Witness: Real estate deal involved a pot full of cash

In an Escambia bribery trial, a suspended official says an ex-state senator gave him money for his vote on a real estate buy.

©Associated Press
December 4, 2002

SHALIMAR -- A suspended Escambia County commissioner testified Tuesday that another commissioner, former Florida Senate President W.D. Childers, gave him a cooking pot filled with money after he voted for a real estate purchase.

Willie Junior's testimony against Pensacola real estate salesman Joe Elliott was a preview of Childers' trial on bribery and related charges set for March 31.

Junior will return to the witness stand today at Elliott's trial on charges of money laundering, racketeering and bribing Junior and Childers to vote for the county's purchase of a defunct soccer complex in Pensacola for $3.9-million.

Junior said Elliott handed him a package with $10,000 inside when they met at the complex before the 3-2 vote.

"I didn't look at it and I didn't count it there," Junior testified. "I did it at home."

Some time after the vote on Nov. 1, 2001, Junior said, Childers invited him to his district office and gave him a stainless steel cooking pot.

"It had money in it," Junior told the jury.

Junior did not say how much was in the pot, but earlier had told prosecutors it was between $80,000 and $90,000.

In other testimony Tuesday, a former commissioner's ex-wife testified that Elliott told her a day before the vote he would have to bribe a commissioner to sell the soccer complex.

Testifying under immunity, Mimi Bass broke into tears while admitting she knew something illegal would occur. Childers, Junior and her former husband, Mike Bass, voted for the purchase.

Mimi Bass, a real estate broker, said Childers had proposed that she help Elliott with the deal. She said Elliott hired her to make a presentation to the board but she never got the chance. Elliott told her a day before the vote that it would be unnecessary, she testified.

Elliott then told her an unnamed commissioner had called him and that he was going to "have to pay off the commissioner before the vote," Mimi Bass said.

"I asked him how much," she said. "He said, 'Figure it out for yourself,' and used the term, 'Prince of Darkness.' "

She said she learned much later that a commentator on a Pensacola cable television station had used that term for Junior.

Junior has pleaded no contest to bribery and other charges and agreed to testify against Childers, Elliott and Elliott's wife, Georgann, whose trial has been delayed. In exchange, Junior has been promised he will spend no more than 18 months in prison.

Gov. Jeb Bush suspended Childers, Junior, Mike Bass and a fourth Escambia commissioner, Terry Smith, after they were indicted on various corruption charges.

Childers already has been convicted on one count of violating the state's open government Sunshine Law by discussing public business in private with Smith and pleaded no contest to another.

Smith was convicted on two Sunshine Law counts. He has been fined and ordered to do community service.

Mike Bass, whose term as a commissioner expired last month, pleaded no contest to sunshine violations and the state dropped bribery and other felony counts.

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