With a force-five hurricane bearing down on fictional Biscayne County, homicide detective Jeff Kohl roosts in his favorite ficus tree with the tools of his trade: a .38 revolver, a glass of vodka, a jar of pickled okra, and a Walkman loaded with sitar music. Addicted to hot peppers and…
It’s been one year since Knight-Ridder’s Miami Herald Publishing Co. notified independent operators who deliver the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald to stores and newsracks across Dade County that their sales to hawkers – the men and women who peddle papers to motorists and passersby – would be curtailed…
Let’s be honest about this. Ladies, have you ever gone to a nightclub with the notion of sashaying into some man’s life and persuading him to buy you drinks? And you, gentlemen, how many times have you gone to a bar without a cent, hoping to mooch a beer? Shoot…
The fishmongers murmured. The boat bums balked. Chikara Nakamura and Tatsuaki Miyaochi waved, bowed, and tied their 28-foot sloop to the fuel dock on Miami’s Watson Island. “We get all kinds of sailboats, but I can’t remember ever seeing one from Japan,” says Barbara Kiers, a cashier at Watson Island…
Every newspaper vending box in the universe should be painted beige and brown, never red or purple. Each should be the same size, with lettering no taller than a matchbook. And the newspapers they dispense should show proper respect for humble servants of the public trust. Thanks to their elected…
Veteran Metro-Dade homicide detective Ramesh Nyberg says his murder mystery is pure fiction, but certain corrupt judges and obfuscating bureaucrats may find it nervous reading. And local bookworms will feel right at home in the novel’s landscape, which ranges from the seedy upper reaches of Biscayne Boulevard to the tomato…
After Saturday night’s four-round fiasco against a doughy, lethargic Mickey Rourke, Francisco Harris left the ring poised, unbruised, and victorious – in the eyes of everyone except two of the fight’s three judges. Scoring the bout on the ten-point must system, one judge called it 39-38 in Harris’s favor; inexplicably,…
The married mayor is having an affair with the also-married mayor of a neighboring village. One councilman wears women’s panties and dabs on make-up at home. Another was caught committing acts of sodomy in the bathrooms of the local high school. A third is a Mafia thief. One of the…
Dade State Attorney Janet Reno, acknowledging that her office made mistakes in the way it handled the investigation of a North Miami teen-ager’s death, says she will present to the courts any information withheld from last month’s inquest. Andrew Morello was shot to death February 1 by off-duty Metro-Dade police…
Sometimes a harrowing screech precedes the collision. Sometimes there’s nothing except the sudden, wrenching explosion of metal meeting metal and the disconcerting rain of shattered windshield glass. So say those who work near the intersection of SW Seventh Street and South Miami Avenue. Anyone who travels regularly through that doomed…
The months leading up to the shooting were difficult for Andrew Morello and his three companions in the van. Morello had been cutting classes at North Miami High School and had fallen so far behind in his schoolwork that his parents withdrew him from school before the end of the…
In the split second it took Laura Russell to squeeze the trigger on her 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol, Andrew Morello’s fate was sealed. Russell, an off-duty Metro-Dade police officer, says lethal force was necessary to keep Morello from killing her and her husband outside their home. Morello, she claims,…
Defense attorneys say they wouldn’t be surprised if the Morello inquest was incomplete and one-sided. The proceedings are inherently flawed, they say, because prosecutors are allowed to present carefully selected evidence and testimony without the scrutiny of an opposing attorney’s cross-examination. “What a joke they are,” says Miami attorney Jeffrey…
Laura Russell is a nine-year-veteran of the Metro-Dade Police Department, a decorated officer with dozens of commendations in her personnel file. In nearly every evaluation, the 28-year-old Miami native has received her highest marks in the category that rates initiative. “Officer Russell is always looking for suspicious or unusual activity,…
With two fox terriers already yapping away at home, Gisela McClelland wasn’t looking to adopt a third when she visited Dade County Animal Services Division headquarters two weeks ago. On the contrary, the South Miami dog lover was there to drop off a stray German shepherd found roaming her neighborhood…
To those milling in front of the Miami Arena an hour before game time on March 18, Steven Friedman’s pitch sounded too good to be true. The attorney was offering to sell thirteen $29 tickets to that night’s Heat match-up against the Indiana Pacers at face value or below -…
As you head over the apex of the Intracoastal Waterway bridge on the MacArthur Causeway and swoop down across Watson Island in your rented Chrysler LeBaron convertible, top down and gleaming white, it no longer matters that you haven’t slept a wink since leaving home in Birmingham, England, 21 hours…
One night in September, after a jumping set with his band at Churchill’s Hideaway in Little Haiti, sweat-soaked singer-guitarist Hank Milne stood on the sidewalk out front, pressing flesh and fielding compliments. Everyone, it seemed, had something nice to say about the Volunteers’ debut concert. Except one attendee, who passed…
Luis Bermudez hardly expected the experience of a lifetime when he visited the newly opened Wal-Mart in West Kendall on February 20. A long-time collector of exotic fruit trees, Bermudez made a beeline for the garden shop while a friend went hunting for a flashlight. “I’m always looking for new…
Pierre Leach comes from a small town in Michigan called LeRoy, population 275. Five churches, no place to buy beer, everybody knows everything about everybody else. A community. Thirty years later, he was seeking a similar close-knit sense in his Hialeah neighborhood, Mango Hill, a crowded area that covers about…
America’s shortest and busiest commercial river always has a tale to tell. In the earliest years of the Twentieth Century, the talk centered on the Tatums, a pair of rough-and-tumble brothers who were busy enraging Miami’s populace. The Tatum boys built the first bridge across the Miami River at Flagler…
With all the disinformation swirling about his good name, Basil Wainwright often found it helpful to provide acquaintances, and potential backers, with a more objective account of his achievements. Below are excerpts from “The True Story of Basil Wainwright: Humanist, Physicist and Award Winning Inventor,” by “historian” Richard Johnson. “Basil…
