California video artist Scott Gairdner (ScottGairdner.com) has captured the ethos of Florida’s issues with sex offenders — sleeping under bridges and on park benches, or, in the bungalow across the street from you — pretty well in his video “The Sex Offender Shuffle.”…
WFTL’s Joyce Kaufman is getting pretty good at managing political stunts. A couple of years ago she collected thousands of shoes to take to Washington to protest illegal immigration. That same year she switched parties — from Democrat to Republican — on the air.And last week Kaufman kicked up such…
When the DEA raided a Parkland grow house at 7773 NW 124th Terrace on September 12, 2007 — was Stephen Febonio’s body crammed into a freezer in that very garage? Or had the freezer been moved out just days earlier, while the DEA had the house under surveillance? Documents related…
Iguanas falling from the sky.Pythons slithering from the swamps and into suburban yards in search of warmth. It would make a great horror movie if it weren’t true life. It’s been so frigid in South Florida this week that 250 sea turtles in cold shock have already been picked up…
Lately, we’ve been looking at the case of Stephen Febonio: The man’s body was recovered buried in a freezer at an abandoned Delray Beach marijuana grow house last March. Febonio was owed about $10,000 for some drywall he’d installed at another grow house in Parkland — a half-million-dollar family home…
Discovery documents released in the case of Brandon Deyo, the 23-year-old Jupiter man arrested in December on charges of transmitting child pornography, reveal that Deyo had been downloading the porn in large batches overnight at the house of a friend’s parents in Jupiter. The predilection for young children seems to…
How many free steak dinners does it take to corrupt a chief of police? The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is “still weighing” whether to investigate Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Frank Adderley’s relationship with Ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein. The stink arose over claims that Adderley was so enmeshed with Rothstein…
Capturing the Deyos In 2003, District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley sentenced David Deyo, 43, in a Palm Beach County courtroom to a whopping 17½ years in prison. Deyo hadn’t murdered or kidnapped anybody; he hadn’t robbed a bank at gunpoint — but the judge threw the book at him. Deyo,…
Long walks on the beach just got a lot more profitable. In time for a new year in which we’re all casting around for ways to offset dwindling cash flow, Hammacher Schlemmer has introduced the perfect accoutrement for beachcombing snowbirds, recently dethroned celeb mistresses, and out-of-work journos: the metal detecting…
If Florida gang members are using Twitter, the new technology didn’t much help Lake Worth MLK member Ricardo Rodriguez. Rodriguez, 24, who lives in a concrete block bungalow decorated with merry Christmas lights at 618 North D Street in Lake Worth, was rounded up by the Palm Beach Sheriff’s office…
Lake Worth City Manager Susan Stanton joins the likes of Sami Al-Arian, Terri Shiavo, and the 2000 Florida Recount as one of Creative Loafing’s end-of- the-year winners: “Ten Biggest Stories of the Decade in Tampa Bay.”In 2007, Steve Stanton had been Largo town manager for 14 years. He found himself…
Stephen Febonio’s parents may not feel like they have much to be thankful for this holiday season. Stephen’s 76-year-old father, Edwin, who lives in Boynton Beach with his wife, Margaret, is a retired police detective from Peabody, Massachusetts. But instead of upholding the law, Febonio’s two sons have tangled with…
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office announced Friday morning that it has indicted and arrested 12 members of the MLK gang in Lake Worth after a seven-month investigation, dubbed “Operation Vida Loca.” The MLK gang, whose moniker stands for Makin’ Life Krazy, has been terrorizing Lake Worth neighborhoods since at…
Fred Chalker says a turning point in his understanding of the needs of the Haitian people came five years ago, when he was visiting one of his clinics on the Northwest coast of Haiti. A mother had brought her 18-year-old son in to the modest medical clinic Chalker funds through…
Dozens of fans on Deerfield Beach boy Michael Brewer’s Facebook page were thrilled to see the new photo his mother posted on Friday, showing Michael looking in good spirits and evidently healing well. Wrote one Facebook friend from Colorado: “I am totally jazzed to see you looking so good! Keep…
Tis the season for charitable giving, and choosing where to spread your meager holiday surplus is harder than ever this year. But folks who donate to one Lake Worth charity don’t have to worry about whether their dollars will be spent wisely. For the Children made Florida Trend’s list of…
Nudie calendars are raining down on us just in time for the new year, and the pinups are not exactly conventional. Old ladies, environmentalists, and now artists have all bared their buns — or at least discrete portions of them — for good causes. We have word from Clay Glass…
Recently released discovery documents reveal that 15-year-old Michael Brewer had nine enemies — a ring of boys that surrounded him one October afternoon in Deerfield Beach, doused him with rubbing alcohol when his back was turned, and lit him on fire. But Brewer, still recovering at Jackson Memorial Hospital in…
The Rev. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church may be a frothing looney, but he seems just as drawn to Florida’s balmy winter days as any Jersey snowbird. Based in Kansas, Phelps has achieved fame for blaming just about all the world’s ills on gay people (his website, godhatesfags.com, is…
Ain’t no sunshine in Sunshine Village today. Yesterday the Palm Springs City Council voted unanimously to change the zoning at this trailer park off 10th Avenue North to commercial, thereby making way to clear the park for an incoming Wal-Mart.Residents like Michael Garcia are wondering why…
The ethics complaint filed on behalf of Lake Worth business owner Gary Dario against City Commissioner Cara Jennings was dismissed yesterday by the Florida Commission on Ethics for “lack of legal sufficiency.” The commission upheld Jennings’s “right to boycott” — even though she holds political office.Dario, who owned Nature’s Way…
Florida Atlantic University just can’t leave well enough alone. It’s been much too long since the school was accused of harboring terrorists — but a day without anti-Muslim hysteria is a day without sunshine. Last week, the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, in conjunction with the Florida…
