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torturing another man who was tied to a chair. Though this tape has
never been found, Deidre is probably telling the truth about it.
Torturing somebody and videotaping it is certainly consistent with what
we now know about Kosta Fotopoulos. Also, there is at least one other
person who says he saw tapes and films that were to be kept secret.
Gus Moamis, who at twenty-four was one of the oldest of the boardwalk
habitues, recalls: "I walked into Dee's house one day. When I walked
in the front door their[Kosta and Deidre] were watching this movie.
All I caught was a quick glance of somebody shoottig somebody and then
Kosta flipped the tape off real quick and he got all over me; shit
about me being there, what the hell was I doing in the house and why
didn't I knock and like that. Kosta had a rule, where Dee was staying
you weren't allowed. To be there you had to be there while Kosta
wasn't there.
"The next morning I was over there and Dee had a box, a little steel
box, it was pushed under the bed. When I come into the room she had
the box opened because I had bought her-well, let's just say I had
bought her a toy and I was getting ready to go through the tapes and
she slammed the box real quick on me and locked it. It had a lock on
it and she pushed it back under the bed. The next time I seen that box
it went from her to Lori, [Lori Henderson, Deidre's friend and lover]
and then it went to Kosta.
I never seen it no more but I believe there were more tapes than just
that one."
No one but Kosta knows what happened to the man being tortured in
Kosta's film, or how many others met a similar fate. J. R for one, has
a rather grim view of the possibilities.
"There were a lot of kids disappearing from that boardwalk," J. R.
says, "maybe one a week. I think Kosta might have been taking them in
the woods and shooting them."
While J. R."s comment is an eerie echo of Kosta's joke to Dina about
cleaning up the boardwalk by "taking a few bums into the woods and
shooting them," there is no evidence that this was happening.
Certainly there were kids who would hang out on the boardwalk for a few
weeks and then disappear, but that is to be expected among such a
transient population.
While Kosta was violently jealous of any man who slept with Deidre, he
apparently was not threatened by having his friend Peter Kouracos go
out with her. In fact, he encouraged it.
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Kouracos took Deidre out twice. He says he did not single her out or
have any special attraction to her.
"I didn't have anybody else to take out," he says, "and Kosta made it
clear that she was available."
The first time Peter took Deidre out it was primary night for the local
elections. To Deidre, the street kid and high school dropout, this
must have seemed like pretty heady company. Kouracos, after all, was a
good-looking guy, bright and articulate, whose large vocabulary made
conversations more interesting. He was always well groomed and well
dressed, favoring three-piece suits. Furthermore, Peter was plugged
into the local power source. He had worked in several local Republican
campaigns, and among his friends he counted city commissioners and
State Attorney John Tanner, for whom Kouracos had once worked as an
unpaid aide. To Deidre's eye, Kouracos must certainly have seemed like
a fellow who could have squired any number of young ladies about town,
but he had chosen her.
Kouracos, who was licensed as a firearm dealer, told Deidre that he had
met Kosta at an International House of Pancakes, where Kosta had been
introduced to him as a fellow gun enthusiast. Kouracos took Kosta
outside and showed him a new shotgun, and before long they were fast
friends. "I was an usher at their wedding," he told her.
Kouracos and Deidre went first to City Hall to watch the vote count
come in, and it was there that Kouracos observed what he would regard
as Deidre's finest quality: her ability to do arithmetic quickly in her
head. As the votes came in from different areas Deidre was able to
immediately move them to the correct columns in her head and call out
the totals for each candidate.
"She had an incredible facility for juggling numbers in her head, and
counting votes," Kouracos says.
Later they went to a party at the home of City Commissioner Bud
Asher.
Asher and his wife, Dawn, were taken with Deidre, who had worn an
alluring new dress for the occasion. Later, the Ashers told Peter that
Deidre had been the life of the party.
Peter wasn't so sure. Just before the couple left the Asher home that
night, Deidre did something to embarrass KourDeidre acos in front of
his friends. Dawn Asher had bought dozens of submarine sandwiches at
The Subway for the party.
Now, as the party wound down, Deidre asked if she could take home the
leftovers. Dawn Asher told her she could.
"Great. I'll cut them up into smaller pieces and sell them for a buck
each at Top Shots," Deidre announced. Peter turned red. Later, Deidre
told him that she had been only kidding. But Peter thinks she was
serious. Kouracos says he didn't want to take Deidre out again.
But he did take her out, this time for the general election.
He took her, he says, because she was good with numbers.
If Deidre Hunt had taken a minor role in the lives of Daytona's
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