Politics: The Boating Life
In Miami, That Means Speed, Muscle, Beauty and a Bayful of Glamor (Not to Mention Danger)
The story is as infamous as it is apocryphal, and as befitting of Miami’s glamorous and dangerous history as Biscayne Bay itself.
On the afternoon of February 3, 1987, noted powerboat builder Don Aronow hopped into his white Mercedes Benz, pulled out of the USA Team Racing parking lot and headed west on a road known as Thunderboat Row. As the founder of Magnum Marine, Cigarette, Donzi and Formula, Aronow had pretty built this street, not to mention the businesses it supported, so when a dark blue, late model Lincoln Continental slowed to a stop from the opposite direction, he had no reason not to stop himself. The driver of the Lincoln lowered his tinted windows and exchanged a few words with Aronow. Then he fired five shots from a semi-automatic pistol and left the boat-builder for dead.
A convicted killer, kidnapper and cocaine trafficker named Bobby Young eventually copped to the crime, pleading No Contest to second degree murder. Young, who was also wanted in connection to the death of “Dixie Mafia” member John “Big Red” Panzavecchia, had been picked up in Oklahoma on drug smuggling charges, and while he was in stir apparently boasted about shooting Aronow. But his plea not only saved him from sitting in Old Sparky, it meant he never had to name the man who contracted the hit.
That didn’t prevent Florida authorities from charging Apache Boats’ Benjamin “Barry” Kramer, who had bought, then had to return Aronow’s USA Team after the Feds used his own drug smuggling conviction as an excuse not to to do business with him. Kramer, who once tried to escape from a Federal facility via an old Bell helicopter (it crashed), to this day denies any involvement in the murder, though he did plead No Contest to Manslaughter back in ‘96. (He says that was simply to be moved out of the notoriously decrepit confines of Miami-Dade County Jail.) And there are still some people who believe either Colombian drug lords or Northeastern mobsters were the real culprits behind Aronow’s assassination.
But whether a rival boat builder or some faction of organized crime was behind the murder of powerboat kinghpin Don Aronow is by this time of little consequence. The fact is his killing joined the long list of crime stories that have made Miami one of the most fabled cities on the planet — and one of the most dangerous.
Two years prior to the Aronow hit a fishing boat called the Mary C slowly made its way up the Miami River loaded with $12 million worth of cocaine. After docking at Jones Boat Yard, eight uniformed men boarded the boat and gunned down its crew, three of whom would later be found floating in the River. The culprits — and the case — would come to be known as The Miami River Cops, and it too would help cement Miami’s reputation as a very dangerous place.
Those were the high-flying days of Miami Vice, when Crockett and Tubbs took to the streets and the waterways in their pastel suits and busted every bad guy in sight. According to Wiki, Crockett, who lived on an Endeavour 42 sailboat named the “St. Vitus‘ Dance,” “pilots a 39 foot Chris Craft Stinger 390 in the first season, and a Wellcraft 38 Scarab KV for the remainder of the show.” Adding “the Scarab 38 KV was a 28-hued, twin 440-hp boat that sold for $130,000 in 1986.”
“As a result of the attention the Scarab 38 KV garnered on Miami Vice, Wellcraft received “an onslaught of orders”, increasing sales by 21 percent in one year. In appreciation, Wellcraft gave Don Johnson an exact duplicate of the boat. Afterward, Johnson was frequently seen arriving to work in it. Altogether, one hundred copies of the boat (dubbed the “Scarab 38KV Miami Vice Edition”) were built by Wellcraft. The Miami Vice graphics and color scheme, which included turquoise, aqua, and orchid, could have been ordered on any other Scarab from 20–38 feet.
Don Johnson also designed the Scarab Excel 43 ft, Don Johnson Signature Series (DJSS), and raced a similar one.”
“The Don Johnson Signature Series was powered by twin 650-hp Lamborghini V-12′s, which caused some problem to the design of the boat due to their size. Overall the boat cost $300,000 with each engine amounting to between $60–$70,000. His interest in boat racing eventually led Johnson to start his own Offshore powerboat racing team called Team USA. Joining him were Hollywood stars including Kurt Russell and Chuck Norris. Johnson won the Offshore World Cup in 1988 and continued racing into the 1990s.”
Long before Crockett and Tubbs and Aronow and his Cigarettes, a man named Murph the Surf plied the South Florida waterways, burglarizing the many mansions that dot our shores. Murph, born Jack Roland Murphy, got so good at stealing jewels, he eventually assembled a team and swiped the Star of India and the rest of the J.P. Morgan Collection of precious gems from New York’s American Museum of Natural History. That feat remains the biggest jewel heist in American history.
Unfortunately, Murph would move on to murder, and in 1968 he was convicted with killing a California secretary, who was one of two women pulled from The Whisky River up in Hollywood, Florida. Paroled in 1986 under a “lifetime monitoring” plan, Murph now spends his time visiting prisons as a minister.
Less bloody Florida stories include undercover cop Donnie Brasco entertaining mob kingpin Santo Trafficante on “The Left Hand,” which was the very same boat used in the FBI’s Abscam sting operation. According to lore (and Wiki), Benjamin “Lefty Guns” Ruggiero (the Sonny Black character player by Al Pacino) and Brasco were in a Miami Beach eatery when Ruggiero came across a photograph of the yacht in a Time magazine article about the Abscam scandal and recognized it as the same boat Brasco provided several months before for a party. Fortunately for Brasco, he convinced Ruggiero that he did not know the boat’s owner was related to the FBI.
Quick thinking and close calls aside, Miami has always had a thing about boats — and about boat shows, which is why so many firms use the Miami International Boat Show to launch their latest crazes. Among those making, er, waves over the last decade: the Marlow Prowler 375 Series (2005), the Viking 64′ Convertible and the Savannah 54 (both 2007).
Even Donzi, which is now based in Sarasota, continues to use Miami to launch its newest and nowest vessels, and in 2006, on the eve of outfitting the feature film version of Miami Vice (Donzi was the “Official Vee-Bottom Boat of the Miami Vice Movie”), the company unveiled its 27 ZR high performance craft, which was sleek enough and sexy enough and tough enough to help propel a record 56 orders that year. The take: a cool $12 million. And Donzi didn’t have to shoot anybody to do it either.
Category: HISTORY
