s tony Four Points Sheraton Hotel on New Year’s Eve. Seven security guards from the neighboring Fontainebleau Hilton sprinted past the front desk. They were chasing two people who had allegedly stiffed the Fontainebleau’s bar…
On a cool night on Miami Beach’s Twelfth Street. A chill wind blows off the ocean, subduing the nocturnal revelers along Washington Avenue’s nightclub strip. But in the second-floor suite of Luke Records, things are downright steamy. While a posse of young bucks stands around stone-faced, three Jamaican chicks shimmy…
In the early evening of December 10, 1998, David Ziskind picked up his telephone in Miami to call his daughter in Texas. When it rang in the living room of his ex-wife’s house in Lubbock, ten-year-old Amy rushed to answer. “Hi, Daddy, do you want to hear about my snowman?”…
Tony Martin inked a new four-year, $14.5 million contract with the Miami Dolphins just in time. The celebrated wide receiver is so broke he’s filed for bankruptcy. New Times has learned that Martin, attempting to dodge debts on both coasts, asked a federal judge for protection from his creditors on…
In the hours after Nancy met Anwar Zayden, the two entered one of those sybaritic South Beach society hazes that hovers over beautiful voluptuaries as they eye one another like prey. Zayden, a playboy with a ponytail and money, spied the 31-year-old stewardess over dinner at the cacophonously chic China…
Bane, a lanky 21-year-old graffiti artist, is highstepping it across a weed-choked patch of ground spiked with broken bottles and shards of scrap metal. “Watch out for the needles,” he warns over his shoulder. He’s heading to a burner, a large mural painted on the side of a warehouse off…
The Miami-Dade Police Department’s response to a recent bomb scare in his city was inadequate, claims Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez. And he’s using the incident to push for his municipality’s secession from Florida’s largest county. About 6:30 a.m. on Friday, February 19, an unknown caller warned of an explosion at…
On October 12, 1998, Hialeah police officer Rolando Bolanos, Jr., filled out an arrest report on case 98-42048. It states that 63-year-old Valerio Gonzalez entered the station soused and turned himself in for drunk driving. Bolanos administered a Breathalyzer test, read Gonzalez his rights, and locked him in a cell…
The recent news that regulators had expelled philanthropist-about-town and South Beach hip-guy Richard Bronson from the securities industry didn’t exactly shock the financial world. After all the 44-year-old investment broker has a reputation as a scammer. And he’s been out of the business for more than a year. Yet the…
When the clerk called Tony Martin’s name in federal court Monday, the football star, dressed elegantly in a casual brown suit and dark-brown suede shoes, just nodded. “Indicate your presence,” Barry Garber, magistrate judge, prodded. “Please raise your hand.” Martin, a Miami native and Atlanta Falcons wide receiver, lifted his…
Something, or someone, failed Jarvis. Maybe it was the social worker assigned to visit the family, or maybe it was his mother who couldn’t keep him off the street. Or maybe it was Jarvis himself, a headstrong boy who tried to become a man too quickly.
