Dr. Josef Mengele : “The Angel Of Death” - Police News

From the Frying Pan Into the Fire:
A Perspective of a Former FBI Agent Now Practicing
Personal Injury Law
POLICE NEWS
After 25 years as a Special Agent in the Federal Bureau of Investigation I honestly believed I knew it all.
Having earned a Juris Doctor Degree from Nova University Center for the Study of Law and passing the Florida
Bar Exam, I had entered “The Bureau” as a lawyer.
In the back of my mind I always knew I would someday practice law, but my time in the FBI never prepared
me for what came next when I signed on as a partner in the Law Offices of Kaplan & Sconzo, PA in Palm
Beach Gardens, Florida. On the first day after retiring, I signed up two personal injury cases, a slip and fall and
an automobile accident, and that is when I learned that there was life outside “The Bureavu” and the education
process began.
Stuart Kaplan, also a former Special Agent with the FBI, and I left the confines of our well-decorated
office and set out to meet two new clients. What came next was truly a sight for sore eyes. Stuart parked his wellmaintained
car in a dirt parking lot in front of a row of one story, run down apartments in Lake Worth. The
neighborhood was one that I had fearlessly visited during my FBI days; carrying a shoulder weapon, a side arm,
and wearing a bullet proof vest. Back then, I entered places like this with an arrest warrant, and now I was there
to represent a man who had sustained a serious injury because his landlord failed to maintain the property in a
safe manner.
We walked up two cracked concrete steps, opened an aluminum door that was missing its screens, and
knocked on the rotting door. A loud, steady stream of barking followed our knock, and then the door was
slightly opened by a man who was in his thirties, but looked at least 25 years older. We identified ourselves
as the lawyers he had called earlier that morning and he invited us inside. As he did so he yelled for his dog
to “shut up” and then opened the door wide to allow us to follow him in. Once inside, in full view was a large
brown Pit bull, occupying the only place to sit in the front room of the apartment. The dog stared and growled
as the man began to detail the events that led us to his door. The man was a mess; clothes hanging off him, hair
unkempt, and barely standing erect. Stuart and I stood close to the door taking notes, just in case the dog came
toward us.
The man then led us through his run down and mostly unfurnished apartment to the bathroom. There
was no door, and the floor had a gaping, jagged hole in front of the shower. He described how he was walking to
the shower and the floor gave way causing him to fall about three feet down to the dirt below. He recounted being
stuck waist deep in the floor until a friend came to help him up. He showed us the bruising on his side and
back, and explained how intense the pain in his knee and back has been since the fall.
After photographing the scene and sizing up the man and everything involved in this accident, Stuart
and I signed on as his attorneys. We left shaking our heads and discussing whether the man had invited such an
accident just by living in such a dump.
The next stop was Starbucks in Wellington. As we drove west on Forest Hill Blvd, one can only envision the
smiles on our faces as the neighborhoods changed. We walked inside Starbucks, took turns washing our hands,
ordered Cappuccinos, and then sat on two chairs waiting for a female Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Deputy to
meet with us. Shortly thereafter, a very neatly dressed, attractive woman in her forties, entered Starbucks and
walked toward our table.
Continued on pg . 28
August / September 2012 | www.police-news.us | Police News 27