FORT PIERCE — On a morning just over seven years ago, Joan Loughman was on the phone with her twin sister when she ended their call abruptly.

“She said, ‘I have to go, someone’s at the door,’” Assistant State Attorney Lynne Park told a group of jurors today.

Park said it was the last time anyone heard from Loughman before she was found bludgeoned to death and stripped of her jewelry inside her father’s house on Hutchinson Island south of Fort Pierce.

A jury in 2005 determined that Loughman’s death came at the hands of Michael Andrew Gosciminski, who wound up on Death Row for the crime. But a state court’s ruling last year overturning his conviction has led to a second trial, which began Friday, two days after the seventh anniversary of Loughman’s murder.

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PORT ST. LUCIE — It was 2006, and though the housing market had already begun to crash the three women who invested with Rodney McGill’s Young Millionaires Group thought the pastor and self-made real estate guru could teach them how to the make the millions he’d made buying and selling property.

Each said they trusted McGill and his mortgage broker-wife, Shalonda, so much that they didn’t hesitate to sign mortgage loan applications with highly exaggerated incomes and other false information the McGills had filled out for them.

Now Patricia Kelly, Sharon Schofield and Cynthia McNair all have ruined credit, and McGill and his wife last week were sentenced to 20 and 10 years in prison, respectively, on racketeering, grand theft and mortgage fraud charges.

As cases of mortgage fraud stemming from the housing boom in the early part of the decade begin to see the light of day, the potential magnitude of the problem also becomes more apparent — especially in former overheated markets like Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast.

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George Gonzalez, comforts his wife, Rosa Gonzalez , Julia Rolon- Estrada's sister, as Jose Rolon, Rolon-Estrada's father, watches after the jury convicted Rolon-Estrada's killer Albert Estrada of second degree murder at the St. Lucie County Courthouse on Tuesday.

FORT PIERCE — A jury this morning convicted Albert Estrada on a lesser charge of second-degree murder in the shooting death of his wife, Julia Rolon-Estrada, who was found buried in their back yard.

Estrada, 43, of Port St. Lucie, could have faced the death penalty if the jury convicted him of first-degree murder.

Jurors had deliberated for more than nine hours Monday and announced they had reached a verdict immediately after they reconvened this morning.

Rolon-Estrada’s father, Jose Rolon, and her sister Rosa Gonzalez, said they were devatated by the verdict.

“It sucks. I really don’t know how I feel about it right now,” Gonzalez said. “I think I’ll know more how I feel tomorrow.”

Estrada faces up to life in prison when CIrcuit Judge Dan Vaughn sentences him Wednesday.
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VERO BEACH — The DUI trial of County Administrator Joe Baird continues today with more defense witnesses testifying about his physical condition before his arrest at 10:25 p.m. May 16 in Vero Beach.

Baird “appeared perfectly normal to me” around 10 p.m., Baird’s long-time friend John Binkley testified Tuesday at the end of trial testimony for the day.

Testimony is expected to end today, possibly in time for the case to go to jurors for a decision.
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On what would have been her mother’s 43rd birthday, Candice Estrada spent the afternoon telling a jury how she unwittingly discovered what would become a piece of evidence in her father’s trial for her mother’s murder.

She said she was taking the last of her mother’s belongings from her parents’ Port St. Lucie home in December 2006 when she opened a cookbook, curious as to why the edges were shredded.

“When I opened it, there was a bullet there,” she said Tuesday.

Prosecutors in Albert Estrada’s first-degree murder trial this week said another bullet Estrada fired inside the house on July 26, 2006, hit Julia Rolon-Estrada and killed her.

Crime scene investigators never saw the cookbook during their investigation.

Assistant State Attorney Steve Gosnell asked Candice Estrada what she did when she found it.

“Well, I was kind of creeped out, so I just closed the book and put it back,” she said.

Albert Estrada could face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder.

Jurors on Tuesday also heard testimony from detectives who said Estrada stood at a back window two days after the alleged murder, his hands pressed to the glass while investigators looked at the bags of mulch stacked atop a shallow grave in the couple’s back yard where they found Rolon-Estrada the next day.

Among other evidence, prosecutors showed jurors a calendar inside the house. On July 26, the day investigators believe Estrada killed his wife, someone had drawn a sad face.

Jurors also heard a conversation between Estrada and Port St. Lucie police Detective Robert Fonteyn while investigators searched the couple’s home. Estrada told him his wife ran away after he rebuffed her desire to have more kids.

“I told her, ‘If we’re going to fight and you decide you’re going to leave, what am I going to do? Huh? Am I going to kill you? Then I’ll never have you,’ ” Estrada said.

VERO BEACH — County Administrator Joe Baird was a victim of police “rush to judgment,” his defense attorney said in the opening arguments of his DUI case Tuesday.

Bobby Guttridge told jurors when Baird stepped out of his Jeep when it was stopped May 16, Baird was wearing a flowered Hawaiian lei around his neck. Because of that, police “never gave Baird the benefit of doubt.”

Baird was arrested after attending a community fundraiser in Wabasso at which Guttridge said Baird had two beers. But Assistant State Attorney David Dodd told jurors Baird failed all of the police roadside sobriety tests. Baird couldn’t stand on one leg, walk a straight line, count backwards or follow the movement of a pen with his eyes.

Guttridge blamed that on Baird having physical problems, including vertigo.

Dodd also said an officer found an alcoholic beverage spilled on the floorboard of Baird’s Jeep.

Prosecutors Tuesday morning are putting the arresting police officers on the stand to testify. Vero Beach Police Lt. Matt Harrelson is first. He stopped Baird at 10:26 p.m. May 16 near the Miracle Mile Plaza on 21st Street.

Harrelson testified he could smell alcohol when he was within 6 feet of Baird. Because of Baird’s appearance, he called in a DUI investigator.

By Elliott Jones

FORT PIERCE — Testimony began today in the murder trial of Albert Estrada, the 43-year-old man accused of murdering his wife before burying her in their back yard and lying to police as they searched for her.

Assistant State Attorney Steve Gosnell in opening arguments this morning gave the 14-member jury a timeline of the events before and after Wednesday, July 26, 2006, when friends and co-workers last heard from Julia Rolon-Estrada.

Nancy Paxton, her supervisor at a doctor’s office where she worked, later testified that Rolon-Estrada had been upset that day, crying and talking about breaking up with her husband that afternoon.

Paxton said she overheard a phone conversation between the couple that afternoon when Rolon-Estrada put the call on speaker. She said Estrada gave a chilling response when his wife said she wasn’t coming back home.

“He basically said, ‘You are coming back home. If you don’t I’m going to kill you and I’m going to kill your whole family. I’m going to kill your sister, your mother and your father,’” Paxton said.
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STUART — It was “bizarre” for Martin County Sheriff Robert Crowder to repeatedly pat the short, spiky haircut of Detective Jennifer Heard, her lawyer said, and he expects Heard’s sexual harassment complaint to lead to a federal discrimination suit.

“We fully expect to file a lawsuit and just litigate the matter,” said Justus Reid, a lawyer representing Heard. “The overall theme will be gender discrimination and, in effect, sexual harassment that went on in the department.”

Heard filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in May alleging the sexual harassment against her began shortly after she was hired in September 1996 and continued for the next 12 years in the form of sexual advances, catcalls and a suggestive nickname. She also accused Crowder of belittling her by patting her on the head.
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FORT PIERCE — After Julia Rolon-Estrada died of a gunshot wound to the artery in her leg on July 26, 2006, she was wrapped in a blue tarp and again in a green blanket before being buried in the yard of her Port St. Lucie home, near a rear sliding glass door.

A dog trained to find cadavers helped authorities locate the newly tilled grave, which was covered with a wooden pallet holding 20 mulch bags stacked on top.

Rolon-Estrada’s jailed husband, 43-year-old Albert Estrada, state prosecutors say, is the man guilty of killing his wife and high-school sweatheart, who had walked out on him the night before she died at age 39.
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FORT PIERCE — A man who police have said could be responsible for 20 burglaries or attempted burglaries of occupied homes since March was arrested Tuesday afternoon.

Police, with the help of a U.S. Marshals Service task force, apprehended Derrick L. Hickman, 33, for whom investigators obtained an arrest warrant in connection with a May attempted burglary in the 1600 block of Havana Avenue.

Investigators suspect Hickman could be responsible for 19 other burglaries or attempted burglaries, Fort Pierce police Sgt. Dennis McWilliams has said.
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