Five Crimes This Year So Insane They Could Only Have Happened In Miami

The year's most uh, striking, crime image.

​Miami is the fictional home of Dexter, Michael Weston and Horatio Caine, so it makes sense that some truly messed up crime goes down in the real 305. Still, it's astounding how the Magic City steps up year after year to deliver acts so depraved and bizarre they make Jeff Lindsay blush.

The past twelve months have been a banner year for Miami-Dade crimes, from cement injecting faux surgeons to elaborate Russian crime plots to illicit taxidermy. Click through for five of Miami's most insane crimes this past year.

One of Molina's creations.

​5. The Ilegally Taxidermying Artist
Enrique Gomez de Molina turned heads at Art Basel satellite fairs with his bizarre amalgamations of taxidermied animal parts, selling one piece for a nifty $10,000 at Scope. But federal agents say Gomez de Molina's works were made using illegally imported exotic animal body parts, from Java kingfishers to slow loris to birds of paradise. He was charged with illegally smuggling in the animal parts, and threatened with up to a $250,000 fine and jail time.

4. Russian Oligarchs' Murderous Fight For An Island
Fisher Island has on-and-off been ranked as America's most expensive zip code. The island off South Beach is reachable only by ferry and is loaded with millionaires' condos. But what few knew until reading New Times writer Gus Garcia-Roberts' jaw-dropping feature a few months ago was that the 216-acre isle has become a pawn in a deadly fight between two Russian billionaire, with accusations of poisonings, KGB-style threats and a kidnapping to Belarus that drew in Hilary Clinton to resolve the affair.