Pressing Fort Lauderdale City Government For the 2007 ‘Packet’ on Alleged Diana Nyad Rapist Jack Nelson, Child Abuser and Pornographer Alex Pussieldi, Drug Trafficker and Murder Accessory Cecil Russell

by Irvin Muchnick and Tim Joyce

One of our several open records requests to public agencies of various municipalities is an application to the City of Fort Lauderdale for a copy of an information packet about the Fort Lauderdale Swim Team that was given to the City Commission in 2007, and subsequently shared with the police and the state’s attorney.

Today city clerk Jonda K. Joseph emailed, “In response to your request of February 25th, no records were found.”

We replied that an explanation was required for a failure to locate the requested records. A cover story in the June 14, 2007, edition of the New Times weekly of Broward and Palm BeachCounties stated:

“… [A] packet of materials that included a sworn statement by [Diana] Nyad, police reports, and news stories was mysteriously delivered to Fort Lauderdale city commissioners in January. The documents purport to show that [Jack] Nelson and two other coaches that he hired and retained are guilty of sexual misconduct and other misdeeds.

…

The packet given to city commissioners paints an alarming picture of Nelson and some of the coaches he supervised.

In 2004, a swimmer in Nelson´s program told Fort Lauderdale police that one of the coaches had child pornography on his computer and that the coach secretly videotaped male swimmers who lived with him as the swimmers undressed in a bathroom. The swimmer claimed he found a video camera hidden in an air conditioning vent. Another swimmer told police the same coach touched him inappropriately. According to the packet, [another coach, Duffy Dillon] told Nelson about the boys´ accusations, but Nelson did not go to police. Instead, Dillon´s wife did. Fort Lauderdale police conducted an investigation, but it dead-ended when the coach denied the accusations. Nelson kept the coach on staff.

The same documents describe another of Nelson´s coaches, Cecil Russell, who admitted under oath in 1996 that he helped incinerate the dismembered remains of a murder victim….”

We’ll let you know what the city tells us next.

Complete links to Concussion Inc.’s Pussieldi investigation are at https://concussioninc.net/?p=8652.