Devil Take Him Gil’s no apostle: I grew up with Dickie Robertson (“Muscles, Murder, & a Messiah,” Trevor Aaronson, January 5); we were the LF Boys (Lake Forest). And this freak Gil Fernandez did a little more then just shoot three kids in the back of the head. Fernandez will…
This is the second in a two-part series. See the first installment at New Times Broward-Palm Beach. “I haven’t been to this area in nearly 15 years,” says John P. Contini as he looks for the site where his former client, Gil Fernandez Jr., executed three men and dumped their…
The media pined for Baghdad Boy last Tuesday night. Six satellite television trucks jammed the teen’s usually quiet street near Las Olas on the Intracoastal. About 40 reporters and crew members mulled about the front yard of his mother’s mansion with the TV lights on and the microphones ready. What…
Once ground zero for Fort Lauderdale’s legendary spring breaks, much of the still-scruffy block at Las Olas Boulevard and A1A has quietly been purchased by a developer intent, apparently, on transforming the area. The block north of the intersection still evokes an earlier era, with small shops that sell T-shirts,…
For two weeks in 1994, after she crashed into a steel-and-concrete pole that pulverized her ’86 Celica and subsequently cracked her skull, the only word Ellen Georgieff had command of was banana. “It wasn’t that I was crazy or dangerous; it was just I had no memory,” she says in…
BCC Post-Piety Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little smear: In response to the cowardly former student of mine who would not have his/her name revealed as the author of a nasty letter about me (Letters, December 29): As a matter of fact, 91 percent of my students over the…
This is the first of two parts. It should have been his last job. Richard “Dickie” Robertson was getting out, going straight. On April 1, 1983, Robertson had orchestrated a deal to sell 20 kilos of cocaine, worth roughly $300,000. And the timing couldn’t have been better. He’d just purchased…
Jack Makler hadn’t changed much. When he answered the door, his silver-streaked hair was still perfect. Even in his tube socks, he looked ready to roll in a jet-black shirt and dark blue jeans. No, it wasn’t Makler who’d changed, just the circumstances. When I’d last met him about seven…
Twice Victimized Sometimes buyers can’t be choosers: You are right! We cancer patients are looking for a wonder pill, and I bought the CancerCure line (“Far From Benign,” Jeff Stratton, December 22). So far, I’ve been charged for only one shipment, but the supposed $150 turns out to be $172.50…
If you go to Rotten Tomatoes, a website that compiles more than 100 film critics’ reviews each week, you will find at the top of the “Certified Fresh” list a single movie that was the best-reviewed of 2005. It was not a remake or a sequel, nor did it cost…
When your movie critics’ tastes range from Jane Austen to Rob Zombie, there’s bound to be some turbulence come award time. Perhaps not surprisingly, determining the year’s best films is something of an imprecise science here: Our top movie was anything but a unanimous pick among the five critics —…
Amid Hollywood’s zillion-dollar explosions and computer-enhanced trickery, plenty of quieter, better films sneaked into theaters virtually unnoticed this year. Following are our reviewers’ favorite overlooked movies of 2005. Some of them never made it to local screens, but many have since made it to the video store. Balzac and the…
If there’s one thing that South Florida has in bountiful profusion, it’s egregious behavior. New Times staffers are connoisseurs of the scandals, scams, malfeasances, and outrages that blossom in the Broward-Palm Beach sunshine. Every year, they like to reflect on the worst of the worst. Here are their favorites for…
It wasn’t so much the sight of the backhoe rolling down Broward Boulevard that raised the hackles of Lee Hillier, district manager for the Plantation Acres Improvement District (PAID), as much as the man riding shotgun on top of it. “Shit, Davis is on that backhoe,” he remembers thinking. That…
Fundamentally Wrong Remember when preaching was done in church? In response to “Proselytizing 101” (Trevor Aaronson, December 1): I took an “Introduction to Religion” class at Broward Community College in the 1980s and found it interesting and enlightening. The professor taught about all religions. So I can’t believe there are…
On a windy Chicago afternoon last May, world-class triathlete David Bigoney threw the ceremonial first pitch at a White Sox-Texas Rangers game. Chicago won 7-0. “And that started their winning streak,” he jokes now. The Tallahassee sports fanatic closely monitored the team’s dream season through its stunning World Series victory,…
The last we heard of infamous local pimp Arthur Vanmoor, he was hopping a plane back to Amsterdam. The Dutch-born sex impresario had been deported after a racketeering and conspiracy conviction last summer. But until his sudden exile, Vanmoor wasn’t just the busy operator of multiple escort services that had…
In the past few years, former Fort Lauderdale city commissioner Tim Smith has watched in alarm as crack dealers turned a local park in his NE 13th Street neighborhood into an all-night drug bazaar. This is no joke. After sunset one night last week, Tailpipe took a quick spin through…
It’s Christmas Eve, and Pat Riley is toiling away in his palatial office at American Airlines Arena. As the resurrected Miami Heat coach goes over plays in the dimmed room, a strange coldness grips his shoulder. He turns to see an eerie specter from the distant past. “It can’t be…
Jesus Community College We don’t need no lousy teachers. Preach! How is it that expressing an opinion is a crime? It seems to me that James Johnson’s only complaint is that Lulrick Balzora does not agree with him (“Proselytizing 101,” Trevor Aaronson, December 1). Don’t students have the right to…
Like most every afternoon after school, Joshua Foster makes his way down the three skid-guard-covered steps of the orange school bus. With his little brother Isaiah, he walks the 30 feet of concrete driveway to his home, a modest pink bungalow on a busy corner lot in Boynton Beach. Joshua,…
Mere hours after the Dolphins’ recent victory over the Bills, I was engrossed in a game of Texas Hold ‘Em at Jester’s Pub, unaware of my home team’s outrageous fourth-quarter comeback victory. It’s poker, baby! A bona fide ESPN sport that’s sweeping the bar landscape in places like Waxy O’Connor’s,…
