Jodie Kelly, a horse dressage rider from a well-known family in Destin, has been sued by a woman who says she relied upon Kelly's opinion in buying a $38,000 horse that proved to be lame.
The plaintiff is also from Destin -- Victoria Guennewig, who in 2007 was shopping for a horse with which to train for the sport of dressage. After Guennewig became interested in a horse kept in a farm near Wellington, she hired Kelly, a decorated rider who trains horses in Destin, as well as in Loxahatchee, at Checkered Flag Farms.
Since the sport requires a horse to have perfect form and make precise movements, its physical health was a crucial factor. Kelly was to perform a pre-purchase examination
The Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan: an unlikely place for a neo-Nazi stabbing.
The stabbings that occurred October 26, during a presentation by a Nazi historian at the Ritz-Carlton were a one-sided affair, it seems. That is, Christopher Nachtman stabbed John Kopko -- multiple times. And now the attorney for Kopko suspects that the Palm Beach State Attorney's Office is considering a charge against Nachtman for attempted murder.
"It was unprovoked and Mr. Kopko was unarmed," says Lee Levenson, the Boynton Beach attorney representing Kopko. "We believe he was trying to kill Mr. Kopko -- right in front of (Kopko's) family."
Barkavius McCray, sporting the shiner he got after his encounter with the Boynton Beach Police.
After arresting a young black man last night in Sara Sims Park, two white Boynton Beach Police officers faced down an angry crowd threatening violence.
According to the incident report, officers were patrolling the park based on its history of drug-related crimes. Around 7 last night, they say they saw a young man reverse his direction as he approached them, then throw plastic bags out of his pocket as he walked away. In doing so, the young man, Michael Taylor, 17, bumped into officer James Cooney. Says the report: "Taylor immediately uttered, "It's not mine, Cooney."
Photo: PBSO
Michael Taylor
But the other cops had witnessed Taylor's having tossed nine bags of marijuana. As officers walked Taylor to a police vehicle, however, they were approached by an 18-year-old named Joshua Kelley and several others. From the incident report:
Kelley was yelling numerous expletives at both officers, continuing to approach them.
That's the post-CNN Lou Dobbs from last night's episode of the Daily Show, which means he's still lingering near the Big Apple. But judging by the interview that he gave to gossip queen Cindy Adams in today's New York Post, Dobbs is looking forward to the end of this junket so that he can head to...
"West Palm Beach. To relax and breathe deeply. Also to assess my next step."
"Relax" is the word that jumps out at me -- did Dobbs have some health problems? Clearly, he spent a lot of energy fulminating at American immigration policy and Barack Obama. But the rest of the column offers no more clues -- just maddeningly elliptical quotes from Dobbs.
Like the rest of America-loving Americans, we Juicers have been worried about the big guy getting blown by the winds of change. Looks like he'll keep us in suspense for a while. Here's hoping inspiration strikes in West Palm.
Lantana Town Manager Mike Bornstein says he got a pretty good laugh when he found out the hundreds of coconuts he'd mailed to Postmaster General John E. Potter had been given away to homeless shelters. "We were
imagining the cafeteria at the shelter handing each poor homeless person a big coconut on a
plate. They clearly didn't realize how much work it is to open a
coconut. You burn more energy getting into it than you'd ever get out
of it."
Bornstein, with the help of a bunch of schoolkids and neighborhood residents, had mailed hundreds of coconuts to Washington to protest the closing of the Lantana Post Office. "There's an old legend about the barefoot mailmen," says Bornstein. "You know they had to walk up and down the beaches carrying a heavy mail sack. Their friends would play a practical joke on them and send coconuts addressed to somebody through the mail. The mailman's bag would be full of coconuts, and as you know, they're pretty heavy."
As promised here, footage of an American icon soaring over the heads of several drunken morning-radio personalities, including one man dressed as Abe Lincoln. Vanilla Ice (real name: Rob Van Winkle) took a few practice runs, then jumped the Wild 95.5 "Snack Pack" three separate times.
Please note Rob's good friend, Wes Kain, shooting fireballs under the motorcycle.
Thoughts from Rob before the jump... after the jump.
After reading this week's cover story about the massive job losses and financial troubles at South Florida's daily newspapers, you may wonder how New Times is faring. Our tiny newsroom, not surprisingly, has also shrunk in recent years, although not by the same kind of numbers as the dailies.
In the past couple of years, Village Voice Media Holdings
LLC, which owns New Times, has laid off employees at several of the 14 alternative weeklies it owns throughout the country and has sold three papers -- Cleveland Scene, Nashville Scene, and East Bay Express. New Times Broward-Palm Beach has seen its newsroom staff shrink from 17 to 13 and its circulation drop from around 80,000 to 54,500.
I called Scott Tobias,
president and chief operating officer of Village Voice Media, to ask him about the future of New Times. After the jump, read excerpts from the interview.
Santonio Holmes is from Belle Glade, and now that he's a Super Bowl MVP wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers, you'd imagine that his life in that crime-ridden, rundown berg is a distant memory. But according to the Post-Gazette, Holmes thinks of home every time he washes his hands. One of them has a tattoo that says "Muck." The other is tattooed: "City."
Muck City, apparently, is the unflattering nickname Belle Glade has earned among its survivors.
"I always refer back to everything I did as a kid growing up, where I came from -- Belle Glade. I even have it tattooed on my hands, Muck City," he said earlier this week, showing his Super Bowl XLIII MVP hands. "So definitely I'm always reminded of where I came from, where I grew up, just how rough it was. It's right there, visible to me, every day."
The Palm Beach State Attorney's Office is still examining the evidence in the October 26 stabbing at the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan, but as we wait to see whether prosecutors will file charges, we're learning more about exactly what happened during the speech by Nazi historian David Irving. That altercation involved two men, Christopher Nachtman and
John Kopko.
The following account was provided by a witness who wrote Juice a note without disclosing his or her identity. According to the source:
Mr. Nachtman was invited by David Irving personally because Mr. Nachtman
and
his wife were going to open a bookstore to market David Irving's
material
and other white racialist materials.
Mr. Nachtman is involved in a skinhead group called VolksFront and that
group has an ongoing feud with another skinhead organization called
Hammerskin's. [edit: The Southern Law Poverty Center has made the same allegation, which Juice reported last month]
I think Mr. Kopko is or used to be part of that group,
but I
am not sure.
Tyrone Pinkney, a 23-year-old who was released from prison in September, looks like he'll be heading back. He's been arrested by police and charged in the November 9 shooting of Demetrus Sutton on Seacrest Boulevard.
According to the probable-cause affidavit, Sutton, 32, had been in an argument with two women -- Tomika Roberts and a woman named Keisha, who summoned Pinkney. He allegedly brought a silver handgun to the scene, causing Sutton to turn to leave. That's when Pinkney is said to have pulled the trigger. Sutton was taken to the Delray Medical Trauma Unit. He survived.
Pinkney, who was identified in a lineup by two witnesses, had previously served a year in prison for willfully fleeing and eluding.
This week's New Times cover story details the human cost of the massive layoffs that have hit South Florida's three major daily papers in the past couple of years. According to estimates by New Times media critic Bob Norman, roughly 1,000 jobs have been lost at the Palm Beach Post, Sun-Sentinel, and Miami Herald.
One of the most dramatic cuts happened at the Palm Beach Post in August 2008, when about 300 people -- including roughly 130 from the newsroom -- accepted buyout packages to leave the paper. More layoffs followed this September. The Post's newsroom staff is now half the size it was in early 2008. And many people with 20 or 30 years in the news business are living off unemployment checks.
In a brief telephone conversation this afternoon, Nazi historian David Irving confirmed that his websites and private email account were attacked by hackers opposed to his writings of World War II. He told me that he's been in contact with the FBI in hopes of bringing the hackers to justice. "We're asking authorities to investigate this felony -- it's a federal crime," Irving said.
The website irvingbooks.com has been up since 1998, he told me, and is registered in Florida. It's the first time it's been hacked. Irving doesn't know how they did it. Nor does he have a clue who's behind the name "anti-fascist hackers."
The author took the opportunity to impress upon me his vehement opposition to a term that often precedes his name, "Holocaust-denier." I pointed out that the Anti-Defamation League uses it on its profile of him.
"Can I tell you what I believe the Anti-Defamation League to be?" he huffed in his British accent. "A bunch of assholes and shits. Goodbye!" Dial tone.
David Irving, a British historian with controversial views of the Holocaust, whose speaking engagement last month in Manalapan was marred by a stabbing between neo-Nazis, has had his websites attacked and his email hacked by a group claiming "anti-fascist" motives.
On the right, pictured beneath the unforgiving fluorescent light in the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, that's Ann Marie Fletcher, a dancer at Platinum Showgirls. Or at least she was a dancer as recently as October 30, when the Boynton Beach club was raided by police. Were it not, maybe Fletcher would have still been dancing in January, when she'll turn 48 years old.
Yes, in that picture she's 47. Now, we don't know whether she's been helped by plastic surgery, but that's been known to extend the career of many a stripper.
Just more evidence that Palm Beach County is the cougar capital of the country. Fletcher allegedly told the undercover officer that she was from Barbados and that she and a Haitian dancer named Jeeny would make the officer "our Oreo tonight -- chocolate on both sides." She's been charged with soliciting prostitution.
In a post Friday I quoted a former dancer who claimed that clubowner Matt Barrow was conscientious about the law and that he strictly forbade both drugs and sex with customers. She expressed doubt about investigators' claims that Barrow and club managers were aware of and profited from the dancers' illegal activities.
The South Florida media is still waiting for Boynton Beach Police to
file the incident reports in connection with the October 30 raid of
Platinum Showgirls, the alleged site of prostitution and drug-dealing.
But while we wait for those incident reports, let's take a closer look at what we know about the evidence in the case so far. It's contained in a probable cause affidavit, which contains decidedly pornographic language -- the type that you're not going to see on the network affiliates or daily papers.
Foster: Proving South Florida still has a few good men
What are the odds? Of 10 extraordinary people chosen from around the globe as the finalists for CNN's Heroes of 2009, two of them are doing their good deeds based in South Florida. And until this Thursday the 19th, you can click here to vote for one of them, possibly netting them $100,000.
Andrea Ivory goes door-to-door in Miami in her mobile mammography van, bringing free breast cancer screenings to women who are uninsured. Roy Foster of Lake Worth runs Stand Down House, helping homeless veterans in recovery from drug and alcohol addictions. At Stand Down House vets get job training, substance abuse counseling, and help finding permanent work and housing.
A Canadian teenager who is among the leading contenders for an Olympic gold in men's figure skating has taken his practice regimen south. Patrick Chan, winner of the gold men in the Four Continents and
Canadian Figure Skating Championships earlier this year, recently relocated from his training camp in Orlando, and he now calls the brand new Palm Beach Ice Works home.
"It's awesome here," he says of the training facility in West Palm Beach. "The lifestyle is much better than in Orlando. As a high performance athlete, comfort comes first."
You can catch Chan triple axelling six days a week, nine hours a day, preparing for next year's Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
"The countdown has begun," Chan says. "The Winter Olympics are about 95 days away, so I'm working hard every day."
This week Lou Dobbs, the last of the original CNN anchors, announced he was leaving the station and ending his show on that network to "go beyond the role here at CNN" and "engage in constructive problem solving."
While this could mean many things, the smart money says his "constructive problem solving" means playing some golf outside of his West Palm Beach home (which we're sure was built solely by legal residents of this country, and is situated on a golf course we're also sure was built by only White mid-western farm boys) and waiting around for a time slot on Fox News.
I called the phone number listed for his WPB house to ask Lou about his plans for the new time off, but there was no answer--he must be out eating at restaurants who employ only legal residents or shopping for clothes made only by American hands from fabrics made of materials procured by non-immigrant field workers. So we decided to put together a little list of five things Lou will do while in the Sunshine State.
Yesterday morning, in a dirt lot off Okeechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach, I witnessed Vanilla Ice (real name Rob Van Winkle) jump over a jacked-up Monster Truck with about 10 people in the bed. Ice, who lives in Wellington and has ridden professionally, was on a buddy's dirtbike.
This is not footage of that jump. This is a scene from the Cool as Ice, the 1991 remake of Rebel Without a Cause, starring Vanilla Ice as a motorcycle-riding bad boy who courts a woman on a horse. Details on the jump, after...the, um, jump.
This week I spoke with a former dancer at Platinum Showgirls, the gentleman's club in Boynton Beach that was raided on the night of October 30. That raid came after a sting by undercover officers who claimed they found drug-dealing and prostitution.
The dancer, who knows club management and several current dancers at the club, told me that Platinum owner Matt Barrow runs a tight ship and if drugs or prostitution happened there, it could have only been without his knowledge. (Barrow has been charged with felony racketeering, drug trafficking, public nuisance and profiting from prostitution.)
Before we hear from the former dancer, a programming note: This post will tell one side of the story. In a subsequent post, we'll give the law enforcement side of the story, based on the probable cause affidavit.
Someone in the Palm Beach Post marketing department has a cruel sense of irony. The paper's latest ad campaign -- now popping up in the paper, online, and on billboards around town -- strikes very close to home for Post staffers.
"Anxious About Your Job?" reads the headline, beneath a photo of a worried-looking guy.
Well, yes. More than 300 Post staffers have lost their jobs in the past year or so,
Roldry Philia, a 34-year-old Delray Beach Police officer, was arrested late last night on charges of beating his wife. The probable cause affidavit released by the Boynton Beach Police Department does not mention the name of Philia's wife, just that she's 24 years old. She told police that she'd been fighting with Philia all day, that he'd taken her cell phone, locked her out of the house in the garage and slammed a door on her arm.
In the affidavit Philia's wife claims that as the fight escalated, Philia placed her in a headlock, then put a gun to her head, saying that "she was not leaving with 'his' daughter. A 6-year-old son and the 11-month old daughter witnessed the altercation, according to the report.
The Art After Dark event at the Norton Museum of Art last night had many highlights: free chocolate martinis, a tour of the New York, New York: The 20th Century exhibit, lovely guitar strumming by Miami troubadour Jesse Jackson.
But perhaps the sweetest moment was when my friend Christina DeNardo, a 31-year-old from Delray Beach, decided to join the sculptures in George Segal's Depression Bread Line. The gray-and-green men ahead of her stood stoically, looking worn and haggard in their imitation of those dreary lines from the '30s.
An elderly couple stopped and questioned DeNardo. She explained that she was posing with the sculptures because she, too, is unemployed.
This wasn't the Meisner's place, but theirs was a similar Palm Beach mansion
Following a Rothsteinesque money scheme, Boca's white collar Bonnie and Clyde are finally facing the music. This week, Victoria Meisner made her first appearence before a judge, answering charges of filing a false tax return.
According to federal prosecutors, in 2003, Meisner filed a joint federal income tax return, reporting a total income of nearly $50,000. Doesn't sound to me like that meager income could have financed a lavish wedding for her daughter at Palm Beach's exclusive Mar-A-Lago or funded the purchase of the 15 luxury cars the Meisner family rolled in.
As we told you in Morning Juice, Joe Namath's been having to defend the beastly behavior of his two dogs, which he apparently trusts to keep "gawkers" away from his Tequesta home. But whose fault is it that people are curious about how the Super Bowl III MVP spends his days? I'd say it's the guy who made this commercial, with Farrah Fawcett, which makes an erotic event out of a morning shave.
Yeesh! How on earth did that ad get past the FCC? Earlier this year, The Daily Beast named it one of the eight sexiest commercials in television history.
What does he mean when he says he's embarking on a mysterious mission that involves "constructive problem solving"? Given Lou's loathing of illegal immigrants, let's hope it doesn't involve a bottle of whiskey, a rifle, and a sniper's nest with a view of the Rio Grande.
After you pay $57 million to get access to funds awarded in a phony court judgment, like Ed Morse did, you're liable to worry about whether you can round up the money to pay for a traditional Thanksgiving dinner -- you know, with the caviar, the Kobe steak, and the cast of celebrity guests. It's the same sad predicament for all those millionaires who invested in Rothstein's apparent effort to extort billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and who now must wait for the federal government to pay them back with the money Rothstein gave to local charities. Where's their charity?
Contributors: Eric Barton, Michelle Centrone, Deirdra Funcheon, Keith Hollar, John Linn, Michael J. Mooney, Bob Norman, Lisa Rab, Nicole Rodriguez, Gail Shepherd.
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