Steve Mann was on his way to work one morning last November, when a golden-brown Mercedes sports car caught his eye. “I noticed it because I’ve always liked cars, and it’s not the type of car you see every day, especially in those colors,” Mann recalls. The car, which he…
The day, as usual, begins with death, or at least its threats. A dog strays into the early-morning rush hour traffic on Miller Road, gets hit by a car, stumbles over to the swale, and collapses. By the time Jorge Yera arrives 45 minutes later, the dog, a Dalmatian, has…
Tuesday, December 5, 10:50 p.m. The doors to the Metro-Dade County Commission chambers swing open and a half-dozen men walk in. Art Teele glances across the room. He does not look pleased. Not that the casual observer would immediately pick up on this. A master pol like Teele does not…
The Humane Society’s four drivers aren’t the only animal-rescue personnel plying the county’s streets. The Dade County pound, officially known as the Metro-Dade Animal Care & Control Division, has its own crew of about fifteen drivers. Though the Humane Society and Animal Care & Control are regularly confused, and their…
The employees of the posh Bal Harbour Shops are used to treating their well-heeled customers like royalty, as indeed some of them are. But many staffers say the mall management treats them like peons, especially when it comes to the common yet ticklish question of parking. Each year, during five…
There’s nothing like going shopping with someone else’s money, and there’s no one like Thomas Kramer, the German financier who has sunk millions into South Beach real estate, to teach South Florida how it ought to be done. The 38-year-old self-described asset manager has been buying chunks of prime property…
PE.Over the past three decades, you have amassed fame, fortune, and — most important of all — respect. Heck, you even have your own steakhouse! But there are evil forces out there working against you: The maniacal owner. The fickle press. The expectorating linebacker. Late in the fourth quarter of…
Jose Milton became nearly a half-million dollars richer on June 20. The well-heeled Coral Gables contractor didn’t win the lottery, cash in an exceptionally prescient stock investment, cut a lucrative real estate deal, or come into a windfall inheritance. Like thousands of his fellow Dade Countians, Milton simply appealed the…
The Dade County Property Appraisal Department uses a mass-appraisal system, dividing the county into a grid of one-square-mile areas that are examined for changes in property values at least once a year. County appraisers employ a variety of techniques to verify values: They examine recent sales, as well as sales…
The narcotics unit of the North Miami Beach Police Department had just set up surveillance this past March 30, and already the operation had hit a snag. Overworked and pressing to keep up with their superiors’ demands for increased arrests, Sgt. Steve Diaz’s squad couldn’t get anyone to sell their…
Herman Echevarria wasn’t running for anything, but he was campaigning as he never had before. Seated at a long table that took up most of a sound booth at WQBA-AM (1140), starched white shirt sleeves rolled up, Echevarria, president of the Hialeah City Council, held a finger above a blinking…
Early in the afternoon of an unseasonably hot autumn day, an old flatbed truck with wooden side panels and dozens of limp, multicolor fiberglass “snakes” hanging from its back pulls into the narrow driveway of a ranch-style house in a quiet upper-middle-class neighborhood near Dadeland in South Miami. Though someone…
At the spot where the Miami River meets Dupont Plaza, Miami Vice Mayor Willy Gort grasps a large pair of scissors, slices a fuchsia ribbon, opens the Brickell Avenue bridge, and fuels rampant rumors that Mayor Steve Clark faces imminent death. The moment seems morbidly appropriate: Clark’s political image, after…
It had been one of Dave Shaw’s best trips to Havana. Clear skies. A steady wind. “No worries,” as the Key West sailboat captain liked to say. That is, until Shaw pulled up to the Texaco fuel dock at Key West’s Conch Harbor on Saturday, December 9, and was greeted…
If there was one moment that best highlighted the difference in style between defense attorneys Roy Black and Albert Krieger, it occurred on the very first morning of jury selection. Krieger rose solemnly from his chair, almost seeming to bow before his audience of prospective jurors. “Good morning, ladies and…
If America learned anything from the O.J. Simpson trial, it was the value of the courtroom as theater. But not every blockbuster can emanate from Hollywood, and most will never be televised. And so it is hardly surprising that the last great drug trial of the cocaine-cowboy Eighties is taking…
It is unlikely that either Willy Falc centsn or Sal Magluta will take the stand during their trial, but in a 30-minute conversation with New Times earlier this month, Magluta talked publicly for the first time since his arrest. Speaking by phone from the federal jail in downtown Miami, Magluta…
When last we checked in with Marcus Silveira (“Kicking Ass and Taking Names,” March 2), the Miami-based black-belt holder in Brazilian jujitsu had received no takers on his two-year-old offer to fight anyone, anywhere, anytime in a mano a mano, winner-take-all, no-holds-barred match. Of course, there probably aren’t many guys…
Doing a little house hunting? Consider this nearly completed beauty: two stories, 2500 square feet, barrel-tile roof, three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, spacious living room, dining room, kitchen, and Florida room, cathedral ceilings, patio, garage, waterfront views, adjoining never-to-be-developed land in a quiet, upscale residential neighborhood. Approximate asking…
Miami City Manager Cesar Odio’s firing of Frank Casta*eda and Ivey Kearson two weeks ago prompted a broad-based protest. Not only are city staffers stunned by the ouster of the two veteran employees, but a wide spectrum of activist groups has also voiced opposition to the dismissals. Angel Gonzalez, vice-chairman…
The two insurance-fraud investigators had stopped by unannounced. It was just after 6:30 on the evening of January 12, 1995, and Steven Smith and Maureen Murphy had some questions for the petite woman with long, dark hair who answered the door wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “U.S. Attorney’s…
If a certain paranoid movie director were to swing through Coconut Grove, he would discover enough conspiracy theories to make the assassination of JFK seem like an open-and-shut case. Compared to the charges of corruption and cronyism that swirl through the Grove, the dubious conclusions of the Warren Commission make…
