Good Morning Florida Keys

GUARD DOG 

DOG FOR SALE

Dog For Sale: free to good home.

Excellent guard dog.

Owner cannot afford to feed him anymore, as there are no more thieves, murderers, or molesters left in the neighborhood for him to eat.

Most of them knew him as ‘Holy Shit!’
 

guard-dog

Yesterday, Sandra Downs spoke with Assistant State Attorney Cathy Vogel about the abduction of five teenage boys by Monroe County Sheriff Deputies. One of the boys was Sandy’s son, Preston. They were taken from school and/or their homes and hauled in Deputy Sheriff vehicles to jail and held incommunicado in the adult population for most of the day, with no phone calls to their parents to let them know where their sons were, until it was decided by the Sheriff’s Office to tell the parents. These arrests and abductions were made without warrants, over the objections, in some cases, Sandy being one of the cases, of the parents. Sandy kept asking the five deputies who came to her home that morning in three squad cars, as she was cooking breakfast, and snatched Preston out from under her, where was their warrant? Show the warrant? They said they had a warrant, but they did not show it. They did not have a warrant. A warrant was never produced. There never was a warrant.

This was made known to the State Attorney’s Office. Yet, the State Attorney’s Office did nothing about what the Sherriff‘s Office had done. In the case of Sandy’s son, Preston, the State Attorney took the case to trial, charging him with criminal trespass at Sugarloaf School. The same grounds it used to abduct and hold the other four boys incommunicado as well. Yet in Preston’s case, the State Attorney’s Office had no evidence putting Preston at the School that day, where several boys were playing hide and go seek. Not only that, the State Attorney knew it had no evidence, not one witness who could put Preston at Sugarloaf School. Not one deputy, not one of the other boys, no one who worked at the school, ever placed Preston at the school. Yet the State Attorney prosecuted Preston anyway, caused his mother to hire a lawyer, Sam Kaufman, to defend Preston. And when the case was heard before a visiting judge, maybe we should say thank goodness for that, the judge was given no evidence of Preston’s guilt and the case was nolle prossed.

When Sandy went with Dennis Reeves Cooper, Publisher of Key West The Newspaper, to State Attorney Chief Prosecutor Jeff Overby about the abduction of five minors by the Sheriff’s Office, Jeff said he would not investigate, he decided what cases he would investigate. When Sandy spoke with Assistant State Attorney Cathy Vogel yesterday, Cathy asked Sandy what she wanted done? She said she wanted the people responsible investigated and prosecuted for false imprisonment. Cathy laughed, said Sandy had no idea how many cases of false imprisonment there are in this county. There is no recourse. In relating all of this to me yesterday, Sandy said the statute of limitations had run anyway. It’s three years, she said, for false imprisonment. How convenient, I said. All the way around, how convenient. The statute had not run when Sandy went to see Jeff Overby. I wanted to chew nails.

Let’s look at this case again. Sandy already described it fully in her Guantanamo story, which is found at sandyforsheriff.com and in the Believe It Or Not file of goodmorningfloridakeys.com. A story Sandy wrote, after she no longer could not not write it. A story she repeatedely offered, through me, to be polygraphed about. A story of five boys kidnapped by law enforcement officers and held incommunicado. Pure and simple, they were kidnapped. Kidnapping used to be, probably still is, a capital felony under state law where I come from. There is no statute of limitations. A capital felony committed here in the Keys not only by the deputies who did it, but by their superiors who ordered it, and by their superiors who backed them up later, or covered up for it. And committed by the State Attorney, who approved the court prosecution of Sandy’s son, Preston, not having a shred of evidence against him, and knowing it; and by the Assistant State Attorney, who actually handled the prosecution. Guilty as accomplices after the fact.

Just as a visiting judge was arranged, by God, I’d wager, to hear the false charges against Preston, an out-of-county Prosecutor is needed to investigate and bring these felons to trial. There is no dispute what happened. Sandy has the records to prove it, even though it seems that pretty near all the records in the Sheriff’s Office conveniently no longer exist. She conveniently made copies before the convenient disappearance.

Accordingly, I’m sending a copy of this post to Bill McCollum, Florida Attorney General, Governor Charlie Crist, former Attorney General, the Florida Supreme Court, and the Florida State Bar Association Lawyer Disciplinary Section. I ask these officials, after they get this far in their reading, to go back and read it all again, but this time, put their own names in place of Sandra Downs’ name, and the names of their own children and grandchildren, and the names of their brothers and sisters’ children and grandchildren, in place of Sandra Downs’ boy, Preston, and the other boys who were kidnapped. Then, having done that, get down to work.

As they work, let them ask themselves why Preston was kidnapped and held incommunicado and prosecuted even though there was not a shred of evidence against him? And let them keep ever in mind that Sandy and her family had no difficulties with the Sheriff’s Office or the State Attorney’s Office before Sandy reported her neighbor, Phillip Goodman, to the Department of Environmental Protection for cutting (slaughtering is more accurate) mangroves on a state-own island near his home. When nothing happened, Sandy went to Tallahassee about it. After Tallahassee got upset about it, Phillip Goodman and his family finally learned what Sandy had done, and then began the terrorizing of her and her family.

The Goodmans are the top of the Republican Party food chain in the Keys, directly under which sits Sheriff Rick Roth and State Attorney Mark Kohl. Yes, I’m telling the high public officials named two paragraphs above to investigate and prosecute Phillip Goodman, as the head of this terrorist cell, and the entire cell. And I’m asking the State Bar Association and the Florida Supreme Court to investigate and disbar State Attorney Mark Kohl and the Assistant State Attorney who prosecuted Preston, both knowing there was not a shred of evidence against him. In investigating the Goodmans and State Attorney Kohl and Sheriff Roth, I suggest that the Prosecutor offer immunity from prosecution to the smallest fish, in exchange for their testimony against the bigger fish.

If nothing comes from this request, I will take all of this to the United States Attorney and F.B.I., for investigation and prosecution of all principals and aiders and abettors under various federal criminal statutes, including but not limited to federal civil rights criminal laws and the RICO Act. I might even ask for an investigation and prosecution of Governor Crist and Attorney General McCollum, who have been kept up to date with all of this shit by email.

Sloan Bashinsky

Key West resident/voter
Inactive member, Alabama State Bar Association
Former law clerk to the Honorable Clarence W. Allgood, United States District Judge, Northern District of Alabama, who presided over every criminal case brought by the U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Alabama. A gooder man I never knew.

After publishing yesterday’s Fishing.Fishing, I felt moved to check my junk mail box and saw an email from Rose Stump, whose son Tom mysteriously disappeared some years ago in the Keys. Rose has not heard from him since, nor, apparently, has anyone who knew him. Another Keys intrigue, compounded by Tom’s wife later moving in with and marrying US 1 Radio News Coordinator Bill Becker, which spawned even more speculation about what really happened to Tom.

Rose wanted to know what would be the cost of publishing on my website a short add asking anyone who has information about her son to contact her by email. I replied that I’d lost a son in infancy and know how it feels. I said goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com are not commercial websites and I’d be glad to publish her ad for free, but I wanted to sleep on it to see what was the best way to do it. I added that I was sending a copy of my reply to Sandra Downs, who also had lost a son and knew what that was like. I did not tell Rose that it was through Sandy that I first came across Rose, when she emailed Sandy after her website was hacked. US 1 Radio interviewed Sandy about it and ran the interview all the next day, catapulting Sandy and her website into the public limelight. Into Rose Stump’s life.

The file on Sandy’s website that was hacked and destroyed, “My Experiences With Injustice,” was about five boys being persecuted by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. One of the boys was Sandy’s son Preston, who later was electrocuted while working with one of his brothers and their stepfather trimming trees near a power line that experienced a sudden power surge. Their business is Tarzan’s Tree Service, and Sandy’s husband Nick is Tarzan. Nick was at a store buying sodas for him and his stepsons when Preston was killed. Sandy, Nick and her family then were investigated by the Sheriff’s Office for murdering Preston, even as Preston was prosecuted by the Sheriff’s Office posthumously on charges against him that a judge had already dismissed.

Wasn’t long after replying to Rose yesterday that Sandy and I spoke on the telephone. When I said I’d just found an email from Rose Stump in my junk mail box, Sandy exclaimed that she needed Rose’s email address but could not get to it because it was locked away in her laptop which was recently messed up by a virus or hacker, causing Sandy to have to find other ways to work online. I told her to check her emails, and there she would find a copy of my reply to Rose with her email address.

This post is Rose’s ad requesting information about her son’s whereabouts. It’s heading to the Today’s Cock-a-doodle-doo file at goodmorningkeywest.com and the Fla-Key Drivel file at goodmorningfloridakeys.com. And to the Coconut Telegraph file of goodmorningkeywest.com, and to keylargokey.com. The “Keys Politics” file on that last website has a pretty rough and diverse commentary on Tom Stump’s disappearance. It’s a terrible thing all the way around. It needs to be resolved, for everyone’s sake. For everyone’s sake.

Rose Stump can be contacted at mamarose7251@copperfast.com.

Just below is an article about Jim Hendrick’s presentation to Coffee & Books in Marathon a couple of weeks ago. I wrote to the journalist and said he’d truly captured the spirit of the Keys and how important our libraries are. How truly important. My dreams last night told me to write some about writing today, which follows this wonderful piece by Rob Busweiler.

Cast of characters draws attention to worthy cause

Living in the Keys, you frequently stumble upon the “only here” moments.

Two months after moving to here, I was dispatched to a 20-ton sperm whale that had beached itself off of Big Pine Key. “Only in the Keys,” I thought to myself.

Three days later I received a call, and was told the now-dead whale had broken free of its tow and washed back, this time planting itself firmly in the shallow waters near the south end of the Seven Mile Bridge. There it would stay until nature did the job the feds had paid several thousand dollars to attempt to accomplish: Disposal of the carcass. It may have taken several months, but you get the idea.

Only in the Keys.

The list goes on, but last week another one of those moments sprung up, as a former county government attorney convicted last year in federal court of obstruction, witness tampering and conspiracy, Jim Hendrick, was the featured speaker during the regular Friends of the Marathon Library lecture series.

It wasn’t so much that a convicted felon, who is currently appealing his case, was speaking about the influential books he has read during his life, but rather the scene it created.

Standing at the podium, Hendrick rattled off book after book. Sitting 15 feet away was frequent political candidate — currently running for Monroe County Commission — and blogger Sloan Bashinsky, who gave a lecture for the library series last month.

Hendrick revealed that he and Bashinsky frequently play chess. The dichotomy of their relationship seemed something that could only exist in the Keys. During his lecture, Hendrick spoke of meetings with the religious and literary luminary buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Bashinsky, on the other hand, says his blog postings are influenced by angels that speak to him during dreams.

The two couldn’t be more different, yet here they were laughing about a relationship that could only be born in the Keys. Further adding to the scene was the self-proclaimed voice of the little people, “Bicycle” Joanie Nelson. A Keys character in her own right, Nelson — who is running for a seat on the Marathon City Council, as she has every year since the City incorporated in 1999 — joked around with Hendrick before the lecture and seemed excited about the discussion. It was like a scene out of a Fellini movie.

Hendrick’s lengthy discussion about the experience of spending three weeks in a federal penitentiary certainly qualifies as uniquely Keysey, and more importantly advanced the cause of a vital Keys service.

Stories along the lines of Hendrick, Bashinsky, Nelson — and even rotting whales — help make this community what it is, for better or worse. And it’s hard to deny that the sponsor for the series, the local library system, is a vital part of our own story here in the Keys.

Next month the series will continue and another Keys character will take the stage. The library needs all the help it can get due to recent budget cuts, and hopefully the attention given to this cast of Keys characters can help that cause.

Rob Busweiler is a staff writer for the Marathon and Big Pine Free Press. Contact him by e-mail at rbusweiler@keysnews.com.

A few days ago, after pining my ears back pretty good at chess again, Jim Hendrick asked me about my writing. Did I know ahead of time what I’m going to write about? Essentially, no, I said. Although every now and then I write something the day before that ends up being published, usually, I said, I have no clue when I turn in at night what I will write the next morning. Oh, I might look back and see signs leading up to it, which I might have seen if I’d been paying attention perhaps. Which is the case with this piece today. There were signs yesterday and even before, but I didn’t see them until after the dreams last night and earlier this morning. I think I said that since I started running for the county commission against George Neugent in 2006, I had written almost non-stop. Never had it been this heavy.

I told Jim that he would write if and when he was supposed to write. The Muse would see to it. I described a time when I was asked to present at a writer’s workshop once up one a time. I was toward the end of writing the fourth book that literally forced its way out of me, like the three previous books had done, like maybe fifteen more books of different sizes, flavors and shapes would later do. Unexpectedly. I went to the workshop with what I felt was a clever agenda, which didn’t seem to strike many of the participants as clever however. On the second day, I told Jim, I was asked a question that seemed to frame the reason I was there.

The question was, “What do you do about writer’s block?”

I said I don’t get writer’s block. When I’m supposed to write, I have to write. When I’m not supposed to write, I need to be doing something else. If I try to write when it’s not there, all that comes out is garbage. Maybe I’m writing in my soul or subconscious and later it will force itself to page, but until then I should be doing something else. I told Jim that suddenly I felt horns growing out of my head, or being put there maybe by some of the people in the workshop.

No, I said, when asked if I didn’t get up and sit at my typewrite or computer for so many hours each morning. No, I don’t to that. There’s no point. If I’m to write, I have to write. I might write all day, or for a few hours, but there’s no stopping it when its there, and no making it happen when it’s not. I told Jim that I told them not everyone is a writer, that wanting to be a writer has nothing to do with it. Maybe they were artists, instead, I told them, or something else. Not the kind of thing one usually hears at writers workshops, I told Jim, and encouraged him to write when he felt it was time.

I dreamt last night of my last novel, HEAVY WAIT: A Strange Tale, which I gave to Jim before his trial began. I then found myself somewhat intrigued by how some of the latter part of HEAVY WAIT paralleled how Jim’s case went and later. Somewhat. I suppose only someone who actually had practiced law could write a book like HEAVY WAIT, which is about a very successful trial lawyer and two women mostly, who had some pretty strange experiences indeed; strange by the measure of this world, not so strange by the measure of the worlds I have come to know. Not so strange at all by those worlds’ measures.

I gave several copies to the Monroe Library last year for its various branches, and I suppose they are still in the library system. It was published by PublishAmerica, a print-to-order publisher, on their dime. Their website is PublishAmerica.com, and it’s easy to order online. The book begins with the publisher’s caveat: “At the specific preference of the author, PA allowed this work to remain exactly as the author intended, verbatim, without editorial input.”

How that came about is PA offered three timelines for the book being published: fast without editorial input, medium fast with copyediting, slow with full editorial input. My early books had full editorial input, and I was an easy author for editors to work with and appreciated their input. Later books had less and less editorial input because I was publishing way far-out material and self-publishing. None of the newer writing, including the first three novels, was literature by the classic definition, and, yes, none of it was school book perfect. Nor is HEAVY WAIT. If you want classic literature and school book perfect, forget it. I was told in dreams to use the fast method of publishing, and so that’s how it ended up going that way. Just as the book itself was ignited by a dream and other strange experiences.

If you want a ride that will turn you every which a way but loose, as it turned me every which a way but loose, and the three main and most of the bit players every which a way but loose, then proceed at your own risk. And, if and as you read it, if and as you find yourself wondering just how much of it might be really true, ask yourself how someone could really make something like that up if it wasn’t really mostly true?

Yeah, it’s just a fishing story. Yeah, it just fell out of me in six weeks, ker-plop!!! Yeah, it has symbolism in it. Yeah, the author is deeply involved in it. Just as Ernest Hemingway was deeply involved in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA, even though he adamantly insisted to his editor that he was not, or that there was any symbolism in the story. The Old man was an old man, the boy was a boy, the sea was the sea and the fish was a fish, Hemingway insisted in a letter to Max Perkins, published in Carlos Baker’s compilation of Hemingway‘s correspondence. I told the people at the workshop that THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA was Hemingway’s suicide note, which was the clever thing I went there to tell them. That, and there is no way to make up a story out of nowhere. Everything a writer writes is about the writer, even if the writer doesn’t know it.

As I later wrote in one of the way far-out books no editor would ever see, “Although he sometimes tries to write fiction, when the tale is done, every character is a character in himself, every plot a plot in himself. There are no surprises. Only his surprise to discover parts of himself he has lost, forgotten, thrown away or never even knew were there. In this way perhaps he and God are somewhat alike. They both create to discover just who and what they really are.”

Below is the text of an email yesterday from County Commissioner George Neugent, referring to earlier email correspondence between us, followed my reply, which might be classified as nuclear.

Sloan,

None of it was to be any sort of a joke, however, just as you include double entendres, satire and humor in your writings – I may be mistaken – sometimes I do too. Or at least try. And before I go any further, I think a lot of you and your opinions, although, in this case you’ve left me questioning how you could get so far out there with a couple of folks that have literally, with one Jerry Coleman and radio show, literally slandered some good folks.

As for your position on Rego? Why are you so hostile to Mr. Rego – hell I don’t know him beyond recognition and a hand shake. The criteria, not anything else, unless there is something I don’t know that you can add, will determine whether I vote for him. I mean, is he a pedophile, convicted felon – what’s up with your disdain for him? Just that Mario appointed him? As for, Mario the Mayor – you step out in front of fast trains, this was a done deal. I begged Dixie to take the Mayoral seat – I told her Mario wasn’t qualified and that Monroe county would suffer. Don’t vote for me Dixie but don’t let Mario serve – nothing, except the Hickory House & Vandenberg were accomplished under his administration/leadership.

Again, if she got what she wanted enforced why is she still railing on the Goodmans? Why is she railing on anyone? Why is she not just telling us what she is going to do as Sheriff when elected?

And, no I doubt very seriously if I will feel differently about any of her accusations.

And if you are going to run against Sonny – why don’t you run in a party rather than waste your time and money running as an independent? Ask Jerry Coleman, he ran as an independent, and independent can’t win. You’ve done it – got a death wish or just doing it to prove nothing? Run as a Republican, win, make a difference.

George

Evening, George.

You still defend the Goodmans. Keys people need to know that is your position, even though you have not seen and, it seems, now decline to see the mountains of evidence Sandy has in the past and has just recently again offered to show to you.

I don’t know Frank Rego from Adam. I read in Key West Citizen that he is Mario Di Gennaro’s choice. I already told you I don’t trust Mario any farther than I can throw him, and now add to that his big house in Marathon. Repeating what I also already said, I would not agree with appointing Rego and would vote No if I were on the County Commission, and would say why I was voting No, so it would be in the record: I don’t trust Mario, so I don’t trust Frank Rego, so I vote No.

Just as I would have voted No and said why when Dixie and Sonny put Mario in the mayor’s seat. So it would be in the record: Mario had no experience, was a joke, and should not be Mayor. But even before that vote, if had been you, I would have gone and gotten clueless “Queen Sylvia” (Murphy) out of her surprise “coronation party” Kay Thacker and others were throwing for her off somewhere else in the main meeting room at Harvey Government Center, and made Sylvia take a public stand on Mario being Mayor. I would have done that because I would not want anyone to think I had anything to do with Mario becoming mayor, and because I wanted the public to see how new-commissioner Sylvia voted. Keys people are entitled to know what position their county commissioners take on every single issue that affects them. Every single issue. Frankly, I don’t know how Sylvia lives with herself after she basically put Mario in the Mayor’s seat, by not being there to vote against it.

Maybe until now Keys people have not understood how you and Sylvia could have kept Mario out of the Mayor’s seat. You have not disagreed with me that if Sylvia had voted No, a 2-2 tie would have resulted, which tie only Mario could have broken. Nor have you disagreed with my view that procedurally Mario could not have voted for himself to break the tie. No Mayor would have been better than Mario. You knew he was bad news, I knew it, but as I said in the earlier email, Sylvia told me shortly after it happened, she had been advised by someone not to get on Mario’s bad side, to make him and ally, and she was glad she had not participated in the vote for him being Mayor. A hell of way for Sylvia to spend her first day on the County Commission. A hell of a way.

Whoever said Sandra Downs got what she wanted enforced? The Goodman’s chopped down the mangroves. Sandy wanted them to be stopped from doing it. Then she wanted them prosecuted for doing it. She got nothing she wanted, and plenty she didn’t want: her and her family being terrorized by the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and the State Attorney’s Office.

Unbelievable, is all I can say, your saying you doubt you would ever believe Sandra Downs without even first seeing her evidence and talking to her. Unbelievable. Unbelievable that you have not called her to set up an appointment to see her of evidence, after she did everything she could once upon a time to show it to you and could not even get an appointment to see you. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Shit, George, what happened to Sandy and her family after they turned the Goodmans in is what happened in Nazi Germany.

As for Sandy talking of all of this instead of what she will do if she becomes Sheriff, she will do what she’s doing right now: chasing down criminals, and catching hell for it. She’s not getting paid for it now and does not have a sheriff’s office backing her up and protecting her and her family, which she might not have when she’s sheriff, because she’s going to clean house in the Sheriff’s Office if she’s elected. She said this to me, and that she’s been [one of] the few real law enforcement officers in the County for the past five years, and she doesn’t even have a badge. [”one of ” was inadvertently left out of the orginal email — my,  Sloan’s error]

Can you imagine, George, what you and I write back and forth looks like to other people? Especially people not obligated to the Goodmans? Or to the Republicans? To people fed up with Mario, Dixie and Sonny? It looks like you aren’t really any different from the Goodmans, Mario, Dixie and Sonny. That’s what it looks like.

What possible reason could I have for wanting to become a Republican? So I could spread my legs wide and have a better chance of winning against Sonny McCoy? Why not join a Satanic Cult instead? For that’s what I’m looking at on the Republican totem pole: the Goodmans, the County Commissioners, State Attorney Mark Kohl, Sheriff Rick Roth. Please don’t take this as a joke or double entendre, George. It’s not either. It’s what I’m looking at: a Satanic Cult.

And because I’m looking at it, I’m wondering what in the name of God is wrong with Kim Wigington running as a Republican against Dixie? Doesn’t Kim see the slime she’s wallowing in by being a Keys Republican? How can she accept Republican support and money knowing what’s at the top: the Goodmans and the County Commission? Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Of 22,000 votes cast when I ran against you in 2006, I received just over 7,000. Me, an unknown, with no campaign committee or workers, no party advertising for me, no campaign mailings, posters, buttons. 7,000 people voted for me, an Independent, and maybe I knew one hundred of them somewhat, and perhaps five of them pretty well. 7,000 Keys people wanted to see me instead of you in office, George. 7,000 Keys people. In 2006.

I would not be able to face myself in the mirror if I became a Republican, or a Democrat, just to get a party behind me, just to give me a better chance of winning. I’m a person, not a can or a crat. I answer only to my conscience and God, and not to a political party or other people. Often have I said you seem to me to be your own person, not in anyone’s pocket. I was mistaken, George. Mistaken. On both counts.

I would ask you to tell me, George, that the Goodmans and/or others did not put you up to trying to persuade me to become a Republican. To become one of them so they gain some measure of control over me, in case I end up beating Sonny, and to get me away from pushing Sandra Downs down the Republicans’ throats. But I won’t ask you that. I’ll just say it, so anyone who reads this will know how I’m looking at this offer you made.

And so they will know you were seen and heard talking yesterday with Debby Goodman and Mario at a Republican function at the Marathon airport, and Debby was visibly upset and asking what was going to be done about what Sandy and I are doing about the mangroves? What’s going to be done is we are going to try to get Debby and her husband put in the penitentiary. And maybe some other Republicans, too. That’s what is going to be done.

I told you in an earlier email, George, that I have dreaded serving on the County Commission because of Mario, and now was feeling much the same way about being on the County Commission with you. I feel that way all the more after receiving this last email from you. All the more. All the more.

God help the Keys. God help Keys people. For it’s plain as day the Republicans will not. Plain as day.

Sloan

p.s. I sent this email exchange to someone elses besides Sandy, just in case I’m not able to publish it generally. Just in case. Yeah, George, that’s how I’m thinking. That’s how I’m thinking.