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German Bosque’s personnel file looks more like a rap sheet than a résumé. In two decades, the Opa-Locka Police Department opened 40 internal affairs cases on Bosque. Sixteen of them were for battery or excessive force. Fired five times and arrested three, he was charged with stealing a car, trying to board an airplane with… Continue reading Unfit for Duty
Fraudulent property flipping ran rampant during this decade’s housing boom, with $10 billion in suspicious deals in Florida alone, a Herald-Tribune investigation has found. The deals -- many of them inflated sales among friends, family and business associates -- drove up property values and tax bills during the boom, fed bank bailouts and failures after… Continue reading ‘Flip that House’ fraud cost billions
"Would you get for me a cigarette up there?” Mary Catherine Hampton asks in an accent that has trickled down from the mountains of eastern Kentucky. “I got to puff all my cigarettes when I talk about this.” She sits on the sheet-covered sofa in the living room of her duplex, one town over from… Continue reading Mary Catherine Hampton
Matthew Herman has a problem. But it isn’t finding a job. For three years at South Broward High, the teacher subjected teen girls to his sexual aggression, state records show. One girl said he tried to kiss her belly button. Two said he invited them home for sex. One later claimed he cornered her in… Continue reading Broken Trust
Six days before Christmas in 1959, a killer wiped out a local family of four, staining their living room floor with blood. The crime -- one of the most horrific in Sarasota County history -- shocked a community unaccustomed to such wanton violence. Suspicion and fear spread from neighbor to neighbor as people wondered if… Continue reading The Walker Murders
