4 April 17-April 23, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | ▼ SUNRISE MYSTERY SOLVED SONAR COMPANY CRACKS 25-YEAR- OLD COLD CASE. BY B. SCOTT McLENDONA private underwater recovery company appears to have solved a mystery that has haunted a Sunrise family for 25 years when divers located the remains of Libby Ann Dibenedetto on Sunday, April 6. St. Petersburg-based Sunshine State Sonar announced the find late Tuesday after finding Dibenedetto’s body in 13 feet of water in a pond near W. Sunrise Boulevard and N. Fla- mingo Road in Plantation. She was still in the gold 1996 Toyota Camry in which she’d gone missing. Dibenedetto, a 35-year-old nurse, was re- ported missing by her family after she failed to return home from celebrating a coworker’s birthday at Duke’s Bar and Grill in Davie on April 11, 2000. Her family, including her three young children, would never again see her alive. Neither Plantation nor Sunrise police im- mediately responded to calls for comment Wednesday. But Sunshine State owner Mi- chael Sullivan tells New Times foul play isn’t suspected in this case, which he says is iden- tical to most missing-persons cases his com- pany has solved in which a person was last seen driving home alone from a bar. “Her kids have been very quiet about the case,” Sullivan says. “She died a day before her youngest son’s tenth birthday.” Sullivan says Dibenedetto’s last known ac- tion was calling her therapist from a pay phone near N. Pine Island Road and W. Sun- rise Boulevard. He says his company con- firmed that she’d been living with her mother in Sunrise while finalizing a divorce when she disappeared. The recovery company began searching Broward County bodies of water for Dibene- detto in 2022, undertaking more than 30 de- ployments from St. Petersburg and searching about 400 different bodies of water. They made a breakthrough on Sunday afternoon when they found skeletal remains submerged in a small Plantation pond. “It was one of the hardest cases we’ve worked,” Sullivan says. “We didn’t know which direction she went when she left the bar.” Armed with so little information, the team began searching all bodies of water in the area. They’d already packed up and were heading out of town on Sunday morning when he de- cided to check one last pond, he says. “It was over — game over,” Sullivan says. “It was the fourth quarter and we were on our way to the airport when I said, ‘You know what, let’s throw the boat in one more pond.’” Sullivan’s sonar gear identified a 15-foot- long sedan in the water, matching the de- scription of Dibenedetto’s car. He was certain it was her when he spotted a Miami Dolphins bumper sticker, still intact. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, Florida has more than 2,400 active missing-persons cases, including 252 in Miami-Dade County, 167 in Broward County, and 249 in Palm Beach County. The system is a database maintained by the U.S. Department of Jus- tice’s Office of Justice Programs. Sullivan says that thanks to the invention of OnStar and other roadside-assistance tech- nology, cases of missing persons like Dibene- detto’s are becoming less commonplace. [email protected] | RIPTIDE | GET MORE NEWS, COMMENTARY EVERY DAY AT MIAMINEWTIMES .COM/RIPTIDE ▼ SOUTH FLORIDA High There! Top five weed dispensaries that deliver to your door. BY ALEX DELUCA I t’s 2025, which means you can have basically anything delivered to your door in short or- der: a new car, live ladybugs, Japanese candy, and yes, even some good ol’ ganja. As Florida’s lucrative medical cannabis mar- ket continues to grow, so does the number of companies that deliver weed. Gone are the days of sitting around dispensary waiting rooms and awkwardly chatting up budtenders. If you’re one of the more than 900,000 Flo- ridians with a medical marijuana card, you can have someone bring cannabis products straight to your doorstep for a small fee and, in some in- stances, for free. Competition is fierce in the Sun- shine State’s marijuana market, and retailers are willing to travel far and wide to earn your devo- tion as a customer. In no particular order, here are five of the best dispensaries that deliver weed in Miami: Trulieve Trulieve, Florida’s largest cannabis company, of- fers delivery across South Florida — “every zip code,” per Trulieve’s marketing materials. The company has at least eight dispensaries in the Miami-Dade area alone. The delivery fee is $15. Call or visit the company’s website to place your order. trulieve.com Curaleaf Curaleaf, the state’s second-largest cannabis producer by volume of THC sold, offers delivery in South Florida from its South Beach and South Miami-Dade stores. The minimum for delivery orders is $50. Delivery costs $20 but is free for orders of $75 and more. curaleaf.com GoldFlower Cannabis Pledging to use a natural grow process and no synthetic pesticides, GoldFlower is a relatively small cannabis operation based out of Florida’s Gulf Coast. The company offers same-say deliv- ery across Miami-Dade County for orders placed before 2 p.m. While GoldFlower has plans to eventually open brick-and-mortar locations in South Florida, it currently offers only delivery in the area. goldflowerfl.com The Flowery The Flowery, a family-founded dispensary based in Homestead, offers next-day delivery across the Miami metro area. The delivery fee is $15, but free for orders of at least $100. The Flowery tells cus- tomers, “Be sure to place your order by 4:20 p.m. the night before to ensure next-day delivery.” theflowery.co Müv Most of Müv’s more than 70 statewide locations offer delivery, including at least one location in Miami-Dade. Delivery orders under $100 have a $20 delivery fee. Müv touts the quality of its can- nabis in its company profile, saying its cultivation team is “handpicked from a select group of ac- complished horticulturists and scientists.” muvfl.com [email protected] Sunrise Police Department graphic/ Google Maps screenshot Libby Ann Dibenedetto’s remains were found inside her ’96 Toyota Camry, which was submerged in 13 feet of water in a pond just west of a Sunrise Boulevard Aldi. New Times artist conception/Photos by Elsa Olofsson (weed leaf) and With Mahdy (paper bag) via Unsplash
