In late 1991, when Metro-Dade Police Sgt. David Simmons was assigned to investigate the latest child abuse allegations lodged against physicians Lisette and Andres Nogues, his colleague Det. Ellen Christopher issued an ambivalent sigh. On the one hand, she was thrilled an officer as competent as Simmons had inherited the…
Take a look at the new MacArthur Causeway now. It’s fast and smooth, for sure. Plenty of room to maneuver through rush hour at velocities well over the 30 mph speed limit. It’s also about as boring as a stretch of asphalt can get: all road with just a strip…
People still ask me about my car, the little red Sentra that was totaled as it sat parked outside my apartment in the rain one early morning in November. An off-duty Miami Beach police officer plowed into it. I wrote about the whole experience in the January 20 issue of…
Human beings have, for good reason, spent a considerable amount of their history figuring out ways to hide their excrement. In fact, several good reasons, reasons so small you need high-powered microscopes to see them. Behold, for instance, shigellae. Resembling a tiny ice-cream sprinkle, this bacterium is among scores of…
The airwaves beckon. Yet we are captives on the Venetian Causeway. Locked in traffic and reduced to soothing our frayed nerves straight from a bottle. Our larger half, Jim, is not one to obey gridlock protocol. His faded red Mazda lurches left, then right. Soon we are slaloming through the…
In the arcane world of modern hydraulics and flush toilets, there is one widely held assumption: what goes down will stay down. You answer the call of nature, push the handle, and keep on walking. Few care to dwell on what happens next, and fewer still care to talk about…
Adam Von Furstenberg remembers seeing the hypodermic needle taped to his right arm pop upright like a jack-in-the-box and knowing he was in big trouble. The machine that was supposed to be converting his blood from HIV-positive to HIV-negative had malfunctioned. Rather than returning ozone-treated blood to his body, the…
Inside the minuscule Indian Creek Village Hall, some 30 tense bodies were crammed, and more spilled onto the outdoor walkway. Elderly residents dressed in the fashion of twenty years ago. Lawyers in staid suits. Scruffy reporters and even a television news crew, much to the horror of a community that…
At nine o’clock sharp on Wednesday, February 24, Norman Braman strolled into Indian Creek Village’s teensy town hall to address his esteemed council. In an unprompted, five-minute soliloquy, the millionaire auto salesman paid homage to the ultra-exclusive isle on which he had settled eighteen months ago. The crown jewel of…
In the few maps that record South Florida before the era of dredge-and-plat, Indian Creek Village survives as an obscure speck of land off the northern tip of Miami Beach. Originally earmarked to become part of a much larger manmade island, the islet was instead remodeled into a free-floating country…
A friend A I’ll call him Alex A phoned to warn me before I read it. Though at the time, I didn’t understand the call to be a warning. The year was 1985, and Alex was calling from Wisconsin to tell me that a mutual acquaintance had just published a…
Winston Churchill said it best: “Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous.” Miami’s most venerable political consultant, Phil Hamersmith, has a new appreciation for the British statesman’s pithy observation. And he gained it just in time to carry his battlefield injury into this week’s elections. The…
A minister, a rabbi, and an attorney are swimming in the ocean. A shark comes along and swallows up the rabbi. A second shark moves in and gobbles the minister. A third shark approaches, sniffs the attorney, and swims off. Why? Professional courtesy. It’s really not so difficult to hate…
“I think this will be the most important vote people will make in a long time. You only get one vote, folks. There are no latitudes for mistakes.” A Joe Gersten, 1/14/93, Government Cut Political Club Next week a revolution will take place. A political system is being opened to…
Rebar at four in the morning and a night of heroic drinking with club promoter Michael Capponi, the twenty-year-old prince of South Beach, is winding down. The place is packed, grunge rock pounding over the sound system, a madhouse of lust and degeneracy. A Saudi fighter pilot earnestly raves about…
Later they would play Candyland. Later, too, they would eat homemade muffins and frolic with the anatomically correct dolls. But first, four-year-old Donna had to practice. That was what her therapist, Miss Suzanne, told her. Over and over again. Because this wasn’t just any rehearsal. Tomorrow Donna (which is not…
Joseph and Laurie Braga were invited by State Attorney Janet Reno to interview many of the children involved in the Country Walk case. Their efforts earned them both praise and criticism. Press accounts at the time quoted supporters describing them as “remarkable,” “honest, caring, and sincere.” One observer suggested they…
It’s your mother, her careworn Iberian face framed in graying hair, smiling delightedly and holding a telephone receiver to her ear. The past few weeks, the posters and ads have been cropping up all over town: “No se olvide de su madre, ella esta esperando su llamada,” they urge. “Don’t…
A year ago, standing on a football practice field in South Dade, Ernie Cambo put his life in perspective. “I’m kind of limited,” he explained. “My knees are giving out, so I take things as they come. I just want to give it my best effort and never say, ‘What…
Country Walk, the housing development northwest of Metrozoo, is best known today for being brutally victimized by Hurricane Andrew. But not so long ago, in 1984, the affluent neighborhood suffered a different sort of tempest. It was the site of one of the most widely publicized child-abuse cases in U.S…
One county commission candidate has taken Dade’s new era of political change very seriously. He’s not going to lobby any bigtime politicians and power brokers in his bid for District 3. He’s not going to sit on any panels or engage in any televised debates. He’s not even going to…
The following excerpt from Our Last Chance recounts the events of Tuesday, July 4, 1992, Bill and Simonne Butler’s 20th day adrift on their inflatable life raft. The food they had managed to salvage from their sailboat before it sank A including crackers, beer, soda, juice, peanut butter, canned vegetables…
