F9 Pilot Arrested

[Flex81]

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4747960,00.html

This is pretty crazy

 

[learflyer]

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4747960,00.html

This is pretty crazy

Dang, and I got grilled about speeding tickets at some of my interviews.

 

[coogebeachhotel]

Brings back memories of woodchipper EAL guy

 

[Ty Webb]

The "Chipper Skipper"!

Somewhere, right now, someone is flipping through the list, saying, "was he senior to me?"



.


.

 

[Rick James]

Somewhere, right now, someone is flipping through the list, saying, "was he senior to me?"



.


.

Funny and true!

 

[8vATE]

If the math is right, this guy was 15 during the shooting?

That's messed up.

 

[Phaedrus]

He would've been 20. He's 41, it happened 21 years ago.

 

[FN FAL]

Details on the victim, from the Yuma Sun. Sounds like he was a real good guy...

http://sun.yumasun.com/artman/publish/print/printer_24643.php

Yuma man rubbed elbows with Bogart, Hayworth
BY MARK RANDALL, SUN STAFF WRITER
Jun 3, 2006


Toni Ferrara always thought her brother Jimmy was the handsomest man in the world.

All of her girlfriends used to tell her what a "doll" he was.

"He was gorgeous," Toni said. "He was so good looking. He was class personified."

Those good looks took him all the way to Hollywood where he had bit parts in films in the 1940s under the screen name Craig Lawrence.

Jimmy Ferrara shared screen time with such Hollywood luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, Roy Rogers and “Wild” Bill Elliott, and counted Jane Russell and Rita Hayworth among his friends. In fact, Hayworth once snuck a bottle of bourbon into his jail cell after he got thrown in the brig for hitting an officer.

Lou Costello, of the famous comedy duo Abbott and Costello, even paid for Jimmy's wedding when he married his first wife Kathleen, a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies.

"He was just one of the sweetest men in the whole wide world," Toni said.

Only four years apart in age, she was very close to her brother.

She remembers visiting him on his Nevada Ranch — the TWT which stood for Tomorrow Will Tell — where he raised quarter horses.

One of the horses had just had a foal and she watched the young horse prance around.

"I named it Misconduct," Toni said. "He used to always tell me I walked like a quarter horse. I never knew if that was an insult or a compliment."

Jimmy was always very personable, too.

She spotted him in Reno once where he liked to gamble but was stopped by a security guard as she approached his table.

The guard told her she couldn't go in because it was a private table.

"He turned around and saw me and said, ‘It's OK. That's my sister,’ ” she said. "He gave me a great big hug and said, ‘Now go away.’ " For years, she wore around her neck the $20 gold piece Jimmy gave her to remember him by.

He always chided her about it because it was kept in a plastic case and would never let her open it.

"He would always say, ‘Don't touch it,’ " Toni said. "And I would say, ‘Why?’ He would say,
‘Because it is uncirculated.’ ”

Thoughts of her brother came back into focus for the 80 year-old this week after almost 21 years.

This week, Yuma Police announced that they arrested three individuals believed to be
responsible for his murder in September 1985.

Jimmy was found shot to death in the hallway of his Dora Avenue home.

The case remained unsolved until fresh leads led investigators to a break in the case.

Among those arrested are Jimmy's then-wife, Delma Lee Ferrara-Troy, and two former Marines who were stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma.

While details of the murder are still under wraps pending extradition of two of the suspects to Yuma, court documents paint a picture of a killing-for-hire.

Pam Denman, Jimmy's niece, was relieved when she heard the news that those suspected in her uncle's death had finally been apprehended.

Though painful to have to relive the murder, Denman said she's convinced police got the people
who did it.

"I know they got the right people," Denman said. "I am very thankful they got her (Delma) more than anything."

Like Toni, Denman adored her uncle.

"I loved him very much," Denman said. "He was always an icon to me. I just worshiped him."

Jimmy made his fortune ranching in Nevada and had no children of his own. Denman said he
was always trying to slip her money.

"He was a wonderful and giving man," Denman said. "He handed me money and I was always
tearing up the checks. He was just a sweetheart."

Denman also remembered him being good looking.

"He was a head turner," Denman said. "He was just a handsome, handsome man and well loved by his family."

She always knew he led an interesting life but was too young to remember when he was in Hollywood.

She heard her mother say how she once borrowed a bathing suit that had belonged to Jane Russell, and how her father took her mother to a movie featuring Jimmy when her parents were dating .

"He said, ‘You see that man on the screen? That's my brother.’ And she said, ‘Oh you're full of baloney,’ ” Denman said.

Denman said Jimmy came to Yuma to visit them frequently and eventually purchased the Dora Avenue home and made Yuma his winter residence for the last seven years of his life.

Denman said things weren't so pleasant, though, when Jimmy married Delma, or Lee, as he called her.

The two had met in Las Vegas. Delma was half Jimmy's age and wasn't well liked by the family.

"The whole family treated her as the black sheep," Denman said. "Nobody wanted anything to do with her. I didn't have much to do with her."

According to Toni, Delma planned to divorce Jimmy and went back to stay with her father in Fallon, Nev.

She only came back to Yuma when she was told it would be more advantageous to file for divorce in Arizona.

Toni said she always suspected Delma had something to do with his murder.

According to Toni, Delma hung around Denman's house the day of the murder and asked a neighbor to check on Jimmy.

"She went over to Pam's house and sat in front of her house all day long. And she kept knocking on doors asking if they had seen Pam and when would she be home and what time it was," Toni said. "When Pam finally did get home, she asked Pam and would call the neighbor across the street and ask him if Jimmy was OK."

Jimmy had just gotten back from vacationing in Nevada the night he was killed.

The neighbor told Delma that the lights were on but that he couldn't see Jimmy.

"She told him the back door was open and asked if he would go over and check," Toni said. "So he went over and found my brother dead."

Denman has her own thoughts about the case but declined to talk about the night her uncle was murdered so as not to jeopardize the case. She did say though, that she felt Lee used her as an alibi.

Toni though, has no doubt that Lee was responsible for her brother's death.

"This is what made us believe she was involved," Toni said. "We knew it from the beginning."

Denman said she is just glad the police have made arrests.

She praised Yuma Police investigator Sgt. Dan Siegfried for re-opening the case.

"He read it as a cold case file and he said it just jumped out at him," Denman said. "It opened up an old wound. But I loved my uncle very much. He was just a wonderful man."


JIMMY FERRARA'S MOVIE CREDITS: (AS CRAIG LAWRENCE)
•Homicide for Three (1948)
•The Plunderers (1948)
•The Fabulous Texan (1947)
•Dark Passage (1947)
•Gunsmoke (1947)
•Mexicana (1945)
•Federal Operator 99 (1945)
•Bells of Rosarita (1945)
•Lake Placid Serenade (1944)
— Source: International Movie Database (www.imbd.com)

 

[ex-nutjeter]

Haha!!!!!!

 

[ReportCanoa]

Did he disclose all of his traffic tickets? What about that busted checkride? I think unless he's proved guilty, F9 can't fire him. Have fun with that guy.