Pages


Friday, June 10, 2022

The Fugitive Next Door

On the morning of December 2, 2020, Tim Brown got up early to start a fire. The night before, an unseasonable cold front had descended on Love’s Landing, Florida, where Brown lived with his wife, Duc Hanh Thi Vu. By 8 a.m., the mercury in the thermometer had yet to reach 40 degrees. At the bottom of the cul-de-sac where the couple lived, a thin layer of frost glistened on the long grass runways that extended through the quiet neighborhood: Love’s Landing is a private aviation community, home to pilots, plane engineers, and flying enthusiasts.

As heat from the fireplace warmed the house, Brown headed to the small hangar he’d built right outside. Nearly everyone in Love’s Landing owned a plane, and Brown was no exception. He’d just had the engine of his gleaming Tecnam P2008 replaced, and despite the chill in the air, the morning was shaping up to be calm and clear. Perfect weather to take the plane up.

A carpenter by trade, Brown had spent much of his life enjoying the outdoors. In his younger days, he was an expert scuba diver and deep-sea fisherman. But now, at 66, his age had finally caught up with him. His close-cropped hair had gone gray, and health issues had him in and out of the hospital. During the past year alone, he’d suffered two heart attacks. Flying offered the chance, as Brown put it, “to continue the fun.” He’d fallen in love with aviation years earlier, after taking a charter trip with friends in Alaska. Flying sure beat staring at the trees on either side of the road, he said. This was the kind of enthusiastic attitude that made Brown popular in Love’s Landing. Soon after moving there in 2017, he and Vu became, as a neighbor put it, “one of the best-liked couples in the airpark.”
-Kent

13 comments:

  1. Meanwhile, Cankles....
    Aw, fuckit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That was an amazing story. It was a long read, but well worth it. Thanks for sharing.

    I think the prosecutors should have just let this guy Brown/Farley go live out his life at that point as he was obviously "redeemed" from his former life and had been living as a model citizen for a long time as his neighbors attested. Hadn't he already paid his dues in other ways such as the long forced separation from his daughter and other family?

    Really, what more "rehabilitation" was there to be served in the end by him spending any amount of time in the slammer? You should know that I say this as someone who many years ago was employed as a manager of one of the industries inside a Federal prison (I had lots of drug offenders and white collar criminals there. Bernie Madoff was incarcerated at this same institution until he died in 2009.)

    End the end, it boiled down to vindictive prosecutors who wanted their pound of flesh is how I see it. Meanwhile, the likes of Hunter Biden along with thousands of other Swamp felons roam free without even the threat of arrest for their crimes. Yep, there's definitely two tiers of justice in this country.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Career-minded. A case like this would promote their careers above many rungs. It is their ego and greed on display.

      I burned with anger when I read, 'phoney search warrant'. These legal hounds are vile misfits. Which legal tenet allows the ends to justify the means? Who, exactly, is the greater criminal? They operate by the full authority of fedgov, often their avarice known to their bosses. What a racket.

      Delete
  3. Oops, made a typo. Madoff died in 2021, not 2009 as I previously stated.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yep. He was a credit to his community, he made some bad decisions earlier in life, but he turned his life around and was always willing to help little old ladies across the street and then sell them cocaine. At a special price for the elderly.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is why in Europa you have statutory limitations.

    And yes I do agree that the European establishment is way too soft.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great story and thanks for linking it. And a fine example of why so many of us hold the government in such contempt.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This part, the last sentence, talking about when he killed the grouper,"It was very sad, Farley told Farnan quietly as he looked down at the photograph. It was just living out its life, without bothering anybody or hurting anything. And he had ended that."


    If he realized that and understood what he did then he is in a higher place.

    ReplyDelete
  8. It was very sad, Farley told Farnan quietly as he looked down at the photograph. It was just living out its life, without bothering anybody or hurting anything. And he had ended that.

    If he realized what he did when he killed the grouper for no other reason than he could. Then he is in a higher place.

    ReplyDelete
  9. as noted the real criminals go free.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Interesting read - thank you.

    The story compared Farley to Whitey Bulger. Would that be the same Whitey Bulger that straight arrow Robert Mueller protected ("allegedly")

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thank you for linking that one WC. When he was caught for ID forgery, there was a distinct air of needless vindictiveness about it. Pointless as far as I'm concerned.

    Guy sold some blow, BFD, shoot him full of bullets.

    As others have noted, the real criminals in this country are now committing their crimes brazenly right in front of us with no repercussions. I can only hope that the 2022 midterms are so compromised with obvious voter fraud that it becomes the hill that millions will die on(figuratively speaking)

    ReplyDelete

All comments are moderated due to spam, drunks and trolls.
Keep 'em civil, coherent, short, and on topic.