Power to the Pudge!

The series is over. The Marlins have had their best year since they won the 1997 World Series. Fans know this phenomenal achievement can mean only one thing: It’s time for Marlins management to trade away the team’s most talented players for a profit. This is an unspoken rule but…

Letters for October 23, 2003

Ann Landers she ain’t: As I read the story of Georgia Roberts and Kristi Krueger, a great sadness came over me (“Georgia Got a Gun,” October 9, and “Georgia in the Pines,” October 16). For I was with Kristi when she met Georgia, and I watched what Georgia did to…

Georgia in the Pines

As she strolled the hallways of Silver Palms Elementary on that Tuesday morning, Kristi Krueger wasn’t the Channel 10 anchorwoman seen on television. She was the suburban mom, the one who went by her married name, Templin. And she was there to tell administrators she’d be bringing cupcakes to school…

Who Ya Gonna Call?

A shiny gray Chevy Silverado propped up by oversized tires pulls into the Home Depot parking lot on the corner of Stirling Road and University Avenue in Davie. Rick McDonald, a fair-skinned 33-year-old wearing an orange baseball cap, climbs down slowly and deliberately from the truck cab, unable to conceal…

Buyout Revisited

The mainstream U.S. media gave George W. Bush virtual carte blanche during the first two years of his presidency, but now the glaze is peeling from Teflon President II. The promised weapons of mass destruction haven’t been found in Iraq, and the Justice Department recently launched an investigation into a…

Don’t Drink the Water, Part IV

I won’t say they fear me, because they probably don’t. But politicians do seem to avoid me. And when I speak with them, they sometimes seem perturbed by my questions. Broward County Commissioner Josephus Eggelletion once ranted at me that New Times has an agenda to destroy the political careers…

Letters for October 16, 2003

The homecoming queen’s death lives on: I would like to thank Bob Norman for his October 9 story about Georgia Roberts (“Georgia Got a Gun”). I was in that circle of friends that Angela introduced Georgia to. Angela was a very close friend and a wonderful one at that. Seventeen…

Georgia Got a Gun

When the 7-year-old girl climbed onto the witness stand, she didn’t know her mother was in deep trouble. Dressed in pink, from the barrette in her sandy-brown hair to her shoes, Kylee Roberts had no idea that the man sitting across from her in the courtroom was trying to convict…

Loophole? What Loophole?

“Financially,” Ann insists, “I’m about even. I’m not a greedy person. I’m smart. If I get a hit that gets me 15 or 20 dollars, I take it.” “Sure,” Nancy agrees. “Not like this woman I saw the other day with $72 in the machine. So I said, ‘Aren’t you…

Death Road Revisited

Many families have an uncle or a cousin like Charlie Osborne: likable, sunny, smile as big as a house, but a magnet for trouble. In Osborne’s case, the trouble was drugs. Between 1997 and 2002, he was arrested four times for possession of cocaine or drug paraphernalia. In August of…

Letters for October 9, 2003

Big Jorge was done in by the mafia: I found Trevor Aaronson’s October 2 story on Jorge Cortes (“Killer Scam”) very interesting and informative… but I have a few questions. Did the detectives check for gun residue on Mr. Cortes’ hand? If so, what were the results? Were the allegations…

Head for the Hog

Boar’s Nest West is a deep and wide bar, with bare-bones, beer-advertisement décor. When I visited one night last week about 8 p.m., slathered in makeup and leather, a few scattered groups of manly men with bountiful sprouts of facial hair were sitting side by side around the large central…

Killer Scam

Just before noon on May 29, a black four-door 2003 Chevy Impala with darkly tinted windows barreled north on Congress Avenue toward John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Atlantis. The front driver’s-side tire was shredded, its exposed metal rim slicing into the hot black concrete. James L. Johnson, a 29-year-old…

Mary Does California

Pine Crest Preparatory School is 49 acres of manicured lawns in northeastern Fort Lauderdale. Behind the five-tier parking garage is a fountain that sprays water across a pond and a running track that meanders through groves of black olive trees. There are tennis courts and a newly renovated boathouse, where…

The Strange Case of Dr. Dave and Mr. Hyde

Forget politics, corruption, and crime. This week, it’s about sports. You and I have the wild-card Marlins in the playoffs and the Dolphins coming off two big wins. That’s right, Jack McKeon is smoking, Jeff Conine is barking, and Ricky is running. It’s too sweet, but think of this: If…

Letters for October 2, 2003

Bushwhacked in Fort Lauderdale: I agree with Tailpipe (September 25) that forcing out Fort Lauderdale City Manager Floyd Johnson looked like a city commission-led conspiracy. And, it now looks like the total cost of blaming Floyd Johnson for the commissioners’ collective inability to manage the city’s finances will be $308,875…

A Real Cowboy

Davie. A throwback. A town that time forgot. But a place that real estate developers, those uncanny visionaries, know all too well. Now that the home front consists of an eighth of an acre or less in South Florida, it would seem that cowboys would have nowhere to roam. Confined…

The Stuntman

Everyone stares at Kenny 5 in public. Resistance is futile. Uncommonly handsome in a rock-star way, Kenny’s bright brown eyes are as piercing as collapsing stars. His sturdy arms are completely sleeved in tattoos. His not-quite-black hair is a sculpted thicket of pointy angles and hazardous cliffs. Today, he’s wearing…

Broward Shell Game

For almost a year, the Broward State Attorney’s Office investigated Broward County Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant for violating the statutes that govern her office. Late last month, investigators concluded that there had been misconduct: not by Oliphant but by the Broward County Commission. Oliphant may have been guilty of…

Throwback Is Comin’ Back

Due to the pirate nature of his radio show, DJ Showtime does a little bunny-hopping around the FCC. So last Sunday, he’s on 89.7 FM. On Monday, he’s nowhere to be found. Tuesday, around lunchtime, he’s bounced over to 89.1 FM and is playing the latest Trina single. She’s rapping…

Four-Star Muddle

As Hurricane Isabel was snapping branches and tossing lawn furniture around (and killing 35 people) in North Carolina and Virginia last week, Minor Tropical Disturbance Wesley Clark blew into Hollywood. A compact man with iron-gray hair, Clark, a former four-star general with big national ambitions, thrilled a crowd of supporters…

A Boca Tale

You’re baby boomer and beyond. A divorcée with a fat bank account ’cause you knew when to pull out of the market in the ’90s. But when you pulled your old bell-bottoms from your college trunk a couple of months ago and the fit wasn’t even close, you started doing…