Golden State Can’t Hold a Palm Tree to Florida Crime

A continuing source of aggravation to a California newspaper columnist is that Florida’s crimes are more juicy than ours.

We once could brag about having the widest assortment of crooks in America out here. Nobody’s police blotter was more colorful than ours . . . not even New York’s and New Jersey’s, even though those proud states did provide us with Joey Buttafuoco, Leona Helmsley and most recently Sean “Puffy” Combs, a rapper looking to beat a rap.

In the late 1990s, however, Florida began to be the home of outlandish outlaws. From the day our O.J. Simpson trials were over, California couldn’t lay a glove on the Sunshine State when it came to ready-for-prime-time crime.

Florida didn’t have more crimes than any other place; it just began to have more consistently bizarre ones. One case after another seemed worthy of a made-for-TV movie.

It looked this week as if California might be beginning a big 2000 comeback.

For instance, an Orange County lawyer and his wife got arrested Thursday, charged with misappropriation of client funds. Social Security checks were allegedly stolen . . . checks issued to a person who happens to be dead.

You would think Florida would have a hard time topping that.

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“You won’t believe what’s happening here now,” attorney John Trevena says on the phone from Florida.

Having already seen a number of unorthodox cases in never-a-dull-moment Pinellas County, Fla., there was no way Trevena could get a guy from the tranquil West Coast to guess what could be going on there now.

His previous cases were real doozies.

First there was the young graduate of a local police academy who got arrested by a Pinellas deputy sheriff for impersonating a police officer by going out in public dressed in an “LAPD” baseball cap.

The guy didn’t identify himself as a cop or wear a uniform. He just wore a cap someone had given him as a gift.

Next came the British couple’s arrest. Leaving a child asleep for a few minutes, the parents went downstairs to a hotel pool for a better view of holiday fireworks. Their child woke up and was found unhappy but unhurt in a hallway. Police nevertheless put the couple under arrest for serious charges of child abuse, as if they had been malicious rather than careless.

Each case was dismissed.

“So what’s up now?” Trevena was asked Thursday, a loaded question, to be sure.

“Well, I have a client and she’s about to be arrested,” he said.

“For what?”

“For pretending to be a man.”

Like we were saying . . . it’s Florida.

Pinellas County law enforcement authorities are trying to get to the bottom of a case involving Sherrie Lee Cannon, 46. It is one of those typically lurid Florida crime stories that involves a man, a woman, a woman who may be a man, an air-conditioning company and a funeral with an empty coffin.

According to Trevena, his client Cannon first contacted him a few weeks ago with some business concerns. She had been running a Clearwater air-conditioning firm since July 1998 with a Debra F. Dawson, 40.

As best the lawyer can ascertain, police say Cannon arranged for Dawson to meet a man she identified as Ronald J. Buria, her half brother. But never were Cannon and her half brother apparently in the same room at the same time.

Dawson and Buria supposedly got married.

But shortly thereafter, Buria died. His funeral service Nov. 2, 1999, was conducted by a priest.

Cannon called her lawyer again this week, Trevena says, and told him, “I’m going to be arrested.”

When he asked why, she said, “Because they think I’m Ronald.”

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Trevena contacted the cops and was told yes, an arrest was imminent. A relative of Dawson had tipped them to a possible scheme to defraud Dawson’s business of money.

When the grave of Buria was excavated, his casket was empty.

“There is a Ron Buria,” Cannon allegedly still insists to her lawyer.

Is, was, whatever.

Cannon, meantime, stands 5 feet 2 inches, 110 pounds. Was the “husband” of Dawson (who’s 5-4) equally small? Did one size fit all?

Police would gladly ask Dawson, but Trevena says, “Apparently, now she’s disappeared.”

Did Sherrie pretend to be Ron?

“If she did,” Trevena says, “she must change clothes faster than Clark Kent and Superman.”

Anything’s possible in Florida.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com