Now he’s 17 and about to find out how much of his life will be spent in prison.

Berger-Smith quietly pleaded no contest on June 12 to five criminal charges, including sexual battery and kidnapping, a charge that would land an adult in prison for life. The plea came with no promise of leniency. Prosecutors are going to ask for a 30-year sentence followed by lifetime sex offender probation, said State Attorney’s Office spokesman Aaron Savitski.

Broward Circuit Judge Peter Holden is scheduled to decide Berger-Smith’s fate at a hearing Friday.

Minors cannot be sentenced to life without parole in Florida for any offense other than murder, and appeals courts are frequently asked to weigh in on whether judges went too far when imposing prison terms on teenagers.

Defense lawyer James Lewis said this week he’s not expecting a slap on the wrist for his client.

Prosecutors announced in August 2022, two months after the crime was committed, that Berger-Smith would be charged as an adult, citing the severity of the crime. According to police reports, Berger-Smith told the victim he wanted to add her to his “collection,” that he had AIDS and that he was looking to impregnate her.

There has been no indication that the defendant actually had AIDS or HIV, the virus that causes the fatal disease.

In a motion seeking leniency, Lewis said his client was too young at the time of the offense to fully appreciate how wrong it was.

“Numerous scientific studies demonstrate that a 14-year-old brain is not fully developed, which is a primary reason why we have a juvenile justice system,” he wrote.

The victim will have the opportunity to make a statement before Holden imposes his sentence.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.

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But prosecutor William Sinclair told jurors Wednesday that Palmer, 63, died shortly after 3 p.m. that April 13, a conclusion drawn not from expert medical testimony but from a handy piece of technology — the smartwatch on the victim’s wrist.

Palmer’s watch showed her heart beating regularly until there was a sudden spike in her heart rate, followed almost immediately by nothing, Sinclair said. And phone records show she was not alone. Her husband, Patrick Palmer, was with her.

Jurors began deliberations Wednesday in Patrick Palmer’s first-degree murder trial. If convicted, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

The defendant, 57, originally told police that he shot his wife during an argument about his continued drug use — she had threatened to leave him if he relapsed again.

On the stand this week, he retracted his confession and said he could not specifically remember the circumstances surrounding his wife’s shooting.

The victim was shot twice in the head. The first shot did not penetrate the skull, according to trial testimony.

Palmer admitted his drug addiction and the argument with his wife, but defense lawyer Dione Trawick told the jury that he was incapacitated by drug use and blood loss after a suicide attempt when he gave his first statement to police.

“He was on a binge,” Trawick said. “He told you that. He doesn’t know what happened, but that doesn’t mean he killed his wife. He doesn’t know because he doesn’t remember because he was on a binge.”

Palmer had no financial motive to kill his wife because they were married and legally co-owners of their Pompano Beach home and the Chit Chat’s business, she said.

Sinclair scoffed at her account and the notion that someone else, perhaps Patrick Palmer’s drug supplier, could have committed the murder. There was too much cash lying around in the house, thousands of dollars that would certainly have been stolen if someone other than the defendant committed the murder, Sinclair said.

“So a drug dealer went into this home, loaded with cash, and didn’t take a dime?” he asked incredulously. “And killed her with a gun that was already in the home?”

Patrick Palmer used his wife’s phone to send phony messages to her friends to fool them into believing she was still alive after April 13, 2018, Sinclair said. But worried friends asked the Broward Sheriff’s Office to conduct a wellness check on April 17. It was then that the body was discovered. Patrick Palmer was found lying face down on his bed, his wrists slashed, holding a wooden heart that read, “Pat and Sherry Forever Soulmates.”

Jurors deliberated for about 90 minutes on Wednesday and will return Thursday.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. 

The murder of Tabares was shocked her friends and family because it happened suddenly and apparently without motive. Serrano, 55, and Tabares, 21, were fellow members of a Broward gym who were out partying with friends in November 2019 at a World of Beer pub in Coconut Creek.

Jurors learned during the June trial that Serrano and Tabares were seen leaving together in Tabares’ car. The following morning, police were at Serrano’s home in Coral Springs trying to determine why Tabares was lying in her driveway, half in and out of her car, with a gunshot wound to her head.

Police questioned Serrano about the shooting, but she gave them conflicting stories, first denying that she even knew the victim and later admitting they were friends. The murder weapon was in Serrano’s bedroom.

Second-degree murder carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, but Broward Circuit Judge Barbara Duffy could have imposed a lesser sentence if she determined it was warranted. She did not.

The victim’s mother, Isabel Tavares, told Duffy she would never recover from her daughter’s death.

“The day this woman took my daughter’s life, she took my whole life with her, because she was my all,” she said in court.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457. 

All of them had human remains inside.

Sunshine State Sonar, a team of volunteer divers known for solving missing persons cases across Florida, visited Broward County over the last few weeks to search for the remains of a missing mother and child, inadvertently locating two other cars owned by people missing from the area for years.

On Saturday, the team says they successfully found what they were looking for: the remains of Doris Wurst and her 3-year-old daughter, Caren, reported missing from Plantation in November 1974. But in the process, they uncovered cars linked to the missing persons cases of Bernie Novick, an 83-year-old World War II veteran, and Eduardo Graterol, 31, who never came home from a party at a friend’s house.

Volunteer dive teams like Sunshine State Sonar are not new to the area, though the sheer number of finds in a matter of weeks has made local headlines. Together, divers located hundreds of cars and at least six missing people in Florida over the course of 2023 alone.

“There’s like a thousand cars in water in Miami-Dade and Broward,” Mike Sullivan, one of the founders of Sunshine State Sonar, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday.

The blue Honda Civic

The first find came in late July: Sunshine State Sonar was looking for Wurst and her daughter, and assisting in a search for a missing Fort Lauderdale woman with Alzheimer’s disease, when they found a submerged vehicle in a retention pond along southbound Interstate 75 at the Miramar Parkway exit in Miramar on July 30.

The Florida Highway Patrol hasn’t confirmed it, but the company said the car was a blue 2011 Honda Civic that, when last seen, was being driven by Eduardo Paul Graterol, who was reported missing by the Pembroke Pines Police Department in 2018.

He had been missing since Oct. 21, 2018 from his home in Pembroke Pines. He was last seen at a party in Fort Lauderdale.

The body in the submerged vehicle has not been positively identified, the Florida Highway Patrol said in a news release. DNA results are pending, as is the cause of the crash that caused the car to end up underwater.

The 1999 Buick LeSabre

The second find came last weekend.

Bernie Novick was 83 years old when he left his wife of 55 years in their Plantation condo and never returned. On Monday, the same Plantation Police detective who had searched for him back in 2004 called Novick’s family, his son said: Novick’s silver 1999 Buick LeSabre had been found in a lake not too far away from where he lived.

“It was a very emotional situation,” Novick’s youngest son, Joey, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday.

Bernie Novick grew up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, his son said, before World War II broke out. He was drafted at age 20 and served in the artillery unit, stationed in North Africa, Italy and France. Later, he liked to joke to his family that he had the highest rank in the military and personally helped Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill win the war. As a kid, Joey Novick believed him.

Yet it was not war but the pain Bernie Novick felt towards the end of his life that became unmanageable, his son said. He had begun suffering from spinal degeneration and had to use a walker. Joey Novick recalled visiting Florida from his home in New Jersey to help his mother take care of his father, bringing him food and taking him to see doctors. In July 2004, shortly after Joey Novick returned to New Jersey, he got a call from his mother: his father had disappeared.

He flew back. For three weeks, they looked for any sign of Novick. Divers with the Plantation Fire Department searched nearby bodies of water. A few TV stations ran his picture, but nothing turned up. For the next 20 years, Joey Novick surmised that his father had died by suicide.

“At the time I thought what had happened was he decided that the pain was too much and decided to take his own life, possibly,” he said. “And I sort of moved on.”

Plantation Police wrote in a release that the man had “numerous health issues” and his wife said he suffered from depression.

Five years after Bernie Novick disappeared, the family was able to declare him legally dead. They gathered in Florida and sat Shiva for him, telling stories over a big meal at a local diner, the kind of thing Novick loved to do when he was alive.

“The only thing missing at that dinner was my dad,” Joey Novick recalled.

The ceremony brought his family as much closure as they could get. Joey Novick’s mother, who went on living alone in the Plantation condo, died in 2012, eight years after her husband disappeared.

Then, this past Saturday, divers with Sunshine State Sonar went to Plantation. But they weren’t looking for Novick. They were looking for Wurst and her 3-year-old daughter when they happened to locate another car in a nearby lake at 10151 SW First St. about an hour before.

“We knew it wasn’t gonna be Doris and Karen, so we left it behind,” said Sullivan, the co-founder of the diving team. “We had every intention of diving it, just not at that moment.”

They thought it might just be a stolen car. It was not. On Sunday, detectives with the Plantation Police Department met with Broward Sheriff’s Office divers, who pulled Novick’s 1999 Buick from the lake.

Even though family members were notified about the find, Detective Robert Rettig, a spokesperson for the police department, declined to provide a name because police still have to officially identify the remains using DNA or dental records.

“Within all likelihood this is going to be him,” Rettig said. “It’s his car and the remains are consistent. However, we aren’t going to verify that because we need to do our due diligence.”

In addition to missing people, Sunshine State Sonar divers have located a cement mixer in a lake in Deerfield Beach and a U-Haul truck in Lauderdale Lakes; with no people to identify, the stories behind them are even more of a mystery. Sullivan wonders if they’re kids sending them into the water for fun or associated with more serious crimes. His team has since left the area. But in about a month, they’ll be back to help dredge up more cars.

Just Tuesday afternoon, about 2:30 p.m., another car was found in a canal near 8400 W. Oakland Park Blvd. in Sunrise, police say. There was a body inside.

Sullivan said his team was not behind the discovery.

“At this time, the identity of the deceased, the vehicle description, and the cause of death are being investigated,” said Victor Fortune, a spokesperson for Sunrise Police. “More information will be provided as it becomes available.”

Michael Dingman, 54, was sentenced to four years’ probation that will be suspended after two years as long as he does not violate the terms of the plea, said his lawyer, Fred Haddad. Dingman also received a withhold of adjudication, which means he could emerge from his probation sentence without a criminal record.

Dingman now works as a dive instructor based out of Coral Springs.

TMZ, the gossip news site notorious for breaking and aggressively covering numerous high-profile crime stories, ran the footage obtained from Dingman in January 2017, days after Esteban Santiago-Ruiz shot and killed five people and injured six others. Dingman was accused of secretly recording video footage on his phone and sending it to the website.

Santiago-Ruiz pled guilty and was sentenced to life in prison in 2018.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.

The woman, Sophie Hall, is a social media influencer and Only Fans model who visited Hill at his home in June 2023, according to the lawsuit she filed earlier this year. She alleges that Hill became flustered when she bested him during scrimmages and retaliated “violently and with great force,” causing her injury.

Only Fans is a social media outlet in which models interact with subscribers who often pay for access to their risque or revealing content.

Broward Circuit Judge David Haimes scheduled a hearing date for Oct. 24, 2025, with a trial to start the following month.

Hill recently restructured his contract with the Miami Dolphins through 2026 in a deal worth $90 million, including $65 million guaranteed.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.

Justin Edmond, 16, sat in the jury box in front of Broward Circuit Judge Ernest Kollra last week, listening to his lawyer ask for bail to be set in his vehicular homicide case, in which Edmond was charged as an adult. But the May 10 crash that ended the life of Patricia Ann Schmelz on Copans Road near Interstate 95 was only the end of the lurid chain of events that led to the arrest of Edmond and five of his friends.

The night of mayhem has Edmond being held without bail, with at least one co-defendant facing a life sentence. Accounts of what happened have raised questions in court about the credibility of both the carjacking victim and the teenage girl who told investigators she had sex with him.

According to police reports and accounts related in court, the carjacking victim was Rider Prospere, 25, a Lauderdale Lakes man who told police that he knew the girl because she was “referred by a friend.” He said he was parked in his grey 2016 Dodge Charger with the girl in his passenger seat when they were interrupted by five young men, four of whom were under age 20.

The defendants pointed at least one gun at Prospere and ordered him to remove his clothing, according to the initial police report. The girl later told investigators she’d already had sex with the victim before they arrived, according to testimony at a hearing last month.

Defense lawyer Jim Lewis, representing Edmond, told Kollra the carjacking victim should be charged with sexual contact with a minor. Prosecutors haven’t charged him with anything, and even Lewis said it will be a challenge to convince a jury on the word of someone who admitted involvement in the carjacking plot.

As Prospere undressed, he was kicked repeatedly and struck in the face with the butt of “multiple firearms,” according to the police report. When the group left with his car, Prospere found someone in the neighborhood to help him call 911 and report the car stolen.

Police found the vehicle within minutes less than a mile away, but when they tried to pull it over, it sped away and onto northbound Interstate 95.

With police in pursuit, the car reached speeds of up to 135 mph, Judge Kollra said while summarizing the facts of the case. Police believe Edmond, who does not have a driver’s license, was at the wheel.

The chase ended when the Charger got onto Copans Road, ran a red light and crashed into a 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe. The first police at the scene believed the Hyundai driver, Schmelz, died on impact. But about 10 minutes later, other officers realized she was alive and began efforts to keep her stable.

In addition to Edmond, police arrested: Cody Clark, 20; Cameran Wright, who turned 18 two months after the carjacking; Jamari James Peacock, 17; and Jermaine Walker, 17. All have been charged as adults with carjacking and other crimes, but only Edmond (as the driver) is facing charges related to Schmelz’s death and the high-speed chase.

The 14-year-old girl turned 15 in early July and has been charged criminally as a juvenile. The Sun Sentinel is withholding her name because of her age and the sexual nature of her alleged participation in the carjacking plot.

Efforts to reach Rospere this week for comment were unsuccessful.

Bail has been set for all the male defendants except Edmond. His lawyer, Jim Lewis, asked Kollra to grant bail last week, arguing that the second victim may have survived the crash if medical assistance had been summoned sooner.

“The delay in calling paramedics and working on her could have contributed to her death,” he said.

But Kollra was unimpressed with the argument and said he would have denied bail even if Schmelz had survived.

“I made a finding that he was a danger to the community because he was driving a car at 135 miles per hour,” he said. “Whether the woman died — I wish she had lived — would not have affected my ruling.”

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.

Court records show Michael Shapiro, 73, left three messages at Swalwell’s Washington, D.C. office, one saying “I’m gonna come after you and kill you.”

In another message, Shapiro said, “I’m gonna come and kill your children you mother-[expletive]. I’m gonna kill your children.”

Swalwell ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2019 and 2020.

U.S. District Judge David S. Leibowitz imposed the two-year sentence on Shapiro on Wednesday.

Shapiro was arrested in January and pled guilty in May to the indictment charging him with transmitting threatening communications.

“There is no place in America for threats of political violence,” Swalwell said in a statement earlier this year, when Shapiro was arrested. “We must always resolve our differences at the ballot box.”

Trump was the target of an apparent assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July, while former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband survived a violent attack at his California home in 2022. Trump’s shooter was killed, while Pelosi’s attacker was captured and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.

Erik Hadad, 58, of Aventura, had a handgun tucked in his waistband when he followed Schneider Jean Louis from Jean Louis’ home in Miami Shores to a Tri-Rail station parking lot at 3797 NW 21st Ave. in Miami on Dec. 19, 2023.

According to records filed in federal court, Jean Louis, 25, had made two payments on his silver 2020 Honda Accord, but both payments bounced, and the lender authorized the car dealer, Guru Auto Sales, to repossess the vehicle.

Guru, located on South State Road 7 in Miramar, is owned by Yarin Hadad, Erik Hadad’s son. The loan had an interest rate of 24.58%.

Jean Louis initially told police he did not know the elder Hadad or why he was being followed, according to police reports. At one point on the journey south, both cars stopped at a red light and Hadad got out to try to talk to Jean Louis, removing the vehicle’s paper temporary tag.

Jean Louis drove away and went to the parking lot, where Hadad caught up with him again. The first police reports indicate that Hadad showed Jean Louis his gun and ordered him out of the vehicle, snatched the keys and drove off in the Honda, leaving his own black BMW behind. Hadad brought the Honda to his son, who showed up in the same parking lot, according to the initial police report.

That first account of the incident left out many details that came to light as the investigation continued, including the bounced checks and the loan agreement between Jean Louis and Guru, according to court records. That agreement, signed in October 2023, authorized repossession if the buyer defaulted within the first 60 days of the loan.

Defense lawyer Russell Williams, who represents the elder Hadad, said his client identified himself to Jean Louis and never intentionally displayed his gun. According to Williams’ account in a motion to dismiss the federal case, Jean Louis didn’t even see the gun until after he voluntarily surrendered the key. Hadad removed Jean Louis’ other keys from the ring and took only the car key, Williams said.

Hadad’s son knew where to find his father because they were talking by cellphone during the drive from Miami Shores. When the Hadads had control of the repossessed car, they remained at the scene. Williams said they were waiting for a tow truck to take the Honda back to Miramar when Jean Louis called the bank that financed the loan, Guru Auto, a friend, and finally 911.

Police tried to question the Hadads, who declined to answer them, according to records. They were arrested and charged with armed carjacking by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.

Those charges were dropped two weeks ago after Jean Louis was questioned in a deposition. In that sworn statement, Jean Louis acknowledged ignoring repeated attempts by the dealership to contact him about the missed payments. He also said he did not know the car was being repossessed, despite the fact he called the bank and the dealership before calling police.

But federal carjacking and gun possession charges were filed against the elder Hadad in the spring.

“I think the government is trying to criminalize conduct that is not criminal. There was no intent to steal the car. They owned the car!” said Williams, whose account of the incident draws largely from Jean Louis’ deposition.

The car is still in Jean Louis’ possession, and no payments have been made, Williams said.

“Law enforcement is facilitating the theft of this vehicle from my client,” Williams said. “I just can’t get the prosecutor to see it that way.”

Federal prosecutors say the charges against Hadad are still valid and they intend to proceed with the case, according to court records. The trial is scheduled to start in October.

Attempts to reach Jean Louis were not successful on Tuesday.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.

Daniel Doyle, 64, was sentenced to die in 1981 for the murder of Pamela Kipp, who lived with her parents in Miramar. Questions were repeatedly raised by defense and mental health experts about Doyle’s mental capacity.

One testified that he had the mental age of a 6-year-old when he was in his 30s. His IQ was 58, well below normal for an adult.

A Broward judge granted a hearing on the mental health issues in 2020, and the Broward State Attorney’s Office determined after reviewing the case that the defense argument was a reasonable one.

“The prosecution and defense reached a lengthy legal agreement that all parties, including the victim Pamela Kipp’s dad, agreed was the best resolution to keep the conviction intact and ensure that Doyle would spend the rest of his life in prison without any chance of being released,” said Broward State Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Paula McMahon.

Former State Attorney Michael J. Satz and current State Attorney Harold F. Pryor both approved the way the appeal was handled by prosecutors, she said. No public announcements were made about the case and resentencing.

Under the agreement, Doyle will not get credit for the 41.5 years he has served. He will also gave up the right to appeal the conviction. 

Doyle was resentenced to life in prison by Broward Circuit Judge Edward Merrigan in March 2023.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4457.