DOGE: Driving Out Great Employees

 

In 1969 or 1970, freshly graduated from university with a degree in philosophy, I joined PriceWaterhouse & Co as a Chartered Accountant in the City of London, the ‘Square Mile’, located between the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange.

At that time, PriceWaterhouse & Co was probably the leader of the ‘Big Five’ accounting firms that controlled the British economy and working out of PW’s head office in the City of London, our clients were the nation’s largest and most prestigious corporations.

As auditors, we had the legal authority to look at, to question and to examine whatever we wanted – from petty cash vouchers and bills of lading to the confidential minutes of the latest meeting of the Board of Directors.

Traditionally. PW&Co and the other Big Five accounting firms employed men who had studied accounting, sometimes at university but more often at trade school or night studies. In the late 60’s however, they decided to employ men [1]who had a broader education, in the humanities, and who could therefore more easily interact in Board Rooms with the Captains of Industry.

PW&Co wanted to understand its clients’ management systems; how and why things worked; what were the rules and the checks and balances. It was a time when accounting firms graduated from mere ‘number crunchers’ to being Management Consultants. That’s why they hired an innumerate philosophy graduate like me to be an auditor.

So, after cutting off my long hippy hair, swapping my tie-dyed outfits for a pin-stripe suit and cutting back on the pot – I entered the world of high finance and corporate respectability.

In my early twenties, dressed in a 3-piece pin-stripe suit and a bowler hat, and armed with a tightly folded umbrella and all the arrogance and ignorance of youth, I and my like-minded colleagues were let loose upon the bastions of corporate Britain.

The early 70s was also a time when large international corporations were switching to the new ‘computer technologies.’ Suddenly, with little preparation and even less understanding, the multi-national corporate clients of PriceWaterhouse & Co and other large accounting firms were switching overnight (usually on December 31^st) from Dickensian hand-written ledgers to vast spinning disks of computer tapes. It was a time of sheer unbridled financial and management chaos.

Into this mix of turmoil and technological anarchy stepped an army of young, ignorant and arrogant young men who, because they had been made moderately familiar with (1970’s) computer technology, thought they understood and could fix everything. We were the young Gods.

For the two or three years I was employed at PW&Co, we swaggered through corporate Britain. The established corporate executives, bewildered by the new technologies, were hapless in the face of our superior and dismissive overconfidence. We made impulsive and ill-informed decisions, and our elders and betters complied meekly. We moved fast and broke things, carelessly

The chaos just got worse, and most historians agree that the 1970s was probably one of the most disastrous decades of the 20^th century.

So, when I look at Elon Musk’s chainsaw wielding young thugs, I catch an embarrassed glimpse of my own misspent youth.

But you know. Somehow, we survived …

So far.

Patrick

Patrick@GablesWine.com

 

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[1] I use the term ‘men’ because women, in those days, were only employed as secretaries and tea-ladies.

 Democracy vs Dictatorship

My lifelong faith in Democracy is being sorely tested as I witness the daily clown-show in Washington D.C.  Observing our elected representatives squabbling over nonsense is like watching an episode of Mean Girls. While pressure builds on our southern border, Russia destroys its European neighbor, China threatens Taiwan and as tensions in the Middle East spiral out of control, our leaders prove incapable of doing anything except playing musical chairs with the Speaker and indulging in meaningless impeachment trials.

 

Maybe a dictatorship is not such a bad idea after all!

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AS A LYING TEENAGER

 

In an article for the Guardian on September 5, 2023, Elif Batuman described how she decided to use ChatGPT to help her locate a half-remember passage in Marcel Proust’s voluminous novel ‘In Search of Lost Time’.  Although ChatGPT kept offering her possible answers, they were always vague, sometimes contradictory and, despite Batuman’s increasingly specific prodding, never actually produced the passage she had been seeking.

Intrigued by her article, I decided to repeat her exercise, and asked ChatGPT to locate a passage in Proust’s novel in which the narrator describes seeing a girl in a railway carriage smoking a cigarette.

As Elif Batuman had discovered, ChatGPT certainly had a general understanding and familiarity with Proust’s seven-volume novel. Like any well-read and educated person, ChatGPT was aware that a major theme of the novel was that memories of past events continue to exist and can be triggered unexpectedly by some trivial act. The most famous example is of the narrator dipping a little madeleine cake in a cup of tea and being transported back to his childhood.

ChatGPT informed me that the incident with the girl in the railway carriage occurred in volume one, Swann’s Way, and the smell of the cigarette smoke transported the narrator back to his youth in the village of Combray.

In fact, the incident occurs in volume four, Cities of the Plain, and there is no mention of cigarette smoke, let alone its smell. Rather than looking backwards, Proust looks forward in time, wondering what happened to the girl, whom he never saw again after that brief encounter.

Just as Batuman’s had described in her article, whenever I corrected ChatGPT, it very politely and immediately agreed with me, apologizing for its mistake, and rephrasing its answer to include the new information that I had provided. But again, it never actually located or quoted the specific passage I was seeking.

Increasingly I felt as though I was dealing with a shifty but quick-witted teenager, trying to conceal the fact he had not done his homework or read the assigned text. The initial answer it provided was a complete lie. It had made an intelligent guess and constructed a fairly compelling answer that would have satisfied the average person. However, having previously written two books about Marcel Proust’s novel, I was not so easily fooled.

So that is probably the state of Artificial Intelligence in the Fall of 2023. No longer in its infancy, it has become a shifty teenager endlessly improvising and lying, if need be, in order to appear plausible, while it plans its next move. As we know, many awkward teenagers grow up to be honest and trustworthy adults, on the other hand, some others do not.

BOOMER 1(a)

On July 1, 1946, two days before I was born, the Americans conducted the first in a series of nuclear tests called ‘Operation Crossroads’. The tests took place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, at the Bikini Atoll in Micronesia. On July 5^th, two days after I was born, the French fashion designer, Louis Reard, launched a new two piece, swim-suit design in a Paris fashion show. He named his new design the bikini. Both these ‘bikini’ incidents caused some international controversy, thus allowing me to slip unnoticed into this world. Not surprisingly, throughout my life, I have always had a fondness for bikinis.

I was born just ten months after the Second World War ended with the surrender of Japan, and just over a year after the war ended in Europe with the death of Hitler. But memories and signs of the war were everywhere throughout my childhood. Wounded men wearing their ‘de-mob’ suits were a common sight and most cities showed signs of German bombing raids. Playing hide-and-seek with other kids in bomb sites and air raid shelters was just part of the world that I was born into.

My paternal grandfather was a captain in the British Royal Navy, stationed in Portsmouth, an important Naval base where I was born, next to Southampton. Obviously, I was too young to remember, but most of the streets and buildings where my mother gave birth had been demolished by unrelenting German bombing attacks. As a result, following the war, housing was in desperately short supply and my parent’s and my first home was a prefab. Prefabricated homes had been erected during the war as a short term measure for temporarily housing bombed-out families, but prefab estates remained part of the British landscape well into the 1970s.

I was too young to know what I was missing, but the war had caused such food shortages that everything was rationed. My earliest memories are of shopping with my mother and her precious Ration Book. Sugar, butter, cheese, margarine, cooking fat, bacon, meat, and tea were all strictly controlled and carefully accounted for in the Ministry of Food Ration Book. I was almost ten when rationing finally ended and I had my first candy-bar.

Despite the austerity, the rationing, and the ever present bombsites, the Britain I was born into was truly Great Britain. It had emerged victorious from a terrible world war, it was the center of the greatest empire that history had ever known, its language was spoken and recognized worldwide and, along with the United States of America and the Soviet Union, it was a world Super-Power. On the day of my birth, July 3, 1946, Great Britain was still at the pinnacle of its power, but in the almost eighty years that have passed since then, there has been a slow, steady, cruelly inexorable decline; Great Britain has become Brexit.

In my mid 30s I moved to the United States and have lived here ever since. After all the gloomy English class divisions and labor unrest of the late 70s, the America where my family and I settled, was a sunny, friendly land of boundless optimism; our friends were equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, political discourse was cordial and there was a widespread understanding that with hard work and a cheerful disposition, anything was possible. Growth and steady progress was seen as an ineluctable Law of Nature. But today I live in a nation bitterly divided between Blue States and Red, where political discourse is impossible, gun violence and mass-shootings are a common occurrence and most people are fearful for their future.

The purpose of this book is to trace Great Britain’s national decline and show how my fellow countrymen and my generation of fellow ‘baby-boomers’ have accepted and adapted, or ignored and denied that sad transformation of our once proud heritage. It will also trace and describe, if not explain, how the sunny and optimistic America of the 1980s has become a dark, distrustful nation of fear. The book will show how the baby-boomer generation, born with such promise and blessed with such wealth, is leaving the world a darker and a sadly poorer place.

 

BOOMER

 My current work in progress is a book about how the world has changed since I was born in 1946.

I will post excerpts here, from time to time, as the book progresses.

BUILDING PARADISE

     The COVID lockdown of the past two years has actually proved quite productive for me. Unable to go carousing out on the town, I was forced to stay home and write. In addition to researching and writing A Dance to Lost Time, comparing the authors Marcel Proust and Anthony Powell, I have also written Building Paradise, a history of Miami, my hometown.

Less than one hundred and thirty years ago, Miami did not exist. Apart from a small, abandoned army post and some derelict slave quarters, the only sign of life was an orange grove planted by a middle-aged widow.  In less than a decade after Julia Tuttle cleared a space in the wilderness to plant her first orange tree, Miami sprang magically to life and today, that same humble orange grove has a glittering glass and steel skyline to rival Shanghai or Manhattan.

In the Florida Land Boom of the early twentieth century Miami became ‘Paradise Found’, the most exotic and sought-after city in North America. It was a tropical paradise filled with Hollywood celebrities, movie stars, European aristocracy, Washington big shots, Wall Street tycoons and all the leading mobsters between Las Vegas and New York. Miami was a developers’ paradise, new buildings and sub-divisions sprang up almost daily, to accommodate the endless stream of new arrivals lured by the Magic City’s reputation of sun, sand, sin, and sex. Miami had become a paradise for starting over, for creating a new life. Refugees from political oppression or economic despair and people escaping from past indiscretions or serious legal problems could all find a new beginning in this sunny paradise of optimism and endless opportunities.

But it all came crashing down in the late seventies, when Miami became synonymous with deadly race riots, civic corruption, violent drug warfare and political scandals. In November 1981, Time Magazine featured a cover headline describing South Florida as ‘Paradise Lost’. By the end of the century Miami was bankrupt and Wall Street rated its bonds as worthless junk.

But whether from hurricanes, police scandals, race riots or bankruptcy, the Magic City displays an endless ability to bounce back and reinvent itself.  As we enter the twenty-first century, Paradise has, once again, been restored. The city has a AAA bond rating from Wall Street, Miami neighborhoods from South Beach to Wynwood have become synonymous with all that is hip, cool, and fashionable, while property values are, once again, the highest in the nation. Whether it’s for the Ultra Music Festival, the Miami Book Fair or Art Basel Miami Beach – the Magic City continues to entice and attract visitors from all over the world.

In just one-hundred years, Miami has already had more history, more glamour, more stories, and more excitement than most other cities see in a thousand, and this new book ‘Building Paradise’ aims to tell those stories.

 

 

 

 

NEW BOOK

Forced into COVID lockdown in the Spring of 2020, I decided to re-read two of my favorite novels, Marcel Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time ' and Anthony Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time'. They are two of the longest novels ever written and share many similarities. Both are first person narratives covering about 50 years of the narrator's life, and include many real world events between the years of 1871 and 1971. Both novels contain a wide selection of unforgettable characters, examine profound philosophical themes and both are extraordinarily funny. Having read both novels several times over the past fifty years, I've been unable to decide which one I enjoyed most.

 But, despite the similarities, their popular reception has proved remarkably different. The seven volumes of In Search of Lost Time have been translated into more than a dozen languages, including several different English versions, but the twelve volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time have been translated into only three other languages. There have been more than three thousand books written about Proust but less than a dozen written about Powell.

 My new book, A Dance to Lost Time, seeks to examine the differences between the two books and, if not explain, at least explore the disparity in their reception. If my book can persuade a reader to subsequently read one, if not both, of these splendid novels - then all those months of lockdown will not have been in vain.

 ON-LINE WINE CLASSES 

Since March 2020, my various Wine Appreciation classes conducted at the Coral Gables Museum, have moved online and are currently offered through Zoom.

I have been offering a six-week, wide-ranging class covering all aspects of wine appreciation as well as a more focused three-week class.

The one-hour classes begin at 6:30PM on Wednesday evenings.

I also offer the occasional stand alone class. For example, I devoted one class to focus just on white wines. To celebrate Valentine's Day I offered a class where we examined a dozen famous lovers from Antony & Cleopatra to Napoleon and Josephine.

Our next class devoted to SHERRY (the wines of Jerez) will be held on Wednesday, April 28, 2021 to celebrate the year in 1587 when Sir Francis Drake stole two-million bottles of sherry from the King of Spain.

WINE IN A TIME OF CHOLERA

Wine in a Time of Cholera part 1:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0dwvT4qq-0

Wine in a Time of Cholera part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXljNiJWdU4

Wine in a Time of Cholera part 3  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xax3IamFfJk

Wine in a Time of Cholera part 4  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wejIue2Eefc

Wine in a Time of Cholera part 5  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw8pCFdi-MI

Wine in a Time of Cholera part 6  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-UDQPOcdzc

White Wine in a Time of Cholera  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgPnqL6Q1L0

Valentine Special:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeJPFZOluY8

Wine in a time of Cholera: Sherry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xPkD8d29kc

Wine In A Time Of Cholera

ON-LINE WINE CLASSES 

Since March 2020, my various Wine Appreciation classes conducted at the Coral Gables Museum, have moved online and are currently offered through Zoom.

I have been offering a six-week, wide-ranging class covering all aspects of wine appreciation as well as a more focused three-week class.

The one-hour classes begin at 6:30PM on Wednesday evenings.

I also offer the occasional stand alone class. For example, I devoted one class to focus just on white wines. To celebrate Valentine's Day I offered a class where we examined a dozen famous lovers from Antony & Cleopatra to Napoleon and Josephine.

Each one-hour class begins at 6:30PM on Wednesday evenings.

For information about the next scheduled class

Please call the Museum at 305-603-8067 or go to:

https://coralgablesmuseum.org/wine-appreciation-program/  

On-Line Wine Appreciation Program

CORAL GABLES MUSEUM ON ZOOM 

For the duration of the Coronavirus lock-down, the Museum has transformed its popular wine appreciation classes to an on-line format using Zoom technology.

We offer a series of 6 one-hour classes from 6:30 PM, each Wednesday evening. The current classes began on September 2 and will continue till October 7th.

As soon as you sign-up for the program you will receive a list of the 6 wines to purchase (1 bottle for each class) and you will also receive a Zoom address and a password to enter the class.

(If you are unfamiliar with Zoom, we will send you simple step by step instructions.)

The total cost of the six-week program is $90. Since most people will watch with their spouse or with friends, this works out at less than $8 per person, per evening.

The current class is fully booked, but to reserve your place in the next class, please call the Museum at 305-603-8067.

Alternatively, watch the informative video at https://coralgablesmuseum.org/wine-appreciation-program/ 

  Next Wine Zooming Class

Wednesday evening 6:30 – 7:30PM

November 4^th through December 9, 2020

In the comfort of your own home

and the company of good friends

On-Line Wine Class

Because few people could attend the final class of our six-week program on March 16, I have posted a summary of the class in two videos on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/gables.wine.3

Unfortunately you need to provide your own wine.
Enjoy!

TWO NEW WINE APPRECIATION PROGRAMS

Miami wine lovers now have a choice of two different wine appreciation programs, both offered by the Coral Gables Museum on Monday evenings from 6 - 8 PM, and both taught by Patrick Alexander..

A Basic 6-week program is offered by the Coral Gables Museum at 285 Aragon Avenue.

A Master 3-week program is also available for those students who have already taken the basic 6-week program.

For details about the next available classes, go to www.GablesWine.com

Fast Boats & German Cars [2]

Gus Boulis, cruising to nowhere: February 6, 2001

Like Don Aronow, Gus Boulis exemplified the ‘American Dream’ but, as with Aronow, the dream ended in a nightmare. Both men were self-made millionaires, both built fortunes in the boats and on the waters off the coast of Florida, and both met their bullet- riddled fate, sitting in expensive German cars in the mean streets of Miami.

Born in a small Greek fishing village, Boulis dropped out of school and emigrated to Canada where he took a job as a dish-washer in a sandwich shop. Within a few years he had taken over the shop and expanded it to a chain of over 200 stores which he eventually sold. When he moved to Miami at the age of 25, he was already a multimillionaire.

 Upon his arrival he purchased Miami’s most famous Mafia hangout, the Gold Coast Restaurant and Lounge. The Gold Coast was a favorite place for everyone to meet, from John Gotti and Meyer Lansky to Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant; it was mentioned in the Kefauver Committee hearings into Organized Crime and in the JFK Assassination files, as well as being featured in Elmore Leonard’s novel Gold Coast. In May 1994, Boulis turned it into Miami Subs and five years later he sold the expanded chain to Nathan’s Famous hot dog chain for $4.2 million. 

Boulis had also purchased a small shipping company which he operated out of Key Largo. His ‘cruises to nowhere’ would sail three-miles out to sea, where Florida’s gambling prohibitions did not apply. His floating casino empire was extremely successful but unfortunately attracted opposition from various Federal, State and local authorities. Eventually Boulis was forced to withdraw from the gambling business and he sold SunCruz Casinos to a couple of Washington lobbyists for $147.5 million. But the deal was more complex than it appeared on the surface. Firstly, Boulis maintained a secret ten-percent interest in the company and secondly, the lobbyists were Jack Abramoff and Adam Kidan, two of the slimiest denizens of the DC Swamp. Relationships swiftly soured, accusations of double dealing and non-payments at one point even led to fistfights. Within just a couple of months, just two days before he was due to appear in Federal court to face questions about his finances and the sale of SunCruz Casinos, Gus Boulis was murdered.

As with the murder of Aronow, the details and precise motivations for the murder are murky. What is known is that there was extreme bad blood between Boulis and the Abramoff/ Kidan partnership. It is also known that Kidan had a business relationship with Anthony ‘Big Tony’ Moscatiello who was also a bookkeeper for the Gambino crime family. Moscatiello in turn had a close working relationship with Anthony ‘Little Tony’ Ferrari, and James "Pudgy" Fiorillo.

Late in the after-noon of February 6, 2001, Boulis was driving home from the office in his green BMW when the road was blocked by a Mazda Miata forcing him to a stop. Seconds later, a black Mustang pulled up to the driver’s side of the BMW and fired several shots. The Mustang then calmly drove away, followed by the Mazda and a red Volkswagen Jetta driven by ‘Pudgy’ Fiorillo. Badly wounded and bleeding profusely, Boulis continued driving a few more blocks until his car hit a tree and he died shortly after.

Big Tony, Little Tony and Pudgy were eventually charged, tried and convicted of the Boulis contract killing but Kidan and Abramoff were never charged with ordering it. On August 11, 2005, Abramoff and Kidan were indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on fraud charges relating to the disputed $23 million bank transfer used as down payment for the purchase of SunCruz Casinos. Kidan pleaded guilty on December 15, 2005, Abramoff pleaded guilty on January 3, 2006.

The actual murder trial dragged-on for years, but eventually ‘Pudgy’ Fiorillo pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2012, and ‘Little Tony’ Ferrari was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On July 1, 2015, ‘Big Tony’ Moscatiello was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He was sentenced to life in prison following the sentencing recommendation of the jury that convicted him. However, as recently as June 2018, ‘Big Tony’ was awarded a new trial by the Fourth District Court of Appeals.

Abramoff of course, famously had his own problems to worry about. At the time of the SunCruz purchase he was one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. A senior member of the Republican Party, he was the DC ‘go-to man’ if you wanted anything done. He was however notoriously corrupt and involved in all sorts of major Federal swindles, particularly involving the Native American Tribes. But it was SunCruz and the feud with Gus Boulis however that marked the precipitous beginning of his downfall. After pleading guilty in 2006 to the SunCruz fraud and various other scandals, Abramoff was sentenced to six years in Federal prison. But he did not go down alone. His corruption trial resulted in convictions and jail sentences for twenty-one other prominent Washington politicians, attorneys, lobbyists, White House officials and members of Congress including Tom Delay and Bob Ney.

Gus Boulis would no doubt find comfort from the fact that the brutal murder in Miami of a humble Greek fisherman’s son caused unparalleled turmoil and scandal at the highest levels of the American government.

Excerpt from "Miami Murders Most Foul" by Patrick Alexander

Go Fast Boats and German Cars [1]

Don Aronow, the Cigarette King: February 3, 1987

Don Aronow’s life in many ways represents the American dream. The Brooklyn born, youngest son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he left school without completing his education and tried a variety of jobs before joining his father-in-law’s construction company. After creating his own successful construction company, he was able to retire to Miami as a self-made millionaire at the age of 32. In Miami he developed a taste for racing boats, first as a hobby and then he started designing his own boats, which he built into a successful business. Very soon he was touring the world, winning international races and selling his designs. Aronow's boats won over 350 offshore races and he was a two-time world champion and three-time U.S. champion. He had been elected to every powerboating Hall of Fame in existence and he is one of only two Americans to have ever received the UIM Gold Medal of Honor in Monaco.

Because of his success and fame in the world of power-boat racing, Aronow formed a close friendship with Vice President George H.W. Bush, a fellow aficionado. Bush himself had owned one of Aronow’s most famous designs, the Cigarette boat and was instrumental in Aronow’s Blue Thunder catamarans being adopted by the US Customs Service for chasing drug smugglers in the waters off South Florida.

Very soon, Aronow’s business model resembled a perpetual motion machine, with Miami’s Cocaine Cowboys buying his Cigarette boats to outrun the lawmen and the lawmen buying his Blue Thunders to chase them. Aronow was steadily increasing the speed of the go-fast boats he designed while lawmen and cowboys raced to outmaneuver each other. It was the perfect business model. Aronow was well aware that the drug smugglers were as fond of his boats as the lawmen. “We in the ocean-racing fraternity are flattered that the dope runners prefer our kind of boat,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1979, “but when they get caught, we don’t like it. We have torn emotions. A kid who works for me was offered $100,000 to run out to sea one night and resupply fuel for a dope boat. He refused, but it must have been a terrible temptation. Heck, lately we’ve been getting letters from jailbirds still behind bars, asking for complete specs and prices on our Cigarettes.”

The world of off-shore powerboat racing, not to mention the world of cocaine smuggling is a testosterone fueled, competitive environment of rivalry and violence. Aronow’s boatyard was located on 188th Street, Miami, known as Thunderboat Row, home of all the world’s most aggressively famous racing brands: Apache, Cigarette, Formula, Donzi, Magnum, Squadron, Flight, Nova, Pantera, Cougar, Tempest and of course Blue Thunder. George Bush was not the only famous and powerful customer in Aronow’s boatyard, others included ex-President Lyndon Johnson, King Juan Carlos of Spain, King Hussain of Jordan, the Sultan of Oman, Jean-Claud ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier of Haiti, Christina Onassis and the late Shah of Iran.

Aronow’s social circle encompassed more than just monarchs and presidents, many of his friends had less savory backgrounds. Having made his initial fortune in New York’s construction industry, Aronow was undoubtedly well connected with the city’s organized crime families and when he moved to Miami, he became a close friend of Meyer Lansky, the Mafia’s CFO. He also made new friends in the world of off-shore racing; people like Ben Kramer, Augusto Falcon and Salvador Magluta, or Willy and Sal as they were known. All three men were well known and respected as successful offshore racers. Kramer won the world title in 1984 and had his own boat design and building company, Apache Performance Boats. Falcon won the 1986 Offshore Challenge off the Florida Keys; Magluta had won three national championships and was a member of the commission that oversees the American Power Boat Association. All three men also earned billions of dollars smuggling cocaine and marijuana into the United States, using planes and go-fast boats.

In 1984 Aronow sold his USA Racing company, which built the Blue Thunder boats, to Ben Kramer in return for a Bell helicopter, real estate, various assets and some undeclared cash. However, when the Feds discovered the company was now owned by Kramer, a convicted felon, they threatened to cancel the Blue Thunder contract. To save the government contract, Aronow agreed to buy back his company and he returned the helicopter and other assets to Kramer but, it has been suggested, that he did not return the undeclared cash.  Because there was no record of the cash which had been exchanged ‘under the table’, there was nothing Kramer could legally do to recover it.

On the afternoon of February 3, 1987, Aronow, in his white Mercedes, was leaving Kramer’s office at Apache Performance Boats, when he was approached by a dark blue Lincoln Continental with tinted windows. Both cars stopped in the middle of the street and the two drivers lowered their windows. After exchanging a few words, Aronow was shot at least three times; in the face, in the arm and in the groin. He died shortly afterwards. The Lincoln sped away, never to be seen again.

There was endless speculation about the killer. Was it a jealous husband? Aronow was known as an active ‘ladies’ man’. Could it have been a mob-hit? he knew and conducted business with all sorts of unsavory characters. Was he too close to the Feds – might someone have suspected him of snitching?

In the meantime, Kramer had been arrested on new drug charges and was being held in the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in South Dade, near the Everglades. In April of 1989, Kramer was waiting in the prison recreation yard for a friend to collect him with his helicopter. Before it landed, Kramer grabbed hold of the right-hand skid while it still hovered above the prison yard. Unfortunately, his weight tilted the machine as it rose into the air, causing the rotors to snag in the prison’s coiled razor wire and bringing men and machine all crashing to the ground, breaking Kramer’s leg.

Finally, after many years of investigation, Bobby Young, a career criminal and a member of the ‘Dixie Mafia’ admitted to being the triggerman in Aronow’s murder. Although Young refused to rat on Kramer himself, Young’s attorney agreed to testify that Young had been hired by Kramer to kill Aronow. Finally, Kramer himself, if only to regain the comforts of a Federal prison, and escape the horrendous conditions of Dade County Jail, pleaded No Contest to the murder of Aronow.

But there still remain a lot of unanswered questions. Why was Aronow really killed, and who was really behind his murder? Who owned the Blue Lincoln? Kramer isn’t talking, why should he? – he’s serving a life sentence with a broken leg and no possibility of parole.

The only certainty that emerges from this story is that ‘Speed Kills’.

For more Miami murders CLICK HERE

Death in the City Beautiful [4]

Susan Sutton and the bad son: August 2004

Just a couple of years after the Maggie Locascio murder, in August 2004, another murder case featured a father and son facing each other in a courtroom setting. The cases were also similar in their focus on security cameras. In each case the security camera provided a rock-solid alibi but, ironically the cameras also provided evidence of guilt.

John Sutton, a well-known Gables lawyer, and his wife Susan had hosted a birthday party in their home on Orduna Drive, off Granada Blvd. in the area once known as The Devil’s Den – where Dora Sugg had been brutally murdered exactly one hundred years earlier.

Guests at the party included their son Christopher, his girlfriend Juliette and John’s Law Partner, Teddy Montoto. Soon after the guests left, and John and Susan retired to their separate bedrooms, somebody entered the house and shot both of them where they lay. Susan died immediately but her husband, seriously wounded and now blind, eventually survived.

Moments after police reached the house, Teddy Montoto also arrived. He told police he had been on the phone with Susan when he heard shots. He also told police that he was an expert marksman and had spent the day at target practice with his gun. The police tested his gun and gave Montoto a polygraph test. His gun passed the test, but he did not. After further questioning, Montoto confessed that he and Susan had been having a sexual affair. Another possible suspect was the couple’s 25-year-old son, Christopher. Even ten years later, Christopher still resented his parents for sending him to a brutal reform school as a teenager. Christopher had a long history of violent behavior, death threats and even a journal entry describing how to get hold of his parent’s wealth. At his mother’s funeral, Christopher seemed to know details of the crime known only to the police. But at the time of the murder, Christopher and his girlfriend were both attending a late-night movie as proved by the theatre’s security cameras.

However, the security cameras also showed Christopher leaving the cinema around midnight and immediately calling someone on his cell-phone. Phone records showed that the person he called, and whom he had called 331 times over the previous few days, was Garrett Kopp. Police then discovered that Kopp had been arrested less than 24 hours after the murder for threatening somebody with a gun. Tests soon proved it was the same Glock 9 mm semi-automatic pistol that had killed Susan Sutton. After six hours of intense interrogation, Kopp confessed to the murders and said he had been hired by Christopher, who wanted his parents dead.

During the lengthy and emotional trial it was shown that Christopher and Kopp were long-time dope-dealing buddies. It was also shown that Christopher had purchased the gun and had drawn Kopp a plan of the house, marking his parent’s bedrooms. His girlfriend Juliette described how Christopher had spent five years talking about killing his parents and constantly demanding money from them. After a day and a half of deliberations, the jury found Christopher guilty of first-degree murder. Before sentencing, an emotional John Sutton addressed the court but did not request leniency for his son.

"Regardless of the result, this is a bad case," he said. "I lost Susan. I lost Christopher long before that. I lost my eyesight ..." Asked if he still loved Christopher, the father told the court, "I would have to say that I do not. And it's hard...”

Christopher is serving life without the possibility of parole and Kopp will not be eligible for release till 2035. It would appear that despite all the manicured lawns and elegant mansions, the dark shadows of The Devil’s Den still linger to this day.

For more Miami murders CLICK HERE

Death in the City Beautiful [3]

Maggie Locascio and the brother-in-law: Oct. 30, 2001

If the twentieth century in Coral Gables had a bloody beginning with the murder of Dora Suggs, so too did the twenty-first century.

On October 30, 2001, just before Halloween, Maggie Locascio drove her Mercedes into the garage of her home at 2806 Granada Blvd., opposite the DeSoto Plaza fountain and just a few blocks from “Fatty” Walsh’s Biltmore Hotel. Returning home with a new hairstyle and a fresh manicure, she was about to start a whole new phase in her life. The following day, she was due to appear in court to end her marriage of 28 years. As part of the divorce settlement, the court would award her fifty-percent of her husband’s assets; however, being a CPA, Maggie knew that her husband, Edward Sr, had declared only a small portion of his vast fortune. In court, the following day, she was scheduled to reveal to the judge where all the other millions were hidden. Unfortunately, she never made it to court.

Her dead body was found sprawled on the kitchen floor. Her head had been brutally bludgeoned, and her body badly kicked and repeatedly stabbed. There was blood everywhere. Her husband lived in a condo on Miami Beach and the security cameras showed him popping out of his condo for no more than a few moments throughout the day and night of the murder. His alibi could not be more solid and the following day, in court, he demanded that the divorce proceedings be dismissed and all his assets unfrozen.

Eventually, blood samples, fingerprints, DNA swabs and a bag full of evidence proved that the murder was committed by Edward’s estranged, younger brother Michael who lived in Charlotte N.C., was unemployed and addicted to pills. The two brothers had not made contact for several years. But then, in the six weeks prior to the murder, they exchanged thirty-nine phone conversations. The condo security camera that proved Edward’s alibi, also showed his blood-spattered brother, Michael, visiting him just two hours after the murder.

Michael was quickly arrested, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Despite constant pressure on the authorities from his son, Edward Jr., it was many years later that Edward Sr. was finally charged as co-conspirator and mastermind of the murder. The evidence was entirely circumstantial; the trial was lengthy and included one of those ‘only-in-Miami’ moments when it was revealed that the lead detective had been sleeping with one of the major witnesses. Despite the lack of a smoking gun, Edward Locascio Sr. was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced, like his brother, to life in prison.

Years later, in a prison interview, Edward Sr. argued that he and his brother had been framed by his own twenty-year-old son, Edward Jr. who would now inherit the mansion on Granada Blvd. as well as all the family millions. For fourteen years following the murder, the house remained empty until the court recently ordered it sold at auction. It is currently in the process of being restored and the blood stains finally removed.

Miami Murders most Foul

Death in the City Beautiful [2]

Fatty Walsh, the ghost of the Biltmore: March 7, 1929

Thomas “Fatty” Walsh was a well-known New York mobster and a close associate of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Jack “Legs” Diamond and “Dutch” Schultz with whom he shared various business interests. Earlier in his career, Mr. Walsh had been employed as a bodyguard for Arnold Rothstein, the legendary gangster, famous for fixing the 1919 World Series. Ironically, Walsh was also suspected of murdering Rothstein over a gambling debt in 1928.

But, on March 4, 1929, less than a year after Rothstein’s assassination, Walsh had his own problems with a gambling debt. The details remain murky, but Walsh appears to have been running a card-game in a Prohibition era speakeasy he was operating from his suite on the 13th floor of the Biltmore Hotel. The suite is commonly known as the Al Capone Suite, named after another of Mr. Walsh’s business associates who shared his affection for the Coral Gables hotel. Following a possible misunderstanding over cards played, or money owed, Walsh was shot dead by a rival underworld figure, Edward Wilson, who then fled to Cuba.

Possibly because his murder remained unpunished, the ghost of “Fatty” Walsh continues to haunt the hotel, especially on the 13th floor. During his lifetime, Mr. Walsh was known as a ‘ladies’ man’ which perhaps explains why the elevator, unexpectedly and unbidden, often delivers attractive young women to the 13th floor. One young couple pressed the button for the 4th floor where they were staying but arrived at the 13th floor for no reason. No sooner had the wife stepped out than the elevator slammed shut and returned her husband to the hotel lobby. Strange sounds in the 13th floor suite, lights turning on or off, the elevator behaving erratically are all signs that “Fatty” Walsh is restless and seeks company.

Death in the City Beautiful [1]

Dora Suggs and the Devil’s Den: December 1905:

Long before George Merrick turned the wilderness, west of Coconut Grove into the city of Coral Gables, various hardy souls, known as homesteaders, lived on isolated farms out in the back-country. In December 1905, one of these souls, Dora Suggs, rode her mule and wagon into Coconut Grove (or Cocoanut Grove as it was then spelled) to buy Christmas provisions for her husband Gideon and their children. That was the last time her family saw her alive.

Returning from Coconut Grove, in the gathering winter twilight, she was riding through an especially desolate stretch of countryside known as ‘The Devil’s Den’, when she was dragged from her carriage and assaulted. These days it is a place of manicured lawns and gracious single-family homes, at the intersection of Granada Boulevard and Blue Road, but in those days, it was a narrow, muddy track that followed a creek, through a dark grove of Florida slash pines and palmettos.

The unaccompanied wagon and mule arrived back at the Suggs’ homestead and her husband immediately organized a search party. Her body was found in The Devil’s Den at 10:00pm; she had been brutally raped and mutilated. Her skull had been crushed-in with rocks. Footprints around the body showed that her assailant wore size twelve boots, but there were no other clues.

The following day, Edward (Cady) Brown was arrested for Dora Suggs’ murder. The main evidence against him appears to be that he was black. On being sentenced to death he said, “I don’t know how they can hang a man for something he knows nothing about.” Within just six months he was charged, tried, found guilty and hanged. Despite his neck being broken by the fall, he continued to show signs of life and his boots continued to kick for a further eighteen and a half minutes. His boots were a size ten.

Dora Suggs is buried in Coral Gables’ historic Pinewood Cemetery where her tombstone reads “1872 - December 18th, 1905.  Died tragically at the Devils Den, Wife of Gideon David Suggs.”

For more about Miami Murders Most Foul CLICK HERE

The Real Housewives of South Florida [3]

Candy Mossler: June 30, 1964

Jacques and Candace Mossler had been married for fifteen glamorous years when he was found brutally murdered in his luxurious Key Biscayne apartment. Already immensely rich when they married, Jacques introduced Candy, a poor girl from rural Georgia, to a life of luxury and social eminence which she could never have dreamed of. Thanks to Jacques’ wealth and social connections, she became well known as a charming hostess; entertaining visiting film stars and other celebrities at their various homes in Miami and Texas. Dressed always in the latest fashions, with an hour-glass figure, platinum-blond hair and her rich southern drawl, she adapted to her new role as a socialite with a natural ease. Candy Mossler quickly became a prominent and glamorous figure in a wide range of civic, cultural and charitable causes.

But Candy, only 46, found her 69 year old husband too elderly for her tastes and for three years had been conducting a passionate love affair with her handsome 25 year old nephew, Mel Powers. Powers had been jailed as a swindler at a young age and upon his release from prison his mother suggested he contact her sister, his wealthy aunt, Candy Mossler. After meeting her tall, broad-shouldered nephew, Candy persuaded her husband to offer Mel a job in one of his companies and to let him stay in their Houston family mansion. With Jacques so often travelling on business and Candy and Mel alone in the house, it was not long before the household servants became aware of the couple’s unbridled and adulterous passion.

Candy was already so fond of shopping for jewelry and the latest haute-couture, that Jacques had joked she would “shop me to death.” She now took Mel with her on her shopping expeditions and, in return for his exertions in the bedroom, she showered him with expensive gifts. When they could not be together physically, they exchanged detailed descriptions of their more intimate desires and shared memories, in a series of letter and sweaty love notes.

Eventually Jacques discovered evidence of the affair and had Mel thrown out of the house. He also considered getting a divorce until his accountant explained that half of his vast fortune would go to his ex-wife. Finally, with all the different homes that they owned, Jacques decided it was possible for them to live separate lives while remaining married. If Candy had filed for divorce, she would be left with nothing.

At the time of the murder Candy’s alibi was watertight. She happened to be out driving with her children, mailing a letter at 1:00 in the morning. While driving, she developed so severe a migraine that she had to visit a hospital. When she and the children eventually returned home just before dawn, she found Jacques dead and told the police that it must have been a botched robbery. Her husband must have interrupted the burglars she suggested. The police did not agree; this was no casual murder they said, this was a crime of passion. Jacques body had received 39 stab wounds and his skull had been completely crushed by repeated blows from a blunt instrument. Normal burglars, however brutal, would normally restrict themselves to just a couple of fatal stabbings, not 39.

While searching the Key Biscayne apartment, investigators found Jacques’ journal in which he had written “If Mel and Candace don’t kill me first, I’ll have to kill them.” It did not take police long to identify Mel’s identity nor to discover that he’d flown into Miami on the day of the murder and flown back to Houston on the first flight out the following morning. In addition to intimate photographs and steamy love letters between nephew and aunt, police collected much more evidence including bloodstains, fingerprints and witnesses willing to testify that Mel had often threatened to kill his uncle-in-law. Both Mel and his aunt were charged with first degree murder and ordered to stand trial in courtroom 6-1 of the Dade County Courthouse.

Even fifty years later, the Mossler trial is still referred to as the ‘trial of the century’. The New York Times described it as the ‘Most spectacular homicide trial ever.’  It had everything to feed the public’s prurient appetites: wealth, celebrity, adultery, incest, steamy sex and murder. The Los Angeles Times decried the courtroom evidence as ‘detailed and lascivious’ but, nonetheless, shared the details with its readers.

Because the nature of the evidence was so salacious, nobody under the age of 21 was permitted in the courtroom. Starting at dawn, lines to enter the court house stretched around the block and people brought their own packed lunches rather than risk losing their seats during the lunch break.

Armed with Jacques’ money, Candy was able to hire Percy Foreman, the nation’s most famous and expensive criminal attorney. Foreman had defended more than 700 clients charged with homicide and had lost only one. Life magazine said Foreman wore suits that looked like "freshly-laundered potato sacks." Time magazine called him "the biggest, brashest, brightest criminal lawyer in the U.S." It was also said, according to Life magazine that “if you hire Percy, you’re guilty as hell!”

The trial lasted thirty-three days and the prosecution called 224 witnesses, each of whom added lurid details about the couple’s adulterous and extravagant relationship. Police produced evidence of the nephew’s brief visit to Miami on the night of the murder, bloodstains in his rental car, finger and palm-prints at the Key Biscayne murder scene. The prosecutor asked the jury to ask themselves why Candy had decided to get the children out of bed to mail a letter at one-o-clock in the morning. The jurors were shown Jacques’ journal entries and listened as the prosecutor read from a selection of Mel and Candy’s love notes. The government felt confident their case was watertight and the Dade State Attorney only needed an hour to present his final summary.

Percy Foreman did not call any witnesses and, when he rose to give his summary, he said he would make just a few remarks. In fact, he spoke for slightly less than five-hours, non-stop. He attacked everybody except the defendants. He attacked the police and prosecution, he attacked all the witnesses and he even attacked the victim, Jacques Mossler. The witnesses, he claimed, were bottom-feeding scum, liars and criminals. “They seined the cesspools of the penitentiaries and insane asylums for anybody who would testify. And they didn't come up with an edible fish."

There were hundreds of people, he argued, who wanted the vicious, crooked Mossler dead. Jacques Mossler was "a ruthless financier, a mastermind of a great financial empire, hated by thousands of people and a sexual deviate who slept with an ax at his bedside to protect him from his enemies.” Using an unidentified hair found on Mossler’s dead body, Foreman went on to argue that Mossier's sexual appetites—"transvestitism, homosexuality, voyeurism and every conceivable type of perversion, masochism, sadism,"—had caused his own death; he was murdered, said Foreman, by a slighted homosexual lover.

But the trial was all about Candy. She played to the crowd and she played to the all-male jury. Her elegant clothes, her winsome smile, her beauty all had an effect and at one point the judge was forced to reprimand her for lounging seductively across two chairs.

After four days of deliberations, the jury came back with a verdict of not guilty. Mel and Candy were free to leave and they stepped out of the courthouse waving to the waiting crowds who thronged Flagler street and who cheered as they drove away in a gold-plated, Cadillac convertible. Hosting a celebration dinner party later that night at their hotel, they invited Percy Foreman to join them as their guest of honor. He refused to attend and said, "I may represent these people but I don't have to associate with them,"

Together, Mel and Candy returned to Houston where Candy inherited all of Jacques’ fortune. She then proceeded to dump her nephew in favor of an even younger man, Barnett Garrison, whom she eventually married. This marriage was equally unfortunate. Less than a year after the wedding, Barnett, wearing a gun in his belt, suffered irreparable brain damage after falling forty-feet from his wife’s third-floor bedroom window to the concrete below.

Candy herself died many years later of an accidental drug overdose, alone in her suite at the iconic Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach. She had been an addict for years. Perhaps the most memorable quote from the whole affair was when Candy held a spontaneous pre-trial press conference. “Mrs. Mossler” one of the reporters said. “You’ve been accused of committing adultery and of committing incest. You’re even accused of committing murder. How do you respond to that?”

“Well honey” she drawled, with a smile. “Nobody’s perfect.”

THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF SOUTH FLORIDA [2]

Joyce Cohen: March 7, 1986

Joyce Lemay was only 24 when she met and married a significantly older, multi-millionaire developer named Stanley Cohen. From their luxury mansions in Coconut Grove and Steamboat Springs, Colorado, they enjoyed an exotic social whirl on the international party circuit. Miami and Coconut Grove in the early 1980’s was awash with illicit drugs and Joyce soon developed a taste for cocaine – about once every fifteen minutes.

But sadly, such fairy-tale lives cannot last forever, and, in this case, five years was certainly pushing it. Stanley was already seeking love elsewhere and, to her close confidants, Joyce worried that she might soon lose her meal ticket. And then tragedy struck.

Around 5:00AM, Joyce Cohen called 911, screaming that her husband had been shot during a home invasion. She explained that after seeing two strange men, she had hidden in a back room with her Doberman pinscher. Police and paramedics found Stanley Cohen with four bullets in the back of his head, dead.

From the time they arrived on the scene, Police were suspicious. Why was the alarm disconnected, why was the guard dog locked up and why was Stanley’s 0.38 caliber revolver, wiped clean of prints, hidden in some bushes outside the window? Furthermore, if this really was a home invasion, why was nothing stolen despite the piles of cash and cocaine lying all around?

As one report observed, Joyce’s story had more holes in it than her late husband’s head. Sensing their suspicions, Joyce forced the police to leave her house until they could produce a search warrant and the next morning's Miami Herald carried a story of the Cohen homicide under the headline "Prominent Builder Murdered in Home; Wife Keeps Police Outside for More Than Eight Hours."

Despite their suspicions, police did not have enough evidence to press charges until almost three years later. After watching a program about the unsolved murder on TV, Frank Zuccarello, 25, a jailed member of a home-invasion gang, contacted police and told them that he and two accomplices had committed the murder. He claimed they had been hired by Joyce Cohen who had let them into the house and gave them her husband’s gun. In return for killing her husband, she promised them $100,000 worth of cocaine

Although the murder weapon, found in the garden, had been wiped clean of prints, a small piece of tissue paper had been caught in the trigger guard. The tissue matched a larger piece containing powder residue and Joyce’s DNA which had been found in her bathroom.

In the meantime, Stanley’s older children had prevented Joyce from benefiting from his estate, and when police finally arrested her, she was living with her new boyfriend in a Virginia trailer park. It took three years to bring her to court, and three weeks inside court to try her. The trial had included endless testimony from a succession of friends and associates who described Joyce’s constant complaints about her boring marriage and how she would like to get rid of her husband but keep his money. The most damming evidence however came from Zuccarello who described in minute detail how the murder was plotted in a 7-11 parking lot and how he and Joyce waited together downstairs while his partner, Tony Caracciolo went upstairs to commit the murder.

In November 1989, Joyce Cohen was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison plus fifteen years for conspiracy. “"Do not feel sorry for her because she's a woman” the prosecutor said. “She's a cold, calculating murderess who put on a good show for everyone."

And that should have been the end of the story but, unlike Stanley, the story refused to die. 

Zuccarello’s two accomplices, though pleading no-contest to second-degree murder, have both denied any involvement and both insist they’ve never met the Cohens. Joyce Cohen herself, not surprisingly, has continued, over the years, to make impassioned pleas of innocence. The key witness, Zuccarello, despite an incredibly long and sinister rap-sheet, was released after just a few years in jail. There are many, including some of the jurors, who believe he is a professional liar and made-up the contract-killing story in return for early release.

In 1998, a Miami TV reporter, Gail Bright, revealed that one of the lead detectives in the case had told her that Zuccarello’s testimony was a complete fabrication and that none of the three men had ever been to the Cohen’s house. Frustrated by their inability to collect sufficient evidence, despite their conviction that Joyce had personally murdered her husband, the police had finally coached Zuccarello, a well-known snitch, to make up his story.

Sentenced to twenty-five years to life, Cohen should have been eligible for parole in 2014, however in 2013, the Florida Parole Commission voted to extend her release date to 2048, by which time she will be 97 years old.