Coast Guard Veteran Lost Wife After Irma, Gained Community Wide Family Afterwards

Community helps Naples veteran repair home
WXVN ABC 7 News
January 13, 2017

NAPLES, Fla. -

More than four months after Hurricane Irma, neighbors in Naples are banding together to help a veteran at risk of losing his home.

US Coast Guard vet Walter Landrum, who served for 28 years, was already down on his luck when the hurricane ravaged his property, and he wasn't able to clean it up.

"It's been a nightmare," he said. "But not as bad as some of the nightmares I've seen in the Coast Guard."

He knows things could always be worse, but it got pretty bad after Irma.

"A coconut hit the window, sounded like an explosion."

He wasn't able to clean up because he was caring for his wife, who suffered from congestive heart failure.

"I was with her every day for the last three years. So I'd start cleaning the lanai, and she'd be wracked with pain and terror, and I'd come back to her," he said.

She passed away right before Christmas, by which time his neighbors realized he needed help. 

read more here

Army Ranger Jujitsu Instructor Outed As Non-Deployed Carpenter?

Naples businessman, jujitsu instructor Bill Oliver falsely claimed to be an Army Ranger 
Naples Daily News
Ryan Mills
December 18, 2015

While he never served as a Ranger, Oliver did spend three years on active duty in the Army as a carpentry and masonry specialist, according to military documents on the Guardian of Valor site. He never saw combat and had no special training.

Over a decade's worth of lies are crashing down on Bill Oliver.

Since at least 2001, the Naples-area businessman and jujitsu instructor has passed himself off as something he's not: an Army Ranger and a member of the U.S. Special Forces.

He lied in the bio on his Naples Aiki Ju Jitsu website. He lied repeatedly on Facebook. He even lied in several newspaper articles, including a 2009 photo feature in the Naples Daily News.

Oliver's lies caught up to him Monday when the Guardian of Valor website, a national organization that shines a light on military impostors, exposed him. The six-month investigation has left Oliver reeling; he admits to the lies, but argues he didn't profit off them. He only lied, he said, because of deep-seated insecurity and a consuming fear of rejection.

"I just want it to be over," said Oliver, 54. "I've done wrong. I lied to everybody. I portrayed myself as that. The way I see it, I need to take my medicine. It's not easy. I've hurt a lot of people."
read more here
Linked from Stars and Stripes


From Guardian of Valor

"Oliver’s lies stretch back many years, the first of which we found in the State Newspaper out of Columbia, South Carolina. In this article he claims to have been an Army Ranger who is upset about the Black Beret being issued to all Soldiers. The Black Beret was traditionally worn by Army Rangers until 2001, when the Rangers switched to the Tan beret and the Black Beret was issued to all Soldiers.

In the article, from 2001, he is quoted as saying “It devalues, Symbolically, what the Rangers stand for. Rangers have done something extraordinary and are different.”"
click above for more on this and others

Naples woman killed in Arizona tried to flee domestic violence

Naples woman killed in Arizona tried to flee domestic violence, family says
By VICTORIA MACCHI, AISLING SWIFT
Posted December 15, 2011

Amanda Blaies-Rinaldi's family desperately tried to get her away from her abusive husband.

They encouraged the 28-year-old woman to move from Naples to Arizona, where they lived, to put distance between the couple.

"My mom has told her so many times to get away," said her sister Lea Miller, 35. "She kept on saying 'I love him.'"

On Tuesday night in Phoenix, Anthony Rinaldi, 26, shot his wife in their home, left their two sons alone and turned himself in to police.

"She is definitely dead," Rinaldi told an officer he flagged down, according to an arrest report. "I put two to the chest and one to the head."

The couple met in Naples 2½ years ago, where Blaies-Rinaldi grew up, her mother, Pamela Blaies of Arizona, said Thursday in a phone interview.

Blaies-Rinaldi and her twin brother Jonny Blaies attended Barron Collier High School. They left after their junior year to study cosmetology.

She and Anthony Rinaldi knew each other briefly when she became pregnant in 2009, her mother said. Three months later, they married in Naples while Rinaldi was on military leave from his duties as an Army sniper based in Germany.
read more here

Fatal stabbing suspect told police he suffers from PTSD

Report: Fatal stabbing suspect told police he suffers from post-traumatic stress
By SABINA BHASIN
Posted December 8, 2011

NAPLES — A 37-year-old man charged in an October fatal stabbing in Naples told detectives he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from his service in the U.S. Army.

John Orr is charged with second-degree murder in the Oct. 2 death of Jon Wayne Joseph, 63, in the city’s Lake Park neighborhood.

Orr told Naples police, in an interview after the killing, the stress disorder is the result of a sexual assault from his time as an Army soldier in Central America in the 1990s, according to new case documents released this week by the State Attorney’s Office.

Orr’s close friend, Aimee Wolfe, portrayed him as a “walking time bomb” suffering from extreme anxiety. Orr’s father, Joseph Orr, 72, told police his son recently completed a rehabilitation program for the stress disorder, as he had many times before.
read more here

Florida dad admits killings to reporters, blames crime on 'spirit'

Dad admits killings to reporters, blames crime on 'spirit'
Story Highlights
NEW: Warrant indicated victims were stabbed, throats slashed, paper reports

NEW: Mesac Damas admits killings, tells reporter he wants to be executed

NEW: He blames the crime on his mother-in-law's "spirit"

Damas, 32, faces murder charges in the deaths of his wife and five children

(CNN) -- A Florida man admitted to reporters that he killed his wife and five "innocent" children, adding that he wants to be executed "right away" so he can be buried with them on Saturday.

Mesac Damas, 32, said he wanted to take his own life, but did not have the courage to go through with it, "because if you kill yourself, you're not going to heaven."

Damas made the statements to a Naples Daily News reporter as he was being led into a Haitian police vehicle in Port-au-Prince. Damas was returned to the United States late Tuesday following his capture in Haiti.
read more here
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/23/florida.family.dead/index.html

Naples family of six found dead

Update
Man sought whose wife, 5 children killed
Florida authorities were searching Sunday for a 33-year-old man after his wife and five children were found dead in their Naples, Florida, home. "I can tell you that in no uncertain terms this is the most horrific and violent event this community has ever experienced," Collier County Sheriff Kevin Rambosk said. full story

Naples family of six found dead
Posted: Sep 20, 2009 12:55 AM EDT
Updated: Sep 20, 2009 9:25 AM EDT

Mesac Damas
A neighbor provided this photo of one of Damas' children, which was posted on his Facebook page.
The crime happened in the Stratford Place community
A man wanted for questioning in the slaying of his wife and five children in North Naples has fled to Haiti, according to his father.

In an interview with the Naples Daily News, the man's father said Mesac Damas called his brother from Haiti, though he did not say when.

Detectives found the bodies of Mesac Damas' family at 864 Hampton Circle around 6:30 p.m. while conducting a welfare check.

Jim Williams, chief investigator with the Collier County Sheriff's Office, talked to the Naples Daily News at the scene.

He told them Damas' sister-in-law contacted authorities after she hadn't heard from her sister.

"When the officer walked in the house to do a check, he found a deceased person," Williams told the Naples Daily News. "As he walked through the house to see if anyone else was inside, he found other persons deceased."

The bodies were still in the home as of early Sunday morning.

Williams also told the Naples Daily News that reports that the family members were shot were erroneous, but he wouldn't elaborate on a cause of death.

Investigators continue to walk in and out of the home in white scrubs or "clean suits." They removed several brown bags of evidence around 4:15 a.m.
read more here
http://www.abc-7.com/global/story.asp?s=11163098
linked from CNN