FORT PIERCE — A 22-year-old man accused of forcing a teen girl to perform a sex act on him before raping her at his mother’s home faces felony charges, according to an arrest affidavit released Monday.

The 16-year-old girl told police Sunday she met Timothy E. Mitz, of the 2800 block of Avenue H, about three to four weeks ago and engaged in “semi-consensual” sexual activities during that time.

She told investigators she was at Mitz’s mother’s residence on the 700 block of South 29th Street and went to sleep about 3 a.m. Sunday.
(more…)

Thomas Butt

Thomas A. Butt, 57, dialed the emergency line that night to report that two men were raping a woman behind the Bank of America on U.S. 1.

When Martin County Sheriff’s deputies arrived, they didn’t find anyone except Butt, who was crouching down behind some bushes, according to a sheriff’s report. Butt told deputies the attackers were by a telephone pole but deputies said they found no one there.

Dispatchers told the deputies that Butt had called two other times that night to make false reports. In one call, he reported a burglary in progress but when deputies investigated they found that it wasn’t true, the report states. But also called to report a disabled vehicle on Interstate 95 that might be blocking the road.

Butt faces charges of making a false report using 911, loitering and resisting arrest.

PORT ST. LUCIE — A man found naked in the room of a 12-year-old girl with whom he communicated on MySpace and discussed having sex faces two felony charges, according to recently released arrest and court records.

The victim told police she spent most of a day in late June communicating with a man identified as Barrington Benjimen Smith Jr., 18, of the 500 block of Northwest Avon Avenue in Port St. Lucie.

They arranged to meet, she told police. The victim opened her bedroom window and let Smith in about 12:30 a.m. June 25, records state.
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Brandon Wester

He is being held at the St. Lucie County jail on a sexual battery charge in lieu of $150,000 bail.

The woman told police she was at a bar at the Sandpiper resort on Wednesday night. She had ordered a Mai Tai, danced with two Club Med employees, and then received another cocktail she hadn’t ordered before talking with two golf maintenance workers. When she asked who had ordered her the drink, no one answered her, she said.

The next morning her son woke her up and she realized she wasn’t feeling well. After she noticed she was bleeding, she began to remember small snippets of the previous night, she told police. (more…)

STUART — A judge has permanently dismissed parts of a lawsuit against famed Stuart attorney Willie Gary on claims he raped a woman nearly two years ago at a Stuart hotel.

Martin Circuit Judge Elizabeth Metzger in a ruling filed today dismissed claims from attorneys for Jillian Nedd that Gary’s alleged assault on her was a part of an ongoing pattern of criminal activity in which Gary was supposed to have engaged in similar acts with other women.

Metzger first found that the alleged acts concerning the other women did not result in any injury to Nedd, so she could not rely on them for her claims. The judge further ruled that the other claims directly related to Nedd weren’t enough to hold up the lawsuit’s claims of racketeering.

Gary’s attorneys Michael Pike and Bob Critton described the ruling as a huge win for Gary.

“The judge made a ruling that consistent with the law within the state of Florida and the United States,” Pike said. “We’re thrilled with the outcome.”

Pike added that he and Critton intend to ask Metzger to force Nedd and her attorneys to award them more than $100,000 in attorneys fees and costs for both their firm and Gary.

Since Nedd accused Gary of rape in August 2007, the two filed criminal complaints against each other - Nedd for rape against Gary, Gary against Nedd, her husband and a friend for extortion. No criminal charges materialized in either case.

Metzger’s ruling precludes Nedd’s attorney from filing that portion of the lawsuit against Gary again. Several other claims in the lawsuit are still in dispute.

Luis Gutierrez-Florez

STUART — A Martin County Sheriff’s deputy was arrested Friday on a charge of sexual battery after a woman accused him of making advances at her during a call.

Sheriff’s officials first learned about the allegation April 22, when the woman’s husband called to report that Deputy Luis Gutierrez-Florez raped his wife when he responded to a dispute involving the Palm City woman a week earlier.

Gutierrez-Florez, 37, denies the charges. He is being held at the St. Lucie County jail without bond after authorities arrested him at his Palm Beach County home.

“It’s embarrassing to the agency, it’s embarrassing to the profession,” Sheriff Robert Crowder said .

The woman told investigators she called the sheriff’s office April 16 to report her husband had stolen money from her purse.
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FORT PIERCE — A registered sex offender and his girlfriend were arrested Tuesday following allegations that they beat an 11-year-old girl and her siblings, according to records released Wednesday.

The 11-year-old girl told sheriff’s investigators John Louis Cooper, 30, burned her with a cigarette lighter. She said she feared being raped by Cooper because he “raped a 13-year-old girl before,” records show.

Cooper was convicted in 2002 of lewd act on a minor less than 16 and is a registered sex offender because of it, records show.

The girl said Cooper and his 32-year-old girlfriend, Kathy Ann Carson, push them around and punch her and her 9-year-old brother “all the time,” according to the report.

The brother had an injury on his finger he said was caused by Cooper purposely burning him with a lighter, records show.

The elder girl said Cooper punches her in the chest when she misbehaves, the records show. The boy said he has difficulty with bed-wetting and Cooper punches him in the chest because of it. The boy also was found to have a “fungal scalp infection” that had been present for months.

Cooper faces two counts of child abuse, and Carson was arrested on a single child abuse charge. Carson’s charge stems from alleged abuse on a 4-year-old girl. A doctor examined the 4-year-old girl and the two older children and founds signs of abuse or neglect.

Cooper and his girlfriend live in the 5100 block of La Salle Street.

By Will Greenlee, TCPalm.com

Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing

A jury has sentenced Ricardo Sanchez Jr. and Daniel Troya to death for killing the Escobedo family of four along Florida’s Turnpike in St. Lucie County.

The federal death penalty is different from the state of Florida’s death sentence in many ways.

Only 51 inmates are on federal Death Row in Terre Haute, Ind. Florida houses 392. Crimes punishable by the federal death penalty include genocide, killing witnesses, in a trial, terrorism and murder committed as part of a drug enterprise.

Florida has executed 67 men and women since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. The feds have executed three men since Congress reinstated it in 1988. Some of the more famous of those executed were Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of sabotage for selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Here’s some of those executed since 1927:

James Horace Alderman

1927: James Horace Alderman, known as “King of the Rumrunners,” was intercepted by a Coast Guard vessel 30 miles off Florida’s coast. His boat was laden with alcohol during the era of Prohibition. As Alderman boarded the vessel, he pulled out his pistol. When two Coast Guardsmen and a Secret Service agent rushed him, he shot them all dead. Later, his execution was scheduled for the Broward County Jail, but the county wanted it to occur on federal property. So a makeshift gallows was erected at the Coast Guard hangar.

“When this is read I will have passed over the brink of eternity into the Great Beyond. “I would like to state through the medium of The Miami Herald that I am feeling fine, physically, mentally and spiritually. With the wonderful comfort and strength that I received from Jesus Christ, I am assured that when tomorrow comes I will go with smiles of comfort on my face. … “As I sit here in my cell I can look back and see just what caused me to be where I am today. Drunkenness first starts a young man to gambling — and swearing grows on him — and from that step he becomes hardened in his heart in envy and hatred toward mankind. Then, as he grows up, he becomes what you would call educated to crime. Bootlegging and smuggling is the next step. And there are other angles of downfall that lead to the devil. “The money I made neither did me nor my dear family any good. We thought it did, but no. You can see what it has done — a death sentence by hanging — and a broken-hearted family.”

Read the 1929 Time magazine account of his hanging, here. (more…)

Manuel Jose Vargas

A man in his 20s is charged with raping a 13-year-old Port St. Lucie girl.

The girl told Port St. Lucie police she was sleeping on Tuesday morning at her house when she awoke to find Manuel Jose Vargas touching her. (more…)

Kenneth Atkins

A jury convicted Kenneth Atkins of raping the 15-year-old girl in 2004, and a judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison.

Both Atkins, who was 16 at the time, and another man, Martin Lyke, were charged as adults. Lyke told police they raped the girl, Atkins said the sex was consented.

An appeals court in 2006 overturned Atkins’ conviction, ruling that the judge presiding over his first trial should not have allowed prosecutors to let jurors hear a recorded conversation between the then 15-year-old rape victim and her friend after the alleged rape.

In the first day of Atkins second trial today, his attorney Jerome Stone argued that the teens had consensual sex after drinking heavily at the party.

The alleged victim, now an adult, was tearful at times on the witness stand as she recounted the night she said Atkins and Lyke lured her to the pool area of the apartment complex and took turns raping her.

Lyke pleaded no contest to the rape charges and was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004. According to Department of corrections records, he was released last month.