Wilson's car, shortly after it was pulled out of a canal Feb. 12 (Click on the photo for more about the accident)

Shocking development in the aftermath of the car crash that killed 23-year-old Scott Wilson and injured International Polo Club Palm Beach founder John Goodman: As many as 10 Palm Beach County Fire Rescue responders have been notified that they are under internal investigation.

Their superiors want to know whether the crew from Wellington’s Station 27 followed procedures because Wilson’s body was not found until an hour after the Feb. 12 crash.

Page2Live has been told exclusively that two firefighters searched Wilson’s submerged car, which was upside down in a canal. But the rescuer could not find Wilson in the early morning darkness and gave up the search.In time, fire rescue left the scene when they thought their work was done.

But the jaws of sheriff’s deputies left behind dropped when Wilson’s Hyundai Sonata was hoisted back on the road, revealing his body on the seat.

Said a fire rescue source: “Our guys obviously didn’t look for a body hard enough.”

Fire Rescue spokesman Capt. Don Delucia confirmed that existence of the investigation but declined comment. When asked about emergency procedures for cars in canals, Delucia said: “There are masks and snorkels on the emergency vehicles but the conditions in our canals are bad. It’s so opaque you can’t see your hand in front of you even in broad daylight. Diving on a vehicle is extremely dangerous and difficult.”

Delucia said responders also have the option to call in professional divers, but that wasn’t done, according to my source.

An autopsy showed that Wilson drowned after Goodman’s Bentley went through a stop sign and hit his car, sending it into the water off Lake Worth Road in Wellington’s horse country. Goodman left the scene and walked to a nearby home to call 911. Authorities are still trying to figure out whether alcohol or drugs were involved. Goodman suffered a broken wrist, hired star attorney Roy Black and has been hiding in Miami Beach hotels since the crash. Goodman, 46, has not been charged with a crime.

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Goodman with Lizzie McGuire star Hillary Duff and a circus elephant at the polo club two years ago (Click on the photo for more of Goodman with celebs)

A civil trial lawyer for Wellington’s International Polo Club Palm Beach has been discreetly making inquiries on whether the family of Scott Wilson, the 23-year-old killed in a car crash with club founder John Goodman, is ready to talk financial settlement.

Wilson’s parents, Lili and William Wilson, buried their son Saturday, eight days after the tragic accident in rural Wellington. Authorities are investigating whether booze or drugs were a factor as Goodman, 46, drove his Bentley into Wilson’s Hyundai after allegedly failing to stop at an intersection. No charges have been filed against Goodman.

But two legal community sources tell me Palm Beach attorney Wade Byrd, who has represented the polo club for years, is making calls to area lawyers to find out if the Wilsons already got lawyered up.

“Goodman’s people want to settle this asap,” one of the sources said. “They don’t want the family against them if he has to go through the criminal justice system.”

Wade didn’t return calls, and the Wilsons couldn’t be reached.

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Memo Gracida (left), congratulates Goodman after their team, Isla Carroll, won the 2004 U.S. Open in Wellington (click on the photo for more)

International Polo Club Palm Beach owner John Goodman’s bar tab moments before last week’s deadly car crash shows he ordered about $200 worth of booze during Ladies’ Night at a popular Wellington watering-hole.

According to a source close to the criminal investigation into the accident, Goodman used his credit card to pay for 16 shots of tequila, one of Grey Goose vodka and one of Johnny Walker red, then left a $60-tip for the bartender at the Players Club.

“It doesn’t mean he drank it all himself,” the informant told Page2Live. “As a matter of fact, we’re fairly sure he didn’t. But he bought the first round, and there were seven or eight people with him. There was definitely some kind of a partying going on.”

Fewer than 30 minutes after Goodman left, 23-year-old Scott Wilson was dead. Goodman, 46, at the wheel of his $250,000-Bentley convertible, plowed into Wilson’s Hyundai after allegedly ignoring a stop sign. Goodman suffered minor injuries. No charge has been filed, but the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office and state attorneys are investigating whether Goodman was impaired.

Assistant State Attorney Ellen Roberts, who specializes in high-profile DUI cases, subpoenaed Goodman’s credit card receipt from the Players Club but also those of his friends.

The Players Club’s lawyer, Craig Galle, is traveling and couldn’t be reached.

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Casey Johnson

Socialite Casey Johnson, the 30-year-old Johnson & Johnson heiress who died mysteriously in Los Angeles Monday, was a Wellington fixture as a young woman.

Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, the wild child BFF of aging celebutante Paris Hilton spent winters learning horseback riding at her parents’ Welly home. Johnson was the daughter of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and mom Nancy Sale Johnson.

Both are divorced now, and Sale married NFL great Ahmad Rashad in 2007.

But many in Wellington’s equestrian world remember Casey and the rest of the clan as a carefree bunch who bought the best show horses.

“At one point, the family owned a horse that went to the Olympics,” said TV equestrian analyst Mason Phelps, a Wellington resident. “Casey learned from the best, on the best horses. Casey was here mostly as a child. She learned to ride but never competed like her mom.

“Like a lot of winter residents in Wellington, she lost interest as she grew up and the family moved away.”

Born from billionaire parents –- she was the great-great-great granddaughter of Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson -– Casey ended up the target of tabloid news. She recently was engaged to scandalous reality TV star Tila Tequila.

There was plenty partying in Casey’s life. There were lesbian, and hetero, loves. There were the rehabs and the salacious accusations that her 60-year-old aunt, Lisbet Johnson, stole her boyfriend.

Sale Johnson unloaded the family’s Wellington home to equestrian festival owner Mark Bellissimo for $1.87 million in 2004 and left town. But Sale recently returned to Palm Beach County three weeks ago, and paid $4.95 million for a new pied-a-terre at the Bears Club in Jupiter.

You can also read the story on pbpulse, Casey Johnson, socialite and girlfriend of Tila Tequila, has died

Quirky actress Brittany Murphy (Clueless, 8 Mile, Just Married) was last seen in South Florida in early April. She and husband Simon Monjack, a little known writer-director, caught several tennis matches at the Sony Ericsson on Key Biscayne. Murphy, 32, also the voice of Luanne on the Fox cartoon King of the Hill, was discovered passed out in her shower by her mother Sunday morning in West Hollywood. She was pronounced dead minutes later. Although a Los Angeles coroner says the death appears to have been from natural causes, Murphy battled rumors of drug abuse for years. She was fired last month from the lead role of the movie The Caller. And earlier this year, rumors that Murphy abused prescription drugs were fueled by reports of erratic behavior on the set of Something Wicked, due out next year. Her character reportedly was re-written to fit Murphy’s strange demeanor, which included falling in and out of consciousness. Murphy, who denied suffering from an eating disorder, was famous for her portrayal of mentally unstable characters in movies like Girl, Interrupted and Don’t Say a Word.

PBPulse.com: Actress Brittany Murphy dies in LA at age 32

Jim Sitton, staring at one of his awards for a story titled "Dangerously Dim" (Courtesy b-roll.net)

The WPTV-Channel 5 newsroom is going through the toughest day in its 55-year history.

Tragedy struck the station’s best-known, award-winning photographer, Jim Sitton, on what should have been one of the happiest times of the year.

A gunman related to Sitton’s wife, Muriel, entered their Jupiter home and allegedly shot six people gathered for the Thanksgiving feast. Four have died, including Sitton’s 6-year-old daughter, Makayla. The suspect, Michael Merhige, remains at large.

“Since Makayla was born, Jim has been taking pictures of her every single day to chronicle how she was developing and growing,” said a station insider who asked to remain anonymous. “You’d turn on the computer used for editing tapes, and there’d be pictures of Makayla all over the screen. It’s like everyone at the station knew her.”

Sitton, 48, has been at the NBC affiliate for about 15 years, after a short stint at WPBF-Channel 25. Sitton mostly worked investigative assignments with the station’s Contact 5 reporters, Shannon Cake and Kelley Dunn. Both women spent some time with Sitton at the home after the 10 p.m. shooting.

“He’s the most amazing friend,” Cake said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I just can’t talk about it.”

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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.”

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