Inwood man confesses to setting wife's head on fire with blowtorch

First he bought his wife coffee. Then he set her head on fire.

Officials today released the confession of the Inwood man charged in last month's blowtorch revenge attacks on his wife and ex-boss -- admissions eerie in their mix of the mundane and the maniacal.

"I woke up this morning around 6 a.m. with the plan already made," Carlos Diaz, 35, told cops of the morning he doused wife Cathy Zappata in the face with accelerant, than blasted her with a blow torch as she sat in her car in a Pathmark parking lot.

"I went to Dyckman Bakery to buy her coffee," he told cops in the confession, released as Diaz pleaded not guilty through an interpreter to two counts of attempted murder.

Steven Hirsch

Carlos Diaz, 35, hit his estranged wife in the head with the blowtorch, poured a liquid accelerant in her hair and lit her on fire.

"I did that to buy more time so that I could take my kid to school and then there wouldn't be as many people in the mechanic's shop," he said.

Diaz told cops he'd wanted to lure his wife to the 10th Avenue garage, so that he could attack both her and his ex-boss, shop owner Helson Marachena, at the same time.

"She suspected something," though, he told cops of his wife, so he doused her on the spot in his car, he said.

"I sprayed her with starting fluid in her face and everywhere and lit her with a blow torch," Diaz told cops.

Lead prosecutor Scott Leet was asked today by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro to recount the facts of the case, and the prosecutor told the judge that Zappata suffered second degree burns throughout her neck and face.

"Parts of her hair were singed down to the scalp," Leet told the judge, who set Diaz's next date for April 10.

The ex-boss, Marachena, fared better, the prosecutor told the judge. Diaz admittedly walked to the nearby mechanic's shop and doused Marachena with accelerant too, according to police and Diaz's own confession.

"But the torch wouldn't light," Diaz told cops.

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Miami startup that turns text to video receives $1 million in seed funding

Guide, a new technology startup based in Miami, announced Tuesday it has closed a $1 million round of seed funding from investors including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Sapient Corp., MTV founder Bob Pitman, actor and producer Omar Epps, and early Google employee Steve Schimmel. The Knight Foundation is supporting Guide through its new early-stage venture fund, the Knight Enterprise Fund.

Led by CEO and founder Freddie Laker and COO Leslie Bradshaw, Guide’s team of seven is focused on turning online news, social streams and blogs into video for users who may be cooking, exercising, commuting or getting ready in the morning. The free application offers consumers a selection of about 20 “anchors” — including a dog, a robot and an anime character — that will read the article and present the accompanying photos, pull-out information and video clips in its video presentation. Revenue drivers for Guide could include in-app purchases, advertising-based anchors and customizations from publishers, said Laker, a former vice president at SapientNitro.

Laker and his team plan to launch a public beta next month, which they plan to do with a splash at the huge technology conference South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.

Read more about Guide here on the Starting Gate blog. Follow Nancy Dahlberg on Twitter @ndahlberg

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Lawmakers want major changes in fixing long voting lines

TALLAHASSEE --
Some lawmakers are considering strengthening state officials’ authority to remove county supervisors of elections after voting snafus in November led to long lines and voter anger.

Details are sketchy; supporters haven’t come forward with a specific proposal yet, and at times seemed to be thinking out loud at a Tuesday meeting of the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee.

But there were clearly at least a few Republican senators interested in putting pressure on elections supervisors — with the Legislature having come under fire for changes to the state’s voting laws pushed through by the GOP in 2011.

Supervisors in five counties — Broward, Lee, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and St. Lucie — have been singled out as having performed poorly during the November elections. Florida was the last state in which a winner was projected in the presidential race, with a final call coming long after President Barack Obama was projected to have won re-election, and voters sat in line for several hours in some places to cast their ballots.

The Florida Constitution currently allows for suspension in cases of "malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony."

Among those strongly promoting the idea of cracking down on supervisors is Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, who pushed the 2011 law through the Senate. Diaz de la Portilla suggested that the current standard for removing a supervisor in the constitution didn’t give the governor enough room to suspend supervisors who haven’t done their job.

"The only circumstance shouldn’t be gross negligence, well, that’s the only time they can do anything," he said.

Instead, Diaz de la Portilla said supervisors should be required to closely coordinate their elections plans with the secretary of state and then be held to them -- "to have some kind of stick, if you will, to be able to enforce that."

Lawmakers are wary of infringing on the governor’s authority to suspend supervisors, who are constitutional officers, and might instead ponder whether the secretary of state should make a recommendation to the governor.

"So I think the only question would be whether there would be some sort of mechanism to do a critical report on them in some fashion," said Ethics and Elections Chairman Jack Latvala, R-St. Petersburg, who didn’t take a position on the issue.

Latvala, who will take the lead in crafting an elections bill for the Senate, was noncommittal about whether new standards for supervisors would be part of the measure.

Even with the current system, Secretary of State Ken Detzner said, he almost did refer some cases to Gov. Rick Scott for possible suspension before ultimately deciding not to do so.

"Without pointing any fingers and without calling out names, I would say that there were situations, both in the general election and prior to that, that the administration of an election in a county came very, very, very close in my opinion to a decision to have somebody relieved of their duties," he said.

Any move to give the state more power over local elections chiefs is likely to be opposed by the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections.

"I have an issue with an elected official being kind of mandated from an appointee in Tallahassee [about] how to do my job," said Pasco County Supervisor Brian Corley, legislative chairman of the association.

He told lawmakers that would be like giving the Florida Department of Law Enforcement the power to tell local sheriffs what to do. Corley also said there was already a check on supervisors.

"I think we’re accountable to the citizens of our county," he said.

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Carpet Countdown: Oscars Luncheon

In today's Carpet Countdown, ET's Nancy O'Dell sits down with the Oscar frontrunners (including Hugh Jackman, Quevenzhane Wallis, Bradley Cooper, Naomi Watts and Jennifer Lawrence) after the Motion Picture Academy's Nominees Luncheon.

PICS: Hot Looks of the Oscar Luncheon

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Car swiped in Bronx -- with baby in back seat

A 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee left idling outside a cell-phone store in The Bronx was swiped tonight — with an 8-month-old baby in the back seat, cops said.

Police are now frantically scouring the area for the silver Jeep, which has blue fog lights, tinted windows and the Pennsylvania license plate RR84L2.

The child’s dad had hopped out of the car — leaving it running with the mom and his baby daughter still inside — after pulling up to the store at Morris Avenue and East Knightsbridge Road around 6:18 p.m., authorities said.

The mom then got out for just a minute, she told cops — and the thief hopped in.

The crook then sped off. It's unclear if he knew there was a child inside.

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Report calls Florida business incentives “corporate welfare’’

TALLAHASSEE --
A government watchdog group and a conservative advocacy group blasted Florida’s government Tuesday for the hundreds of millions of dollars it gives to corporations, blaming the state’s public-private jobs agency for “pay-to-play” cronyism and “corporate welfare.”

A new report by Integrity Florida and Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity highlights several problems with the state’s economic incentives program, which gives tax breaks to companies that set up shop in Florida.

“We’re concerned about the appearance of pay-to-play,” said Dan Krassner, director of Integrity Florida, outlining a number of tax breaks that have gone to politically connected companies and other deals that have failed.

Enterprise Florida Inc. and Gov. Rick Scott, its chairman, immediately hit back, claiming that the organization has been instrumental in bringing high-paying jobs to the state. Enterprise Florida CEO Gray Swoope slammed the report as tainted because it was funded by Americans for Prosperity.

“Integrity Florida has claimed to be a non-partisan, non-profit organization with no policy agenda,” Swoope wrote. “However, a report on economic incentives for job creation funded by a group that so publicly opposes these incentives is deeply troubling.”

Martin Dyckman, a former St. Petersburg Times associate editor and a board member at Integrity Florida, resigned after finding out that the report was funded by Americans for Prosperity. He also said it was “deeply troubling” that AFP sponsored the report, stating that it created “the perception that a well-researched report is an attack by Americans for Prosperity.”

Integrity Florida brushed aside concerns about the funding of its report, saying all of its funders are publicly listed. On Tuesday, the good-governance group focused on the findings of the report during a news conference.

Among the findings:

• Enterprise Florida has failed to meet its job-creation objectives, with companies creating only 103,544 jobs after receiving tax breaks, far short of the 200,000 envisioned by the Legislature in 1992 when EFI was created.

• Enterprise Florida has failed to get 50 percent funding from the private sector, instead relying on 85 percent taxpayer funding to support the public-private partnership

• Enterprise Florida has “the appearance of pay-to-play,” since it receives an average of $50,000 from some of its corporate board members. Those board members also get private contracts to do work on EFI’s behalf as well as tax-break deals processed by EFI.

Slade O’Brien, Florida director of Americans for Prosperity, said Florida’s practice of doling out economic incentives amounts to government manipulation of the free marketplace.

“What’s wrong here is the policy that’s in place,” he said. “Too often, we create winners and losers.”

Several bills in the Florida House and Senate seek to demand more transparency from Enterprise Florida and the economic incentives program. A bill voted out of committee Thursday morning would make Enterprise Florida submit to a slew of new performance reviews moving forward.

Enterprise Florida responded to what it called “troubling accusations” in the report by sending legislative leaders a lengthy letter about the virtues of its operation.

“Through the legislation that you supported two short years ago, Florida now has a seamless economic development team focused on creating jobs for Florida families, increasing capital investment in our communities and providing a significant return on the investment made by the state’s taxpayers,” reads a letter signed by the company’s board.

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Member of Miami-Dade marijuana growhouse ring pleads guilty

An operative in the Santiesteban family’s alleged marijuana growhouse ring pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to kidnap a rival gang member, admitting he witnessed the man’s murder after the target stole 50 pounds of pot from the Miami-Dade clan.

Juan Felipe Castaneda’s plea agreement signaled a major development in the federal government’s crackdown on one of South Florida’s largest suspected growhouse operations. The ring is accused of running a distribution network stretching to New York.

Castaneda admitted he collaborated with alleged ringleader Derrick Santiesteban, accused shooter Norge Manduley and other members of the syndicate in June 2009, when they kidnapped Fidel Ruz Moreno after carjacking his Chevy van.

While en route to one of the Santiesteban’s grow houses in southwest Miami-Dade, Castaneda said in a court statement that he witnessed Manduley struggle with Ruz in the back of the van and then shoot him with a revolver.

After Ruz’s body was tossed out into the street, Castaneda said he saw Manduley “approach [the] prone body and repeatedly strike [Ruz] about the head with the butt of revolver that Manduley was wielding,” according to a statement filed with the plea agreement in Miami federal court.

Castaneda, a growhouse caretaker who fled the area last June when FBI agents arrested most of the 16 Santiesteban-syndicate members, is the first defendant to plead guilty to the main charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 1,000 marijuana plants. He also pleaded guilty to the kidnapping conspiracy.

In April, he faces a minimum-mandatory sentence of 10 years for the drug charge and up to life in prison for the kidnapping. His cooperation with prosecutors William Athas and Pat Sullivan could help them put pressure on other defendants to cut plea deals, according to the plea agreement.

The Ruz kidnapping and slaying — along with the possibility of a second, unrelated homicide, as well as suspicions that a Miami-Dade police officer was working with the Santiesteban clan — elevated the case beyond a routine pot-trafficking investigation.

At a detention hearing, Athas and Sullivan described Derrick Santiesteban, the lead defendant in the case, as the “mastermind behind the [Ruz] kidnapping.”

Investigators are zeroing in on a Miami-Dade officer who is suspected of playing a role in the family’s alleged drug syndicate. The officer, Roderick Silva, worked patrol in the Hammocks area of West Kendall. He was suspended with pay in June 2009, records show. He is the brother of another of the Santiestebans’ accused growhouse caretakers, David Silva.

Homicide detectives are also trying to determine whether an unsolved April 2006 slaying of a teenager in West Kendall is linked to an alleged Santiesteban growhouse in the area.

After going to visit a girlfriend near Southwest 172nd Terrace and 153rd Place, Angelo Lopera, 17, was attacked and shot multiple times. Investigators believe Lopera may have been killed because he was mistakenly suspected of visiting the neighborhood to steal harvested marijuana plants from the Santiestebans’ house at 17231 SW 153rd Pl., according to sources familiar with the probe.

The Santiesteban indictment was built around a dozen cooperating witnesses, most of whom were involved in the family’s alleged drug organization and have or will be separately charged, court records show.

The case was spearheaded by Miami-Dade police homicide detective Rich Raphael and FBI agent Michael Gualtieiri, working as part of a federal drug task force. Court records show the task force cultivated the witnesses, including two who were present during the Ruz kidnapping and eventually identified Manduley as the shooter.

Last July, Manduley was sentenced to 10 years in state prison after pleading guilty to weapons charges involving a domestic dispute with his ex-girlfriend in 2010. Manduley shot a .357 revolver twice into the air while threatening the ex-girlfriend and three other people.

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Live action: Twitter grabs Super Bowl spotlight

NEW YORK (AP) — Beyonce’s splashy show, a freak power outage, and —oh, yeah— a captivating game of football combined to generate a record 24.1 million posts on Twitter during Sunday night’s Super Bowl.

That’s up from 13.7 million last year — and that doesn’t even include chatter surrounding the ads.

Twitter said in a late Sunday blog post that about half of the more than 50 national TV spots that aired during the game included a “hashtag,” a word or phrase preceded by a number sign that’s used to organize subjects on the short messaging site. During last year’s game, only one in five ads included one. Brands ranging from Oreo to Tide and Budweiser, meanwhile, captured online buzz by linking the blackout to their brands in humorous tweets.

Super Bowl XLVII, like the London Summer Olympics and the U.S. presidential election, was yet another moment in which Twitter became the platform for millions of people to share quick reactions and participate in a massive, public conversation. Though it’s not as popular as Facebook Inc. or its buttoned-up cousin LinkedIn Corp., Twitter’s surging popularity during big events is a testament to its reach and utility. The question is whether these moments can translate into revenue for the 7-year-old company.

The company makes money by charging advertisers to promote individual tweets, accounts or trends designed to spark a conversation. Research firm eMarketer estimates that Twitter will book advertising revenue of $ 545.2 million this year, up 89 percent from 2012. Next year, worldwide ad revenue is expected to hit $ 807.5 million, a 48 percent increase from 2013.

Tweetable events such as the 34-minute Super Bowl power outage are ripe with marketing potential, provided that brands act quickly.

“It’s really clear right now that Twitter has a lock on real-time conversation on the Internet,” says eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

To capitalize on this, Twitter has to show advertisers that it pays to promote their tweets — even though fans are likely to spread the catchiest slogans on their own, free of charge.

That’s what happened with a certain cream-filled cookie on Sunday.

It took Oreo’s marketers roughly 10 minutes after the power went out to tweet a picture of an Oreo cookie in the half-dark with the words: “You can still dunk in the dark.” As of Monday afternoon, the image had been shared on Twitter more than 15,000 times. Tide followed suit with the slogan “we can’t get your blackout. But we can get your stains out” with more limited success. The message was re-tweeted about 1,300 times. Calvin Klein, meanwhile, tweeted a video of a shirtless, chiseled male model doing crunches “since the lights are still out…”

Such “real-time marketing” is still in its infancy, but Williamson expects this to change, as more companies develop the ability to respond to events immediately.”

“To do what Oreo did actually takes a lot of pre-planning,” she says.

Laurie Guzzinati, spokeswoman for Oreo owner Mondelez says the power outage was a natural moment to engage consumers. The cookie’s TV ad had a planned social media component asking people to follow Oreo on Twitter and post photos on Instagram. The company had set up a “social media command center” that included people from Oreo’s brand team, the ad agency 360i and other partners whose job was to follow the Super Bowl and interact with fans on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

Mondelez likely spent the going rate of as much as $ 4 million on its Super Bowl television spot. But Guzzinati says the company didn’t pay Twitter anything for the “dunk in the dark” picture. Still, Twitter says advertisers moved quickly following the outage.

Matt McGee, editor-in-chief of the blog Marketing Land, counted 26 Twitter mentions in the 52 national spots that aired during the game. Facebook, meanwhile, got only four shout-outs, while Google Plus walked away with zero (though Google Inc.’s YouTube scored one mention from Hyundai).

“When it comes to second-screen advertising, it’s Twitter’s world now and there’s no close second place,” McGee wrote in a blog post late Sunday night. “Last year, brands split their focus on Twitter and Facebook with eight mentions each. This year, brands recognize that Twitter is where they need to try to attract the online conversation around one of the world’s biggest events.”

David Berkowitz, vice president of emerging media at 360i, which worked on the Oreo campaign, says Twitter has done a good job tying itself into major television events.

“If you look at (Twitter’s) trending topics any day especially during prime time or major events, they’re heavily fueled by television,” he says. “So TV is responsible for Twitter’s growth in general.”

He thinks Twitter has done a better job than other social media sites like Tumblr and Pinterest in proving it’s the place to be when it comes to talking about big events online.

“A large part of it right now is just showing this is where the conversation is happening and building their brand around that,” he says. “Even with other very successful social media sites, no one is better at conversation than Twitter.”

__

AP Retail Writer Mae Anderson contributed to this story.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bruce Willis Cracks Up At Vintage 'Die Hard' Intv

Bruce Willis is back for his fifth Die Hard movie as veteran cop John McClane, and the junket for A Good Day to Die Hard proved to be the perfect opportunity to show Bruce some old footage of himself during our on-set interview for 1990's Die Hard 2: Die Harder.

Pics: 13 Must-See Movies for 2013

"This should be on your show, this is terrific," Bruce told ET's Christina McLarty with a laugh. "Holy mackerel."

In the vintage ET interview, we asked Bruce if he would do another one, and he replied, "Another Die Hard? I don't think so. I was trying to get them to kill me in this one. I wanted my character to be killed off in this one, but they wouldn't let me do it. … I don't think so, but who knows? Ask me a couple years from now."

"Well, it's very tongue-in-cheek, but that is totally adorable," said Bruce with a sly grin. "I was very glib in those days."

Video: Bruce Willis Unveils Massive 'Die Hard' Mural

In theaters February 14, A Good Day to Die Hard finds Bruce's John McClane in Russia, fighting alongside his son (Jai Courtney), who turns out to be a CIA operative working to prevent a nuclear-weapons heist.

Asked if he has any special Valentine's Day plans, Bruce jokes, "My wife wants to take me [to the movie]. She's always in charge of Valentine's Day. ... It's a heck of a date movie."

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Hero cop Figoski's blood-stained badge revealed at trial

There was blood on his badge.

Chilling photos of slain Brooklyn cop Peter Figoski’s blood-stained shield and uniform were revealed in the first-degree murder trial of his killer today – bringing tears to the hero cop’s mom as she watched from the courtroom gallery.

Career criminal Lamont Pride, 28, shot Figoski once in the face when the decorated cop and father-of-four responded to a call at the East New York apartment where Pride and four other thugs were robbing a drug dealer.

Pride remained motionless as his deadly handiwork was projected onto courtroom screens.

The crime scene photos showed how Figoski’s blood soaked his bulletproof vest and uniform and spattered his shield after the December 2011 shooting.

While the slain cop’s mother became emotional over the gruesome photos, all four of his daughters stayed away from Brooklyn Supreme Court for the first time since the trial opened last month.

“When I opened the door, I saw the police officer laying on the floor with his legs up in the air,” testified Carlos Feliciano, 52, owner of the building where Figoski was gunned down.

“Was he moving?” asked assistant district attorney Howard Jackson.

“No,” Feliciano answered.

Prosecutors have said that Feliciano’s nephew, Nelson Morales, 28, picked out the drug dealer who rented his uncle’s ratty basement apartment as an easy stick-up target.

Feliciano said he called the cops after the violence downstairs woke him up.

“I heard people yelling, ‘Give it! Give me the money!” said Feliciano.

He added that when cops arrived he pointed them downstairs and told them to be careful.

After the shooting Feliciano’s nephew Morales and another crook even pretended they weren’t robbers and were trying to help the beat-up dealer.

“I asked him what the hell you doing down there? He was the last person in the world I expected to see down there,” Feliciano testified he said when investigators brought his nephew into his apartment.

In other testimony, a NYPD detective said he caught getaway driver Michael Velez by tracking his cell phone to a Bushwick apartment.

Pride has admitted he shot Figoski but claims the gun went off accidentally as he tried to escape. He faces life in prison without parole.

Getaway driver Velez, Pride’s co-defendant, faces second-degree murder charges in the same trial – and could get 25 years to life.

Morales and fellow thug Kevin Santos, 31, will face trial later this year. Another robber, Ariel Tejada, 23, flipped on the other crooks and is expected to testify tomorrow in exchange for an 18-year-sentence.

Pride’s trial is expected to close Wednesday.

jsaul@nypost.com

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