Tall and skinny, Dan Lewis wears a blue oxford and khakis as he walks down Himmarshee Street on a recent afternoon. He’s still upset about Fort Lauderdale’s July 4 fireworks presentation. “Lauderdale-by-the-Sea put on a better show than Fort Lauderdale,” Lewis says disgustedly. “Anything to save money these days.” The…
A decade ago, Hollywood Police Chief Richard Witt blew the whistle on corrupt hiring practices at his agency. From 1990 to 1995, qualified candidates had consistently been passed over in favor of unsuitable ones, he said. Many of those given jobs were friends or relatives of high-ranking city cops. An…
On October 8, 2003, Ronald Addvensky received the visit every drug dealer fears. Two Hollywood police narcotics detectives, Pete Salvo and Robert Wolfkill, armed with a search warrant, raided the 57-year-old’s mobile home near South Park Road in Hollywood. The detectives found a box containing 54.5 grams of cocaine, 12…
The studio is crammed in the back corner of Tootsie’s Cabaret, a sprawling strip club near the Broward/Miami-Dade county line. The walls are painted pitch black. Leopard-print pillows cover two couches. Computers, microphones, web cameras, and cables are strewn throughout the small room. Windows allow club visitors to watch the…
$569. That’s what you, as an average Fort Lauderdale resident, paid in property taxes in 2003. You shelled out $116 more than residents of Miami and Jacksonville, $187 more than citizens of Tampa and Orlando, and $321 more than inhabitants of St. Petersburg. And that was before city commissioners slammed…
Checkout lanes at grocery stores are all the same. Behind the rows of gum and breath mints are America’s most delicious impulse buys: tabloid newspapers. Cellulite Stars! Drug Collapse! Angelina Rejects Brad! Did Britney’s Hubby Cheat? Slater’s Stripper Obsession Drove Wife Away! Lisa Marie Presley Engaged! You’ve thumbed through them…
In the fall of 2000, Republican power broker Tom Feeney attended a meeting at Yang Enterprises in Oviedo, near Orlando, a former employee of the firm says. Feeney, who would soon become Florida’s speaker of the House, wasn’t just a politician; he was also a lobbyist. Among his clients was…
It seemed nothing more than a lustful encounter. Valarie Curry, a pretty, slender, 33-year-old black woman with straight black hair that hung in strands just above her shoulders, was an optician at a Pearle Vision store in Hollywood. Leon Mackey was a handsome, five-foot-nine, 200-pound, 30-year-old Bahamian. They met in…
Tom Rains couldn’t have been prepared for the beating he would take. He was hanging out with his fiance, Mileah Dagon, and a friend outside their apartment building at 2414 Johnson St. in Hollywood about 9:30 p.m. on August 25, 2002. A 37-year-old from Albany, New York, who dropped out…
Donald Baker takes a drag from a cigarette as he sits in front of a laptop computer at his mother’s mobile home near the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. A lanky 52-year-old with light-brown hair that flows down to his shoulders but thins at the top, Baker…
He was 16 and scared. Jason was a newcomer at Growing Together, a boot camp-style drug treatment center for adolescents in downtown Lake Worth. During the day, he attended group therapy at the program’s two-story, banana-yellow building, which is equipped with security gates and barred windows. At night, he’d sleep…
It’s nearing 5 p.m. on Thursday, September 30. Drumbeats can be heard for miles down South Dixie Highway near the University of Miami as demonstrators and campaign workers stump for their presidential candidate. In a few hours, George W. Bush and John Kerry will clash nearby in their first debate…
Vincent Del’Ostia, a tattooed, five-foot-nine, 160-pound 31-year-old with a history of drug abuse and psychological problems, paced outside the office door of the Entrada Motel on Federal Highway in Hollywood. High on cocaine, he wasn’t there to rent a room. He wrapped his hand around the doorknob and banged on…
Richard Grayson is an anomaly. Though politicians usually don’t discuss their faults and neuroses, he’ll happily tell you that he’s cheap, anxiety-ridden, susceptible to panic attacks, and medicated daily with antipsychotics. “But I’m generally laid-back,” Grayson insists at the Roasted Bean coffeehouse across from Nova Southeastern University on University Drive…
Charlie Moretto’s off-white mansion on Millionaire’s Row in Lighthouse Point would have been suitable for Al Capone. Nestled along the Intracoastal Waterway, the 7,042-square-foot estate opens onto azure seas and million-dollar yachts. Inside the home, bright-white tiles and pearl walls shine like gems amid the tasteful, earth-toned furniture. Above an…
Randy Dunlap is a plump man with thinning white hair, large round glasses, and a down-home Alabama, “Yeah, buddy” speaking style not generally heard among the glut of polished South Florida politicos. It’s become a shtick for Dunlap, making him something of a foil for his 12-year incumbent rival: reserved,…
Jennifer Van Bergen opens the door to her tenth-floor apartment on Hallandale Beach, a law review article in her hand and eyeglasses perched on the bridge of her nose. She looks up, squinting. “Have we met before?” she asks, standing about 25 feet from a balcony that overlooks the Atlantic…
In the early evening of Tuesday, November 11, 2003, Stephen Jordi parked his 1988 Ford Aerostar van in a lot south of the Sunset Harbor Marina in Miami Beach. With him was a friend he’d made in August, Stewart Welch. The two looked almost identical: middle-aged white men with flabby…
Melody Ridgley Fortunato was the type of woman young girls are taught to admire. She overcame early hardship, living modestly but with big ambitions in Americus, Georgia. After moving to South Florida, Fortunato took on a sexist boys’ club in the Hollywood Police Department and won. Then she divorced a…
Simone Gitman wants to help me find God. A petite brunet with ocean-blue eyes the size of half-dollar coins, Gitman sits cross-legged next to me on a brown sofa with oversized cushions in the canal-front home she rents in Victoria Park. Dressed in gray sweat pants and a blue tank…
The laughing arrives first, echoing down the hallway. Then comes the commotion. Bodyguards and business associates enter the room, walking slowly backward so as not to lose sight of their smiling, boisterous, broad-shouldered boss. The cameras roll. The laughing continues. The man enters. And he sparkles. Literally. Overhead lights and…
Alexis, a tall exotic dancer from New Hampshire with golden blond hair that hangs seductively to the small of her back, sits at the bar of Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen’s Club on Federal Highway, a bottle of water in one hand. It’s nearing 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, and the Oakland…
