National Roundup

Florida
Art museum sues former director over forged Basquiat paintings scheme
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A central Florida art museum which was raided last year by the FBI over an exhibit of what turned out to be forged Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings has sued its former executive director and others, claiming they were part of a scheme to profit from the eventual sale of the fake artwork.

The Orlando Museum of Art filed the lawsuit Monday in state court against former CEO Aaron De Groft and others whom the museum says were involved in the scheme, seeking undisclosed damages for fraud, breach of contract and conspiracy.

The 99-year-old museum, also referred to as OMA, was left with a tattered reputation that resulted in its being put on probation by the American Alliance of Museums, the lawsuit said.

“OMA spent hundreds of thousands of dollars — and unwittingly staked its reputation — on exhibiting the now admittedly fake paintings,” the lawsuit said. “Consequently, cleaning up the aftermath created by the defendants has cost OMA even more.”

Basquiat, who lived and worked in New York City, found success in the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. The Orlando Museum of Art was the first institution to display the more than two dozen artworks said to have been found in an old storage locker decades after Basquiat’s 1988 death from a drug overdose at age 27.

Questions about the artworks’ authenticity arose almost immediately after their reported discovery in 2012. The artwork was purportedly made in 1982, but experts have pointed out that the cardboard used in at least one of the pieces included FedEx typeface that wasn’t used until 1994, about six years after Basquiat died, according to the federal warrant from the museum raid.

Also, television writer Thad Mumford, the owner of the storage locker where the art was eventually found, told investigators that he had never owned any Basquiat art and that the pieces were not in the unit the last time he had visited. Mumford died in 2018.

In April, former Los Angeles auctioneer Michael Barzman agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of making false statements to the FBI, admitting that he and an accomplice had created the fake artwork and falsely attributed the paintings to Basquiat.
De Groft had repeatedly insisted that the art was legitimate at the time of the exhibit last year. The court docket in Orlando didn’t list an attorney for De Groft.

Maine
Father sentenced for death of 1-year-old son
DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine (AP) — A father who’d faced a series of domestic violence charges was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the death of his 1-year-old son in a case that renewed criticism of Maine’s child welfare agency.

Reginald Melvin, 30, of Milo, was sentenced Wednesday after entering a plea that had a similar consequence to a guilty plea to a charge of manslaughter. Under an agreement, prosecutors dropped a murder charge. His son, Sylus, died in August 2021 from blunt force trauma that left him with multiple internal injuries, according to the state medical examiner.

Sylus’ mother, Desiree Newbert, said she reported to the Department of Health and Human Services that Melvin threatened to kill the family including her, Sylus, and her daughter. But that a caseworker never returned her call or visited the family. Melvin had been previously charged multiple times with domestic violence.

Former state Sen. Bill Diamond accused the agency of “leaving vulnerable children in dangerous situations despite repeated warnings by family members and others that children are not safe.” The family had six different caseworkers after Sylus’ birth, and none of them compared notes with each other, Diamond said.

The infant’s death was one of several dozen flagged by the Office of Children and Family Services, part of the Maine DHHS. A spokesperson didn’t immediately return a message from The Associated Press.

Massachusetts
After more than 30 years, justice for 17-year-old girl shot to death
WOBURN, Mass. (AP) — It took more than three decades, but the 1991 death of a 17-year-old Massachusetts girl found shot in the head on the fire escape of her foster family’s home has come to a close with the conviction of a Georgia man.

Rodney Daniels, 50, was found guilty on Wednesday in Middlesex Superior Court of first-degree murder in the slaying of Patricia Moreno in Mal­den on July 20, 1991, according to the office of Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan.

Daniels at the time dated the oldest daughter of Moreno’s foster mother and was staying in the home on the night of the killing, authorities said. Although the original investigation found that Daniels had been in possession of multiple handguns around the time of the killing and had “engaged in threatening behavior toward the victim,” he was not charged.

He was arrested at his South Fulton, Georgia home in September 2021 based on new information collected by the district attorney’s cold case unit.

“When a family loses a loved one in a homicide, even the passage of time never fully heals that wound,” Ryan said in a statement. “That is especially true when they do not have answers about what happened and no one has been held accountable.
Those who knew and loved Tricia have been waiting over three decades for answers.”

As part of its investigation, the cold case unit interviewed a man who lived on a lower floor of the building who said on the night of the slaying he saw a young woman on the fire escape struggling to breathe with a man fitting Daniels’ description standing over her, who then went back into the apartment.

Investigators also developed new information that a now-deceased woman who in 1991 had lied to police to protect Daniels later admitted to friends and family members that he had killed Moreno and disposed of the gun.

“The team that worked in this case was not deterred by the passage of time and used every tool at their disposal to root out new information critical to this successful prosecution,” Ryan said.

Moreno was found by police and emergency medical personnel on the building’s third-floor fire escape still breathing with a single gunshot wound to the head.

She was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she died.

Daniels told police he was sleeping in an armchair in the living room when he was awakened by the sound of two gunshots, and found Moreno on the fire escape.

He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.