Looking out his window, Albert Scaletti, Jr., watched as police officers surrounded his home. His heart pounding, Scaletti felt a wave of nausea rush over him. When one of the officers looked up and saw him at the window, he quickly slinked to the side, hoping to avoid being seen…
Nobody messed with Smokey. Smokey was a “houseman,” a prisoner inside the county jail who ruled his cellblock. If a new prisoner wanted to use the telephone, he had to ask for Smokey’s permission. If a new prisoner wanted to use the bathroom or watch TV or go to sleep,…
Crazy Joe is back, but you wouldn’t know it from reading the Herald. Carollo has long been a shark among Miami-Dade’s bloodthirsty politicians. Remember when he helped chase Xavier Suarez from office this past March? Or his long-ago intrigue in killing a multimillion-dollar development on Watson Island? Jorge Mas Canosa…
A hard-hitting series of reports that overcame numerous hurdles, unearthed several questionable street addresses, and ultimately overturned a tainted state basketball championship earned New Times a coveted Green Eyeshade award on Saturday, April 24. The 1999 award for investigative reporting went to staff writer Robert Andrew Powell for his series…
At about noon on Tuesday, April 21, Carlos Rolon tried to wake his mother Vivian, who had been sleeping on a mattress in the kitchen of his Hialeah apartment. Carlos became alarmed when she didn’t open her eyes. He held his ear to her chest and thought he heard a…
Cymbal crashes bounce off the walls of a semicavernous band hall at Miami Beach Senior High School. The low drone of a bass guitar and the crack of a snare drum build up a beat. Then the room erupts with sounds from electric guitars, keyboards, and a brass section complete…
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?”…
Almost six months after a state board approved purchase of the 8 1_2 Square Mile Area, the plan is as good as dead. Dexter Lehtinen, former U.S. Attorney in Miami and counsel for the Miccosukee Indian Tribe, Inc., has spearheaded the effort to slay it. Gov. Jeb Bush has also…
You invent a new product, it sells wildly, and you’re a millionaire. It’s the American dream. It’s America Vaughan’s dream. Vaughan is an Orlando housewife and artist who has invented a soft drink called Havana Cola, a key lime-flavor cola now sold in several Miami-area stores and restaurants. After making…
It’s a bittersweet question for the regulars in Little Havana’s Domino Park: Is Havana Cola as good as the real thing? At New Times’s behest, eight locals this past week took a swig and a sip. To most Havana Cola means, well, Cuba libre. Taste-testers reacted to everything but the…
“Who knows about the stupid things Wade did when he was young,” Kelley Seaman says. The South Miami-Dade resident is trying to remember why her husband purchased the used car that has caused them so much grief. At the time, in 1986, Wade Seaman was a single 21-year-old who needed…
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…
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…
The mayor of Miami once wore the heavyweight crown of South Florida politics. Maurice Ferre once championed a more cosmopolitan downtown. His successor Xavier Suarez shuffled into Overtown after the McDuffie riots in 1980, acting as the city’s spokesman, its leader. Used to be. In 1996 the title belt passed…
The unsung hero of the Miami Herald’s Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting: Stephanie Lydecker. Sure, you could name deputy city editor Judy Miller. Or maybe reporters Joe Tanfani, Manny Garcia, Andres Viglucci, or Frances Robles. Their performances were superb by any measure. But don’t forget Lydecker, who once worked as…
Since the beginning of this year, Vivian Rolon’s living space has shrunk from a two-bedroom apartment to a motel room to a tiny corner of her son’s kitchen floor. That is where she lives right now: on a doubled mattress in front of a television. On top of the TV…
In December 1997 Ron Bloomberg strode into Miami Beach City Hall for a predevelopment meeting with city planners. He hoped to construct a four-story office building at 23rd Street and Park Avenue, on the site of a long-abandoned Chevron station. The 33-year-old developer arrived feeling optimistic. He and his partners,…
On a recent Saturday afternoon about two dozen people and a well-mannered yellow Lab gathered in a courtyard in Miami’s Design District. Most owned homes in the nearby neighborhood of Buena Vista and they’d come to discuss mundane issues such as trash pickup, beautification, and code compliance. But the underlying…
Info: Out, Damned Spa Marc Siegel hired South Floridians to work in a Mexican resort, then stiffed them By Jose Luis Jimenez For $1000 per week Sherry Parker was willing to work during the holidays. The 43-year-old single mother wouldn’t be able to spend New Year’s Eve with her family…
On a Tuesday in May 1945 several Miami residents decided to go for a swim in the ocean. Two women and five men, including a lawyer, two grocery store owners, a union leader, and two U.S. Navy sailors, were among them. They left work downtown, climbed into their cars, and…
David Fess Walker, a physical education teacher at Parkway Middle School, joined Dade County Public Schools in 1984 as a gym teacher at Charles R. Drew Middle School. A year later the district learned that, in 1983, while an employee of the Fulton County school system in Atlanta, Walker had…
The half dozen or so Miami-Dade County bike cops, wearing helmets, tight shorts, and pistols, are doing laps around Miami Norland Senior High School on February 26. But these armed officers are merely the outriders of the beefed-up security patrolling the boxy, gracelessly aging school in this middle- and working-class…
