JENSEN BEACH — A man was charged Saturday evening with domestic battery after he drenched his wife with a garden hose and attacked her, according to an affidavit released Monday.

The altercation began when the victim entered the couple’s residence in the 1400 block of Northeast Chardon Street, while smoking a cigarette.

The affidavit says the victim’s husband, John Jeffrey Murray, 51, began yelling at her about smoking in the house and sprayed her with the hose.
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Since March, Leroy Stennett has spent more than 10 hours talking to seven people in five departments at Bank of America about getting his mortgage modified.

In 2006, Stennett and his wife purchased a house in Port St. Lucie for $285,000, putting $95,000 down and adding another $5,000 in closing costs from the sale of their previous home.

“My house is worth $120,000 now, so, I’ve basically paid it off, but they don’t want to cut me a break,” Stennett said about his lender, Bank of America. “Every time I call, I talk to a different person, so I can’t get any real answers.”

Like thousands on the Treasure Coast, Stennett hoped President Barack Obama’s Making Home Affordable plan would help adjust his house payments after applying for a mortgage modification. But frustrated homeowners, who remain current on mortgage payments despite economic setbacks, say they are confused about the modification process and aren’t getting support or cooperation from their lenders. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — Hundreds of Tesoro property owners aren’t waiting around while their subdivision’s developer grinds through bankruptcy court: They’re filing their own lawsuits against Ginn Resorts and its affiliates.

Property owners are charging Ginn with a host of wrongdoings, including selling lots through Ponzi schemes, fraudulently inflating property values, lying to and duping clients, failing to account for hundreds of thousands of dollars in membership dues and missing escrow accounts and backing out on promises to build amenities.

Timothy Vetrano, 72, a retiree from Manhasset, N.Y., who lives at Tesoro with his wife Marilyn, said his experience falls under “buyer beware.”
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STUART — A judge Wednesday ordered the former owner of Arthur’s Dockside restaurant to spend a year in the county jail on a tax fraud charge, prompting his wife to burst into tears and break down outside court.

Arthur Dombrose, 71, was also ordered to serve two years of community control and two years of probation.

Standing before Martin Circuit Judge Sherwood Bauer, Dombrose showed little emotion as deputies fingerprinted him and led him away.

Last July Dombrose entered a plea of no contest to a first-degree felony tax fraud charge after failing to pay $187,000 in sales tax collected from customers between March 2005 and April 2006. (more…)

MARTIN COUNTY — Former Martin County Commissioner John William Holt Jr., who helped create the original Martin County Comprehensive Land Use Plan, died Monday at Treasure Coast Hospice. He was 79.

“He had been ill for some time,” said his wife of 57 years, Evelyn. “His heart just gave out.”

Born in Pahokee, Dec. 15, 1929, the son of John W. Holt Sr. and his wife, Hosea, Holt grew up on a ranch in western Martin County. His brother was former Martin County Sheriff Jim Holt. Like his father and brother, Holt was a rancher.
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PORT ST. LUCIE — The Nelsons moved to Connecticut and had two additional children. Neil Spector got married and still lives in the area and Howard Hillegas has watched homes sprout up along his once-vacant street.

Their lives — like those of others who experienced that chaotic day — moved on in the decade since wildfires ripped through parts of western Port St. Lucie on April 15, 1999. It was described then as the worst disaster in city history, and one of the worst fires on the Treasure Coast.

But the memories remain.
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PORT ST. LUCIE — It’s a 20-year-old dream come true.

Richard “Rick” Hartley and his wife, Ann, picked up the phone last week in their Maryland home and heard Robin Sutherland on the other end telling them they had just won the YMCA Easter House.

The drawing was on Thursday, but the family couldn’t be reached when Sutherland, the YMCA’s house planning consultant, called to let them know of their big win.
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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…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — Erik Bartkowiak’s baseball training facility in Port St. Lucie already was struggling when the economy started to fail.. Bartkowiak quickly found himself swinging at hardballs with a Wiffle ball bat.

In September, parents started coming to the Sandlot Baseball and Softball Academy saying they no longer could afford the $100-a-month membership for instructions and access to the facility’s equipment.

“One or two would say they just got laid off and ask for a break on membership,” Bartkowiak said. “In October, it was four or five a day. By January, I was down to about 20 members. It doesn’t work — $2,000 a month when I needed $20,000 to operate.”

With other training programs to offer and alternative business financing, he got out with his wallet mostly intact. But not everyone has been so lucky. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — A 44-year-old man accused of hitting his wife Wednesday morning after she admitted being out with another woman with whom she’s having an affair is facing a battery charge, a police report states.

The 37-year-old victim told investigators she got home about 12:30 a.m. and went to take a shower when her husband, Alex Adorno, came to the bathroom.

Adorno, of the 1200 block of Southeast McFarlane Avenue, ”asked her if she had been out with the girl she has been having an affair with and she said yes,” the report states.

He allegedly got mad and choked her. He also allegedly turned the water off, hit her in the head and threw the bottles in the shower on her.

The victim said it’s the second time Adorno struck her. She said she didn’t call police the first time ”because she is the one having the affair,” the report states.

Adorno said his wife has been having an affair with another woman for about three months and he doesn’t know what to do. He said he ”lost it” after she returned home and admitted being out with her girlfriend.

The wife didn’t want to press charges, but Adorno went to jail on a battery charge.

By Will Greenlee, TCPalm.com