Word: moneyitis
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...safe at the home, most of them didn't know Gonzalez allegedly planned a murder. As it was, the group -many of them captured on home security video in black ninja-style clothes and masks - hauled away one of Billings' empty safes instead of the one that contained money (about $164,000) and jewelry...
...whacked themselves by figures who they believe contracted Gonzalez to organize the break-in and shooting. Making the investigation more baroque is the $20,000 that Tice, hoping to save his struggling car business, recently borrowed from people he says turned out to be "Mexican mafia" and wanted their money back more quickly, and at higher interest, than he could handle. The shadow of organized crime retribution, real or imagined, is another oft-mentioned anxiety in police interviews. Gonzalez even told investigators that he's in "very deep" and fears for his and his family's safety because...
...conspiracy charges against Tice or any of the other car dealers who Gonzalez told police "just did not like Billings at all" and who described the deceased as a loan shark. But the sheriff believes "the pieces are coming together." Billings, like his competitors, many of whom owed him money, inhabited a Florida panhandle business world that resembled a tawdry cable TV drama series. "Bud Billings was a very hard-nosed, unyielding businessman because he had to be," Morgan says. "He was in a high-risk business, loaning money to the kind of people who can't get it anywhere...
Gonzalez was one person Billings didn't loan money to. Gonzalez's wife Tabitha told police that Billings once donated $5,000 to their nonprofit program to teach people self-defense, but he refused them a loan to save their martial arts studio, which later went under. According to Tabitha, she and Gonzalez have six children...
...adopted brood as proof of their charitable side. But even that admirable domestic picture has come under scrutiny in the murder's wake: Billings, who was arrested in 1989 for adoption fraud, tried earlier this decade to copyright his adopted children's names in a bizarre scheme to extract money from Florida's Department of Children & Family Services. He had also recently thrown two of his teen-aged children out of the house because he didn't like the people they were dating...