▼ Culture Stranger Than Fiction Paradise Lost podcast serializes Miami’s most lurid true-crime stories. BY JOSE D. DURAN M iami and true crime are a match made in, well, hell. Since its inception, the city has attracted nefarious char- acters, culminating in 1981, when Time magazine released its infamous November issue in which it declared Miami “Paradise Lost.” For any other city, it would have been considered a black eye to its repu- tation, but the Magic City has always found a way to embrace its perceived lawlessness. From authoritarian leaders accused of massacres to serial killers not wanting to be found, the southern tip of Florida can some- times feel like an alternate reality where be- ing a criminal doesn’t stop you from holding a position of power — hell, it doesn’t even stop you from holding office. Wanting to preserve South Florida’s sor- did history are producers Kareem Tabsch and Joey Daoud. Borrowing its name from that Time cover, Paradise Lost: Crime in Mi- ami is a 13-episode podcast — presented by iHeartMedia’s My Cultura podcast network and a co-production with Sonoro and Trojan Horse — that delves into some of Miami’s most lurid true-crime stories. It made its de- but last week with an episode devoted to the godmother of Miami crime, Griselda Blanco. “Miami is such a wellspring of bizarre sto- ries that it made sense to revisit some of them,” Tabsch says. “The podcast tells the story of the city through the crime that has happened here.” Tabsch and Daoud felt it was fitting to launch the series with Blanco, a woman whose story has elevated her to mythical sta- tus — which perhaps makes people lose sight of the fact that she was also responsible for a lot of death and violence. Known as La Mad- rina and the “Black Widow,” she was accused of having a hand in at least 40 murders be- tween New York City and Miami, including the killing of a two-year-old boy in a drive-by shooting at SW 168th Street and South Dixie Highway in 1982. The second episode, which premieres to- morrow, focuses on Linda Cooney, the Palm Beach socialite who shot and killed her ex- husband, Jim, in 1992, and later shot and par- alyzed her son, Kevin, in 2011 — reportedly with the same gun. Both Tabsch and Daoud have made 10 10 careers out of storytelling. In addition to cofounding O Cinema, Tabsch codirected the documentaries Mucho Mucho Amor about the life of TV psychic and pop-culture phenomenon Walter Mercado and The Last Resort, which explores 1970s Miami Beach through the lens of photographers Andy Sweet and Gary Monroe. Daoud, a distant relative of former Miami Beach mayor Alex Daoud, who fell from grace on bribery charges in 1991, is also a documentary Museum Quality Miami Worldcenter unveils the first artwork as part of its $5 million public art program. BY CAROLINA DEL BUSTO T he soft, milky white outline of the moon appears overhead as the sun prepares to set in the west. The newly revealed blue- and green-hued mural at Miami Worldcenter pops against the clouds. Devel- oper Nitin Motwani stands tall underneath the impressive work by artist Nina Chanel Abney. Motwani, managing partner at Miami Worldcenter Associates, beams with pride as he walks down the breezeway and points to various aspects of the artwork. His firm recently announced a $5 million grant to curate site-specific public art to be placed throughout the 27-acre property in downtown Miami. The aim of the program is to bring world- class art to the masses. Art dealer and cura- tor Jeffrey Deitch, along with Miami’s own curatorial team at Primary, have been brought on to help lead the initiative. The team’s first order of business was to create an all-star committee to ensure the selection of artists was objective. Members of the committee include Photo courtesy of Trojan Horse producer now based in Los Angeles; he and Tabsch codirected the short Dolphin Lover, which tells the story of Malcolm Brenner, a real-life zoophile who claims to have had a sexual relationship with a dolphin. “In our show intro, we say, ‘Florida: Sunny “MIAMI IS SUCH A WELLSPRING OF BIZARRE STORIES THAT IT MADE SENSE TO REVISIT SOME OF THEM.” place for shady people,’” Tabsch says about the city’s reputation for illicit doings. “Florida has always been wild, it’s always been the Wild West. It feels like there are no rules here, that nobody is going to hold you back. It’s a place where people come to reinvent themselves.” Miami and the entire state’s transient nature is the perfect breeding ground for the WTF headlines that have made the word “Florida” synonymous with crazy crime stories. “It’s the kind of place you don’t want to ask people what they used to do because you don’t really want to know,” Tabsch asserts. “I also think in a weird way South Florida has em- braced its craziness and embraced its crimi- nals. You think of these folks like Griselda and you ask yourself, ‘Why are they larger than life characters?’ They’ve become notorious, not just because of the brazenness of what they’ve done, but there’s also this kind of head nod from folks like, ‘Yeah, I get it.’” You only have to look at movies like Scar- face and prolific characters like Al Capone, Kareem Tabsch (left) and Joey Daoud, producers of Paradise Lost. who had a mansion on Palm Island and died here in 1947, to know that locals love a good if problematic anti-hero. Perhaps that’s what also sets Paradise Lost apart from other true-crime podcasts: it’s not necessar- ily looking to uncover some overlooked piece of evidence or pass judgment — if any- thing, these stories are already well known to the general public. Instead, Tabsch and Daoud are more interested in what these crimes have to say about South Florida and its culture at large. “We don’t look at anybody with an idle lens,” Tabsch notes. “We are not champion- ing these folks. We’re sharing these above- board stories and trying to do a deeper analysis. We want to take larger-than-life, stranger-than-fiction stories and unpack them in ways that our audience will consider what it means.” Future episodes of the podcast dissect the stories of Rudy Eugene, who earned the nick- name the “Miami zombie” after he attacked and maimed a homeless man; cult leader Yah- weh Ben Yahweh; the high-profile murder of designer Gianni Versace; and Jeremy Macau- ley, who was found guilty of the brutal double murder of Carlos Ortiz and Tara Rosado in Key Largo. Paradise Lost: Crime in Miami can be streamed via iheart.com, Spotify, Apple Pod- casts, and more. [email protected] Franklin Sirmans, director of Pérez Art Museum Miami; Alex Gartenfeld, artistic director at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Nicholas Baume, director and chief curator of Public Art Fund; and Cecilia Alemani, director and chief curator of High Line Art in New York and artistic director of the 2022 Venice Biennale. Although the grant was announced earlier this month and the first artwork revealed, Mot- wani sighs with relief as he explains that the project has been years in the making. Over the past three years, Motwani worked closely with the curatorial team. Together they assembled the third-party committee, identi- fied the artists, found locations for the works, and began production on the pieces. “When you’re working with such high-qual- ity artists, high-quality curators, and this in- credible committee,” Motwani explains, “a lot of great, inspiring ideas come about.” The works will be strategically placed in high-traffic areas as well as places with the most visibility. The idea is to create an outdoor museum of sorts, where the community can engage with the works no matter where they’re walking — or driving — from. To one side of Motwani is a recent complete building and the site of incoming restaurants and businesses; to the other is a plastic fence enclosing a soon-to-be public park. He looks around, the sun reflecting off his black aviator sunglasses. It’s clear he’s visualizing the future use of the space: folks walking through the city, coming or going from Pérez Art Museum Miami or the >> p11 MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 JUNE 2-8, 2022 NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | miaminewtimes.com
