Update, 5/14: We just posted a selection of text messages between Okrzesik and Ayers.Original post, 5/11:Police say 21 22-year-old Nicole Okrzesik was arrested Thursday and charged with first-degree murder in the strangulation of 19-year-old Juliana Mensch in late March.Police say Okrzesik and James Ayers, her boyfriend, killed Mensch after getting high…
Note, 4:30 p.m: This liveblog is over. More updates to come in separate blog posts; check out The Pulp for more soon. And thanks for sticking with us this whole time.) Hello, crime-gawkers — here’s where we’ll be liveblogging the 2 p.m. hearing in the John Goodman murder trial. For…
While we were reporting our cover story on the murder of high-flying multimillionaire Ron Vinci and the impending trial of his girlfriend, Catherine Pileggi, New Times went to court to fight for the release of evidence and statements collected during the police investigation. The judge granted us access to everything…
Here’s the latest from a 9:10 p.m. press conference from authorities about the shooting this afternoon; information is pulled together from the FBI, Broward Sheriff’s Office and other news sources.From FBI spokesman Tim Donovan:It started at about 2:20 p.m., when a man stole a car at the intersection of 75th…
Good news for all you Marlins fans who were worried that you were going to have to pay prices inflated by people actually wanting to go to the games: Tickets for Sunday’s game against the Mets are now online for as low as $2.99, and tix for next Tuesday’s game…
Tuesday night, the guy who lives at 420 SW 18th Ave. in Fort Lauderdale couldn’t sleep. He was put out of his house by a termite infestation and was staying elsewhere while exterminators draped a giant tent over his house and filled it with poison gas.It was around 4 a.m…
The U.S. Supreme Court has taken on some of the most compelling debates in history: the struggle for civil rights, the power of corporations to influence political campaigns, a woman’s right to get an abortion. Now, thanks to a South Florida activist, they’ll be taking on another subject for our…
This morning, I wrote a mean blog post about attorney Jose Baez’s upcoming book, Presumed Guilty, Casey Anthony: The Inside Story, coming out in July. I called it a “‘let’s make some cash off Casey Anthony’ book” and called Baez “the guy who sold bikinis on the internet before writing…
If Fort Lauderdale’s red-light program has helped traffic safety, there’s no way to actually tell yet. Crashes at the six intersections where cameras are currently installed actually went up slightly after their installation, but it went from 21 to 24 crashes over ten months, so it’s not clear what changed.Despite…
One year after Thompson Academy settled a federal lawsuit alleging a 14-year-old boy was twice sexually assaulted by a counselor at the lockup, the head of the Pembroke Pines juvenile detention center is facing scrutiny. Administrator Craig Ferguson has left his post amid allegations that he took residents home with…
The sentence for 35-year-old James Mozie was handed down in federal court yesterday: life in prison, plus ten years of supervised release. Dude’s going to have a parole officer in the afterlife.Mozie was convicted in December of one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of a minor, eight counts…
The operators of a West Park meat market and Miramar packaging and shipping store were arrested yesterday on charges that they ran backroom gambling operations that could take in more than $25,000 in a single day.The investigation, rather straightforwardly named “Operation Hidden Bet,” pointed to 43-year-old Ramon Contreras Rodriguez and…
Police say 27-year-old Stephen Bradley was in a relationship with 35-year-old Melissa Kaehler of Fort Lauderdale. Then they broke up. Then he killed her.The Broward Sheriff’s Office just released the names of the people involved after finding their bodies Saturday morning — police received two calls around 10 a.m. for…
The popular Palm Beach Gardens band teacher who was arrested three years ago for sexually assaulting four girls at H.L. Watkins Middle School is about to complete his first month in a Miami-Dade County prison.Heath Miller, 37, pleaded guilty in March to one count of sexual battery of a minor…
If you’ve been reading here for a while, you remember former New Times writer Tom Francis, who has since moved on to more mysterious plans elsewhere in the country. Whatever he’s been up to, it’s involved rooting around in the court records of Chris and Jeff George, the Wellington twins who…
Data is starting to come together in Fort Lauderdale’s red-light camera program, which dished out more than 25,000 tickets between September 2010 and February 2012. A lot of it is more complicated than just the raw numbers (Where’s that money going? How many people are actually paying them? What about…
John Goodman was supposed to get sentenced on Monday. He could have gotten 30 years in jail for killing Scott Wilson in a drunk-driving accident in 2010. The jury found him guilty.But that same jury is what’s standing between Goodman and his sentence — jurors have come forward twice this week…
The charming woman pictured at right is accused of stealing checks out of two cars in Wellington and Royal Palm Beach on March 24. From the looks of those wide eyes and her death grip on the steering wheel, she spends a lot of money on caffeinated beverages.I’ve requested more…
Frank Biden, younger brother of the man who is second in line for the White House, has a flair for the dramatic. Last year, he called the Mavericks High charter school in Palm Springs a “hope factory” and said its management company, Mavericks in Education Florida, was “on a mission…
Just a heads-up: The big to-do on the 1200 block of SW 25th Avenue in Deerfield Beach is a response to what the Broward Sheriff’s Office called a “burglary in progress” that sounds like it’s more complicated than just somebody climbing in a window — they report deputies have surrounded…
The man accused of killing 19-year-old Juliana Mensch in March will go to trial June 25 for first-degree murder. Police say 32-year-old James Ayers drove Mensch’s car to a friend’s workplace and said he’d strangled Mensch a week earlier; he was arrested at a rehab facility later that day.Ayers pleaded…
A rock-wielding burglar broke into five Chinese restaurants in one night, according to police, who suspect him in “at least” 15 other burglaries.Surveillance footage shows the man using a rock to smash the restaurants’ glass doors, then taking all the cash (and coins) out of the registers and, in two…
