Otis "Nickalous" Beckford and girlfriend Daneicka Coley (Courtesy Orlando Sentinel)

Otis Beckford, 26, was killed by a crazed gunman Friday at the offices of the engineering firm RS&H in downtown Orlando. His mother spoke exclusively to The Post’s Jose Lambiet. Read the full story here.
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Picower

Billionaire Jeffry Picower, who died of a heart attack in the pool of his $28 million Palm Beach mansion Sunday, was laid to rest Tuesday before an intimate gathering at the Mount Ararat Cemetery in Farmingdale, N.Y.

Picower, 67, was under investigation in the Bernie Madoff swindle when he died. Picower is said to have made $7 billion on his investments with Madoff — cash that Madoff victims want to recover.

A spywitness tells me Picower’s body was accompanied to the gravesite by a dozen people, including his wife, Barbara, and an undercover security guard. Funeral arrangements for the 2 p.m. ceremony were kept secret.

Picower’s new address: Section 60, Range C, Lot 15.

Mount Ararat Cemetery (Courtesy www.findagrave.com)

(Courtesy www.findagrave.com)

Harris

John Harris‘ claim to fame always was that he went on one of the most colorful assignments in the Boca-based National Enquirer’s colorful history.

Straight from the desk of Enquirer owner Generoso Pope, Harris received a form spelling it out: “Is there really a Utopia left in this world? What’s it really like to live in Tahiti and those other pipe-dream paradises? Let’s . . . write a series of articles.”

Harris ended up spending the next four-and-a-half months circling the world on his search for Utopia.

Said Harris’ colleague at the time, Malcolm Balfour: “He didn’t find Utopia!”

Maybe, Harris finally did, 36 years later.

Harris was found dead at his home in Boca’s University Park neighborhood Oct. 9. His death certificate lists a heart attack and hardening of the arteries as the cause. He was 76.

A rare bird in the newsroom because he didn’t drink, chain-smoke or fudge quotes, Harris was hired by the Enquirer out of Cincinnati Post in Ohio.

“He was known as ‘Honest John,’” said Iain Calder, a former editor-in-chief. “He was the ultimate southern gentleman. And he did get the greatest assignment ever given to any reporter in any newspaper.”

Within months, Harris embarked on the trip that took him to dozens of exotic, at times unknown, locales. At first, it was the Mediterranean, off Greece and Spain, and the Channel and North Sea near England and Scotland. Then he moved on to Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, Fiji, Samoa, Molokai, Bali, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, Mauritius, and many more.

Thing is, every time Harris thought he’d found something close to Utopia, Pope at home shot him down. Tahiti? No good. There was a rush hour and parking meters in the capital. Bora Bora? Too many hotels. American Samoa? Too dirty.

At one point, Harris is said to have called in he discovered Utopia, in the Western Samoa. But when Pope found out there were phones, it was decided that Utopia shouldn’t have phones, and Harris was ordered back to Lantana. He’d spent well over $100,000.

“Well, they did hire him because he’d do anything he was told, anything at all, with no questions asked,” Balfour said. “He was perfect for that assignment. Even if no story was ever published.”

“Utopia may be more a state of mind than a physical place,” Harris later wrote. “I found my Utopia when I got that around-the-world, all-expense-paid, assignment to search for it.”

Harris will be buried Saturday in his hometown of Morganton, N.C. He was divorced and had two step children.

Swayze

Wellington movie producer Mark Koch says he felt a sense of relief late last night when a friend called him to say his former roommate, Hollywood star Patrick Swayze, had died.

Koch, 50, produced an action picture with Swayze in 1998, Black Dog. And for a part of the filming in North Carolina, Koch and Swayze shacked up together.

“Patrick always took great pride in his job and his appearance,” Koch said. “He worked out like crazy, ate well, didn’t drink much. It must have been real tough for a guy like him to watch his body deteriorate.

“It’s a shame he died, but at least he stopped suffering.”

Swayze, 57, passed away on Monday surrounded by his family. An inveterate smoker, he had been battling pancreatic cancer since January 2008.

That March, the tabs were giving Swayze five weeks to live. But he went on to star in a TV series, The Beast.

“If it had been you or me, we wouldn’t have lasted this long,” said Koch, whose movie credits also included the 1998 blockbuster Lost in Space. “He was a fighter and a perfectionist, even when the time came for him to fight cancer.”

For more about Swayze, look below or click (Read more…)

Here we go again!

Two years after Palm Beach County lost its chance to make an impact, and serious cash, on the 2007 Super Bowl in South Florida, the county’s participation in next February’s return of the big game already has hit a snag.

Gerry Baron, the county’s liaison with the organizers of the upcoming Super Bowl XLIV at Land Shark Stadium, resigned as Palm Beach County sports commish last week.

“Unfortunately, I’m going to have to give up that (the Super Bowl) position, too,” Baron said. “We were really putting the county on the map this time.”

Baron’s departure couldn’t come at a worse time!

Why? To find out, and the poll, look below, or click (Read more…)

– Matt Damon’s day of reckoning has yet to come, despite this phony Internet posting that the Oscar-winning star of Bourne Identity and Ocean’s Eleven had died during a solo camping trip. The report, falsely attributed to TMZ and mindlessly parroted all over the web, claimed Miami Beach’s Damon had text-messaged friends that he was in trouble in the desert outside San Diego. This much is true: Damon was lost all right. In the wonders of the Venice Film Festival. He even stopped in New York on his way home to chat with David Letterman Thursday.

Alive and loving it, Damon signs autographs outside the Late Show in Manhattan yesterday

– If the cover on the new album by Miami’s Shakira, She Wolf, isn’t enough to make most dudes howl at the moon, then I don’t know what it. The sultry Colombian’s newest, with fellow South Floridian Wyclef Jean, comes out next month.

will

– Who’d have thunk it!? Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am loves the Miami Dolphins so much that he’d put his bod on the line for the team. He posted on his blog this video plea to team owner Stephen Ross to grant him a tryout before the season starts next week. At 5-foot-4 on high heels, however, the self-described “fast” will.i.am may have a hard time finding a position, except maybe kicker. He says he wants to be a punt returner. “Yo, Ross, this ain’t no joke, I wanna play,” will says on the video. The team had no reax to the rapper’s come-ons. A source, meanwhile, tells me Dolphins officials ordered jerseys with Black Eyed Peas hottie Fergie’s name on the back, fueling rumors that the band will play at halftime of the Sept. 21 Monday night home opener.

Forest Lawn

– From the Great Beyond, Michael Jackson is pushing real estate prices up by at least 30 percent. Future stiffs have gone wacko for burial plots near Forest Lawn Memorial Park mausoleum where the King of Pop himself was interred last week in Glendale, Calif. Burial plots that went for $7,000 a few weeks ago now are creeping toward $10,000, reports TMZ. Interested in a crypt for two inside Jackson’s mausoleum? Fuhgettaboutit! They’re now trading for $34,000 a piece.

– Hey, A-Rod, got something to tell us? Kate Hudson, the actress galpal of Miami’s New York Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez, is stepping out with a big fat sparkler on her ring finger. Spies for the New York Daily News spotted her with the bling at a recent Bombers game. Seeing that it took the lovebirds weeks in the spring to admit they were an item, it’ll probably be years for them to confirm they’re engaged.

– Nice one, Rose Kennedy Schlossberg! Someone who looks a hell of a lot like the 21-year-old daughter of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg showed off that expensive Harvard education by sending her love to those alongside her great-uncle Ted Kennedy’s funeral motorcade Saturday near Washington, D.C. I’m sure her grandfather, former Prez John F. Kennedy, and grandma Jackie would have “appreciated.”

– Get ready for Bad Boys III. Film-making titans Michael Bay (Transformers, A Nightmare on Elm Street) and Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean), both of whom have places in Miami Beach, are reviving the  shoot ‘em up franchise. The first two, starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, were filmed throughout SoFla, including in Delray Beach. That’s where producers blew up a beachside mansion in 2003 for a key scene in dos. The flicks made $400 million worldwide. No word on where tres will  be made, but it’d be hard to imagine detectives Burnett and Lowrey outside of SoFla.

– Anand Jon, 35, a New York designer whose runways were often occupied by models recruited in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm, was sentenced to 59 years in prison for sexually assaulting seven aspiring models. The Los Angeles judge who handed down the sentence mentioned Jon’s cruelty in manipulating the women, some as young as 14.

Tony Wilson's MJ steps (Michele Sandberg/Special to Page2Live)

The spirit of Michael Jackson loomed over downtown West Palm Beach Thursday evening, for a Clematis-by-Night tribute to the dead King of Pop.

Organizers of the monthly party brought in Tony Wilson and the Godfather of Soul Band to conjure up MJ, while some of the 3,000-plus in attendance brought their Jackson memorabilia.

Check out Michele Sandberg’s photo gallery below.

Ryan

The sister of the 16-year-old Delray high schooler killed on her bike by a 94-year-old driver says Bettina Ryan’s death will not have been in vain.

Alix de la Moussaye, daughter of former Palm Beach society bad boy Jean de la Moussaye, tells me doctors harvested Bettina’s skin and will be able to treat up to 120 children who suffer from skin injuries, especially burns.

“The hospital just wrote us a letter saying how helpful Bettina’s gift was,” Alix de la Moussaye said.

Ryan was a bright student at St. Andrews School in Boca. She was weeks away from embarking on a behind-the-scenes “good student” tour of Washington, D.C. and the White House, when she was mowed down by Delray resident Louis Bellet’s SUV. He hasn’t been charged in connection with the Aug. 10 accident, which occurred as Bettina crossed Atlantic Avenue against a red light.

“She wanted to donate her organs,” Alix de la Moussaye said, “but some of them shut down after the crash and it didn’t happen. So they took her skin.”

Bettina was born into Palm Beach’s McMahon clan. Her grandmother is Betty McMahon, a socialite and author. Her mother, Francine Ryan, was once married to race-car driver Jean de la Moussaye.