Never use the Internet when you're laid up with food poisoning, and never trust your own legal defense. Those are the lessons supposedly learned from the bizarre criminal saga of former WSVN Channel 7 weatherman Bill Kamal, who was released from jail last week.
In actuality, Kamal, using the screen name "morethandick," chatted online with what he thought was a 14-year-old boy named Billy and arranged to meet him for sexual purposes. Of course Billy was undercover detectives, and they arrested Kamal, ensuring a local media sensation. He pleaded guilty and got off with a five-year prison term. According to Local 10, which loves embarassing WSVN with this story, he was released yesterday to a Philadelphia halfway house.
In a bizzare jailhouse interview
with Channel 10 in 2005, Kamal alleged he was innocent. He said he pleaded guilty only because he wanted to avoid life in jail, that a case of
food poisoning had left him confused, and that he never wanted to have
sex with the boy, but only to be a father to him. It's kind of sad,
because listening to his side of the story, you can tell the detectives
played with his emotions, saying the kid had just lost his father,
and his mom was with some loser new boyfriend. Still, though, cops found condoms
and water guns in his car, and we suppose the kids who would actually seek out this kind of relationship online have similarly sad lives.
Kamal's full five years aren't up, but he's spending the last few months in a halfway house. After that, he'll be on probation for life.
-- Kyle Munzenrieder
