Two suspects can't dodge sixth sense

TAMPA UNCUFFED E-mail: Amy Herdy David Karp

© St. Petersburg Times
published January 17, 2002

It was around midnight Tuesday when Mike Simpson saw lots of flashing lights off the interstate near Sligh Avenue and decided to check it out.

Simpson, a 24-year veteran of the Tampa Police Department, had just finished running an errand at the 24-hour Wal-Mart and was in his personal car.

Along the way, he noticed two men walking across a parking lot on Sligh, and his sixth sense kicked in.

"I see these guys and immediately I knew they were related to what was going on," Simpson said. "They were doing what I call, 'the suspect shuffle,' " not walking together and checking nervously over their shoulders from time to time, trying too hard to appear casual.

As a marked unit pulled near, one of the suspects pulled his shirt off over his head. That gesture cinched it for Simpson.

"It's 48 degrees out in January, and this guy's taking his shirt off?" he said to himself.

Driving to the nearby search perimeter, which the men had already eluded, he found their description matched two suspects wanted for the beating and shooting of two officers minutes earlier. From his tip, Officers Scott MacLean and Mark Yost found the two suspects, a few yards from where Simpson said they would be.

"Police work is teamwork," he said.

ART IMITATING LIFE: Tuesday night's episode of CBS' Judging Amy may have struck a familiar chord with Tampa Bay viewers. One of the cases facing Family Court Judge Amy Gray (Amy Brenneman) involved two teenagers who were drinking before setting out on a spree to pull down road signs.

A prosecutor in Amy's court alleged that the pair had pulled down a stop sign at an intersection where an accident later occurred, leaving a driver in a coma. The teenagers admitted in court stealing some signs but initially denied having anything to do with taking down the stop sign.

The TV show mirrors Tampa's stop sign case, in which three friends went on a sign-stealing spree in rural Hillsborough. A missing stop sign from one intersection led to a fatal car crash that killed three 18-year-old friends cruising country roads.

"They took my story!" said defense attorney Joe Episcopo, who has been trying to sell a TV movie on the nationally known case.

But the TV show had one big difference from the real-life case: The Tampa stop sign defendants maintained their innocence throughout. The charges were eventually dropped, too.

Tuesday night's "Judging Amy" had one teenage defendant breaking down and admitting taking down the stop sign after the prosecutor announced the victim had died.

Luckily for Amy, the difficult case was then transferred to adult felony court. Former Hillsborough Circuit Judge Robert Mitcham, who presided over the Tampa stop sign case, might have wished for a similar fate.

OFF HIS LIST:More than 20 years ago, prosecutor Mark Ober tried a big case against Charles Norman, a former Tampa police officer charged with murder.

Norman hid inside a grocery store on Gandy Boulevard and waited for it to close, planning to steal drugs from the pharmacy.

After waiting a while, Norman broke out of the locked grocery store, drawing the attention of Steven Bluffstone, a security guard at the nearby Interbay Citizens Bank. Norman shot Bluffstone twice, killing him.

For some reason, Norman, the former cop, took a liking to Ober. After his conviction, he sent Ober a Christmas card.

"Merry Christmas from Raiford," Norman wrote. "Wish you were here."

Next Wednesday, Ober plans to urge the Florida Parole Commission to deny Norman's plea for parole, which means, presumably, he will get taken off Norman's Christmas list.

BACK IN THE BAY AREA A familiar face surfaced at the Hillsborough County Orient Road jail Wednesday -- the Rev. Henry Lyons. Yet no one, not even Lyons, seemed to know why he was there.

If you recall, Lyons is the former leader of the National Baptist Convention serving a 51/2-year sentence for racketeering and theft. He was found guilty of swindling $4-million from companies doing business with the convention, one of the country's largest black church organizations.

Wednesday afternoon, state and federal prosecutors said they had no idea why Lyons was being booked into the jail. Asked by a jail employee, Lyons said he did not know, and that he was trying to reach his attorney to find out. Lyons has been serving time at Polk Work Camp, a state Department of Corrections facility in Polk County.

-- Got a tip? Contact Amy Herdy at 226-3386 or herdy@sptimes.com, and David Karp at 226-3376 or karp@sptimes.com. Times staff writer Jeff Testerman contributed to this report.

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