Phil Busch has always been one angry dude. In 2006, the musclebound motivational speaker and born-again Christian fueled worldwide headlines when he sued über-evangelist Pat Robertson for using the bodybuilder’s well-greased, vein-popping physique to sell a mass-marketed protein shake without permission — and damn was Busch pissed about it. “Look in…
Just when we were starting to worry that Miami was losing cachet as ground zero for all crimes cocaine-fueled — maybe that study about coke making your heart explode in the Miami heat really freaked everyone out? — the DEA swoops in to remind us that we’re still number one,…
Prominent Miami businessman Gaston E. Cantens and his wife Teresita have been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for running a $135 million ponzi scheme that defrauded elderly Cuban-Americans. Gaston Cantens served as an advisory board member for Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, and the two are parents of former…
We don’t know about you, but whenever Riptide dreams of robbing a bakery, it’s usually for the baked goods.”Okay, put all the muffins and raisin bread in the bag and nobody gets hurt. This bad boy’s breaking his no-carb diet tonight.”Not that we’d ever actually rob a bakery. Unfortunately Vicky Bakery…
The string of cat killings that rocked Palmetto and Cutler Bay last summer may have ended when police arrested 18-year-old suspect Tyler Weinman, but investigators haven’t been able to link Weinman’s DNA to the case.Eleven of the 19 cats’ bodies were tested for human DNA and none was found. They…
Edgar Giovanni Castillo, how dumb — and disturbed — you are. Let us count the ways. First, police say, you molest children and film it. Then you keep said films and videos on your cell phone’s smart chip, of all places. And then, for a coup de grace, you try…
Pablo Guzman ran away from a Super Bowl week shooting outside a downtown club, evaded an off-duty cop’s barrage of bullets, and successfully made his escape to Cancun, Mexico. But his luck ran out when he tried to catch a flight from Cancun to Panama City over the weekend. Guzman,…
Who executed a career criminal wanted in connection with a February slaying in Miami? That’s what the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Department is trying to piece together this morning after a 21-year-old Miami native named Travis John Lattimore was found dead behind an a abandoned house outside Fort Pierce. Lattimore’s…
John Walsh and his America’s Most Wanted crew aired an episode about the murder of aspiring model Paula Sladewski, who wound up dead in a burning dumpster early last month after being seen alive at Club Space.In the above video, Space owner Luis Puig explains the club’s policy when it…
We haven’t seen a fight over tomatoes this heated since Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers argued about the fruit’s correct pronunciation in Shall We Dance. Luckily, they decided to call the whole thing off before anyone’s neck got broken.Lerner Rodriguez wasn’t so lucky.The Miami Beach resident was driving through the…
Yesterday, a little after 2 p.m., a woman went to visit her friend in her new home, a squat, pastel-painted ranch on a quiet block of SW 5th Terrace just off SW 8th Street in West Miami. When she walked inside, she found her friend on the floor, dead in…
Kevin Klym, the boyfriend of aspiring-model Paula Sladewski who turned up dead inside a burning trashcan on New Years Eve weekend, went on The Today Show last week and placed blame on Club Space. That was the last place Paula was seen alive. Klym also claimed that the suspect sketch…
Blood tests have been completed on Carlos Bertonatti, the aspiring musician accused of drunkenly killing a cyclist on the Rickenbacker Causeway last month and then speeding away. The verdict: Bertonatti was drunk. The 28-year-old’s BAC came back at .122, Riptide’s sources say. In Florida, anyone who blows over a .08 is liable…
Carlos Bertonatti, the musician charged with drunkenly killing a cyclist and then speeding away on the Rickenbacker Causeway last month, was handcuffed and escorted back to jail this morning. After Bertonatti pleaded not guilty to the charges of vehicular homicide, DUI manslaughter, leaving the scene of a fatal accident, and…
Until now, Club Space, the last place tourist Paula Sladewski was seen alive before turning up dead in a burning dumpster, has remained relatively silent about the case.That changed after Kevin Klym, Sladewski’s boyfriend, went on the Today show last week and said the recently released sketch of the man…
Kevin Klym, the boyfriend of murdered tourist Paula Sladewski, went on the Today show this morning and said the recently released sketch of the man supposedly last seen with her looks like a bouncer from Club Space.In his first TV interview, he placed blame on Club Space. He said the…
Last summer, New Times brought you the story of Roman Vidal, a quiet Cutler Bay resident whom authorities linked to a very troubling international conspiracy. Starting in 2001, the 57-year-old smuggled millions of South American cigarettes through the Port of Miami, hidden beneath floorboards and shipments of yarn on freighters, bound…
Nearly a month after the body of aspiring model Paula Sladewski was found in flames in a dumpster, North Miami Police have finally released a sketch of a man they say witnesses last saw her with.Sladewski was visiting Miami with her boyfriend, Kevin Klym, to catch Lady Gaga’s New Year’s…
Jose Armando Rodrigues really wanted to get back home to Miami, so apparently it was a big bummer when his friend’s car, which he was ridding in, broke down on I-95 near Boynton Beach earlier today. We can understand wanting to get out of Boynton Beach as soon as possible, but…
It’s been more than one week since Carlos Bertonatti slammed into cyclist Christophe Le Canne on the Rickenbacker Causeway and then sped away as the 44-year-old died on the roadside, but the crime is still reverberating in the Magic City. Bertonatti, as we first reported here in Riptide, had a…
Lord knows one of the worst crimes haunting our community is the evil of unlicensed massage. We just don’t understand how parents can sleep at night knowing their children are growing up in a world where women, without proper documentation and trying to make ends meet, are lubing up the backs of…
Eighteen-year-old Chonshi Thompson died Thursday morning in the South Beach parking garage near 1601 Washington Ave. Two other victims were involved: 18-year-old Sandro Louis was shot in the groin, and 21-year-old Cesar Gonzalez took a bullet to his left hand. Both had fled the scene by the time police arrived…
