Sixteen-year-old Bjorn DiMaio and seventeen-year-old Anthony Vincent have not killed anyone, but this Monday, June 15, they are scheduled to stand trial on second-degree murder charges. If convicted, the teen-agers could face seven to twelve years in prison. Their unusual predicament is only one aspect of the controversy that continues…
The partisan political waters of Miami have never been easy to predict or, for that matter, to navigate. As the 1990 snubbing of Nelson Mandela proved, there are political agendas to be addressed and Cuban-exile honchos to be appeased before a hero can receive his plaudits locally. Last week musician/poet…
A Miami lawyer who is dying of AIDS has sued a physician and a fellow attorney, saying the two conspired to illegally obtain hospital records, then gossiped about his medical condition to his co-workers and social acquaintances. The lawyer, who filed suit May 15 under the pseudonymn John Doe, claims…
Last Tuesday at a warehouse in West Dade, six old men broke open a storage crate. Their lives – more than half a century of aviation history – spilled out on the concrete floor in disarray. “I can’t imagine anyone packing this stuff like this,” said Kelvin Keith, one of…
The script would have sent the folks from Cops into spasms of voyeuristic glee. On September 21, 1989, a lone gunman invaded a quiet patch of Miami Beach suburbia, broke into a physician’s home, savagely beat his maid, then engaged two police officers in a life-or-death shootout. Although it was…
Frank Decker walks through the small cottage behind his house, shaking his head. Everywhere he turns, there’s more disappointment – a busted fan, a dented refrigerator, broken windows. The bars to the wrought-iron gate on the back door have been pried apart. The floor inside is littered with garbage and…
Veteran Metro-Dade homicide detective Ramesh Nyberg says his murder mystery is pure fiction, but certain corrupt judges and obfuscating bureaucrats may find it nervous reading. And local bookworms will feel right at home in the novel’s landscape, which ranges from the seedy upper reaches of Biscayne Boulevard to the tomato…
In five months as a criminal court judge in Dade County, Henry Ferro has come to expect days filled with mayhem. His overcrowded docket reads like a True Crime index: assaults, drug deals, sex battery, and all varieties of theft. But nothing could prepare the jurist for the sight that…
With a force-five hurricane bearing down on fictional Biscayne County, homicide detective Jeff Kohl roosts in his favorite ficus tree with the tools of his trade: a .38 revolver, a glass of vodka, a jar of pickled okra, and a Walkman loaded with sitar music. Addicted to hot peppers and…
It’s been one year since Knight-Ridder’s Miami Herald Publishing Co. notified independent operators who deliver the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald to stores and newsracks across Dade County that their sales to hawkers – the men and women who peddle papers to motorists and passersby – would be curtailed…
Let’s be honest about this. Ladies, have you ever gone to a nightclub with the notion of sashaying into some man’s life and persuading him to buy you drinks? And you, gentlemen, how many times have you gone to a bar without a cent, hoping to mooch a beer? Shoot…
The fishmongers murmured. The boat bums balked. Chikara Nakamura and Tatsuaki Miyaochi waved, bowed, and tied their 28-foot sloop to the fuel dock on Miami’s Watson Island. “We get all kinds of sailboats, but I can’t remember ever seeing one from Japan,” says Barbara Kiers, a cashier at Watson Island…
Every newspaper vending box in the universe should be painted beige and brown, never red or purple. Each should be the same size, with lettering no taller than a matchbook. And the newspapers they dispense should show proper respect for humble servants of the public trust. Thanks to their elected…
Veteran Metro-Dade homicide detective Ramesh Nyberg says his murder mystery is pure fiction, but certain corrupt judges and obfuscating bureaucrats may find it nervous reading. And local bookworms will feel right at home in the novel’s landscape, which ranges from the seedy upper reaches of Biscayne Boulevard to the tomato…
After Saturday night’s four-round fiasco against a doughy, lethargic Mickey Rourke, Francisco Harris left the ring poised, unbruised, and victorious – in the eyes of everyone except two of the fight’s three judges. Scoring the bout on the ten-point must system, one judge called it 39-38 in Harris’s favor; inexplicably,…
The married mayor is having an affair with the also-married mayor of a neighboring village. One councilman wears women’s panties and dabs on make-up at home. Another was caught committing acts of sodomy in the bathrooms of the local high school. A third is a Mafia thief. One of the…
Dade State Attorney Janet Reno, acknowledging that her office made mistakes in the way it handled the investigation of a North Miami teen-ager’s death, says she will present to the courts any information withheld from last month’s inquest. Andrew Morello was shot to death February 1 by off-duty Metro-Dade police…
Sometimes a harrowing screech precedes the collision. Sometimes there’s nothing except the sudden, wrenching explosion of metal meeting metal and the disconcerting rain of shattered windshield glass. So say those who work near the intersection of SW Seventh Street and South Miami Avenue. Anyone who travels regularly through that doomed…
The months leading up to the shooting were difficult for Andrew Morello and his three companions in the van. Morello had been cutting classes at North Miami High School and had fallen so far behind in his schoolwork that his parents withdrew him from school before the end of the…
In the split second it took Laura Russell to squeeze the trigger on her 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol, Andrew Morello’s fate was sealed. Russell, an off-duty Metro-Dade police officer, says lethal force was necessary to keep Morello from killing her and her husband outside their home. Morello, she claims,…
Defense attorneys say they wouldn’t be surprised if the Morello inquest was incomplete and one-sided. The proceedings are inherently flawed, they say, because prosecutors are allowed to present carefully selected evidence and testimony without the scrutiny of an opposing attorney’s cross-examination. “What a joke they are,” says Miami attorney Jeffrey…
Laura Russell is a nine-year-veteran of the Metro-Dade Police Department, a decorated officer with dozens of commendations in her personnel file. In nearly every evaluation, the 28-year-old Miami native has received her highest marks in the category that rates initiative. “Officer Russell is always looking for suspicious or unusual activity,…
