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Is Speed Kills a true story? The real-life speedboat racer and multimillionaire Don Aronow

John Travolta stars as Don Aronow (renamed 'Ben Aronoff' in 'Speed Kills'), the speedboat racer and multimillionaire murdered in 1987.

‘Speed Kills’ the film loosely based on the life of Don Aronow (‘Ben Aronoff’ in the movie) has been released on Netflix US .

American Don Aronow was a designer, builder and racer of speedboats. He launched Magnum Marine in Florida in 1966 and created the Cigarette, Donzi, Formula and Cary speedboats.

His boats went on to win a whopping 350 offshore races and Aronow himself was a two-time world champion and three-time US champion of offshore racing .

His boats, success and wealth also attracted trouble. Drug traffickers used his Cigarette speedboats to move cocaine.

Aronow was murdered in Miami in his car by hitman Robert ‘Bobby’ Young on 3 February 1987. He was 59.

Young was allegedly paid $60,000 to kill Aronow by Benjamin Barry Kramer, an offshore race boat builder and co-defendant who had a dispute with the multimillionaire and racer.

The film, described as ‘Wolf of Wall Street on boats’ was released in 2018 but received a lukewarm reception with eminent film website Rotten Tomatoes giving it an average rating of only 2.6/10 and IMDB 4 out of 10.

Report by Stef Bottinelli

Hit man’s death closes notorious Aronow case

In 1987, hit man Robert ‘Bobby’ Young shot powerboat mogul Don Aronow in his Mercedes sports car. Young, paid $60,000 for the contract murder, achieved such notoriety for the gangland-style killing that he secured a place in the pantheon of South Florida assassins.

Young, 60, died on Tuesday 31 March 2009 at Jackson Memorial Hospital, apparently of natural causes, authorities said.

“He finally got what he deserved from a higher authority, the death sentence,” said retired Miami-Dade police Detective Greg Smith, lead investigator of the Aronow murder.

Miami-Dade police pursued the ambush slaying for six years, interviewing terrified witnesses and investigating a twisting path of coincidences, murders, mistresses, mobsters, dopers, spies, jealous boyfriends and snitches before finally stumbling upon Young.

“Robert was a cold-blooded killer. He was full of bravado, and very much into himself,” said Assistant State Attorney Gary Winston, who put Young away for Aronow’s slaying in 1995.

“He would love to talk and reveal in what he had done. He was cold and heartless.”

Young had been incarcerated at the Federal Detention Centre in downtown Miami before recently falling ill. He served his sentence for the Aronow murder in Oklahoma, at the same time he was incarcerated in federal prison for cocaine trafficking.

He returned to South Florida in 2001, having fled Oklahoma while on parole before being arrested in Broward County in October 2001 after his ex-brother-in-law gave federal agents his address.

Young was found to have a revolver and $75,000 on him.

After being sentenced to ten years for having the handgun, he was recorded on the Federal Detention Centre phone talking to an associate about planting an assault rifle on his former brother-in-law, according to court records.

“I was very upset I was betrayed by my own family,” Young told a federal agent in 2004.

“I was just broken-hearted and figured maybe justice could be done. I could set him up by putting the rifle into his vehicle and having him arrested. ‘Let him feel the same pain, suffering and fate that I was feeling,” he said.

In January, Young was sentenced to a 27-year prison term for owning the assault rifle. It was but the latest felony conviction in the life of a serial criminal, whose brazen violence was part of the so-called Cocaine Cowboy era in Miami. Young boasted of involvement with gun-running, prostitution rings and violence during the 1970s.

Later, he was thrown in a Cuban jail after island authorities found him on an offshore racing boat with 300 pounds of marijuana. In 1984, he was released along with 21 other Americans in a deal engineered by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.

Back in Miami, Young hooked up with a group of dope peddlers who considered themselves a new version of the 1960s Dixie Mafia crime group. He was convicted for the 1984 murder of Dixie Mafia member John ‘Big Red’ Panzavecchia, in a drug deal gone wrong.

After he shot Big Red dead, Young took the man’s solid gold Rolex, former Miami homicide Detective Nelson Andreu remembered on Tuesday.

“Bobby took it as a prize and was wearing it when we arrested him,” Andreu said. “Looking back, Young was lucky to escape the electric chair.”

In 1995, he pleaded no contest to the contract hit of Aronow, the powerboat king. He had cut a deal with state prosecutors that spared him the electric chair and ensured he would never testify against Benjamin Barry Kramer, offshore race boat builder and co-defendant who allegedly paid Young $60,000 to hit Aronow.

In 1996, Kramer, who once owned a casino and raced powerboats, pleaded no contest to ordering the killing of his rival, Aronow. Kramer, already serving a life sentence on federal drug-smuggling charges, received 19 years in prison – the same time amount of time as Young.

Aronow, 59, a rich and handsome millionaire among the powerboat set, was killed Feb. 3, 1987, outside his USA Racing office in 188th St, Miami – the road dubbed Thunderboat Alley Aronow made famous with his Formula, Donzi, Magnum and Cigarette power boats.

Aronow left his office in his white Mercedes, shortly after visiting a rival boat dealership owned by Kramer. He pulled alongside a Lincoln car with tinted windows. It was from here the hit man opened fire, three bullets striking the powerboat star.

On Tuesday, Smith, the retired detective, called Aronow’s widow, Lillian, to break the news.

“He certainly deserved more than what he got for the death of her husband,” he said.”She was relieved knowing he died in custody.”

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• Mar 9, 2021

Innovators in Boating - N.E. 188th Street & The Famous "Thunderboat Row" (Part Two)

By: Richard Crowder

Last week, in Part One of the story of Thunderboat Row, we explored how the legendary Don Aronow became interested in the new thrill of offshore boating and racing and in 1962, established Formula Boats on a desolate dusty dead-end road in North Miami called NE 188th Street.

We left off with Aronow’s creation and subsequent sale of Formula, then Donzi, then Magnum, his creating of Cigarette, and the start of other builders setting up shop at what was fast becoming known as Thunderboat Row. At the same time, the street was gaining both an admiring but perhaps seedy reputation for some of its underbelly activities involving drug-running. We now look at some of the other builders that called NE 188th street home and the eventual decline of Thunderboat Row.

in 1974. Pepe Nunez, to be joined later by his son Jo, set up Pantera Powerboats on Thunderboat Row. Pantera V-bottoms went on to win many national and world offshore racing titles. Most Panteras are easily recognizable by the hullside graphics featuring a pair of fluorescent green cat’s eyes . Pantera was one of the first makers to utilize the new developing technologies of Kevlar® and carbon fibre in the layup process.

Bob Saccenti, who had known Aronow back in New Jersey, moved south and started working for him at Cigarette Racing Team. With Aronow’s help and blessing, Saccenti started Apache Powerboats in 1978 across and down 188th Street from Cigarette. Aronow had provided Saccenti with the hull and deck moulds which became one of the winningest V-bottom race boats -- the Apache 41, the first of which was the famous #69 Apache Warpath.

Saccenti took in Ben Kramer as a partner in 1982 and immediately set up a race team with Kramer driving and Saccenti on throttles. They won many races and took many titles with Saccenti becoming recognized as one of the best-ever throttlemen.

In 1986 they built the first triple-engine 47-foot Apache Superboat, which became the go-to V-bottom in the Superboat racing class. In the meantime, Kramer built Fort Apache Marina on Thunderboat Row with capacity for two hundred boats in slips and dry-stack storage, as well as a classy restaurant.

After Aronow sold Cigarette Racing Team in 1982, he immediately established USA Racing Team, again on Thunderboat Row. He proceeded to build stealth-looking 39-foot Blue Thunder catamarans for the US Customs Service for hunting down drug smugglers. Then Vice-President George H.W. Bush actually did some prototype testing of the boats with Aronow. Much later I was given a brief ride on one of these at one of the offshore races. The boat was all business.

This caused quite a stir in the go-fast boat world as Aronow had also sold boats to some who used them for drug running since they could outrun most police vessels. Now Aronow had designed and built a boat that would go even faster and be able to run down the smugglers. Those who had previously purchased boats from him for nefarious purposes were not at all pleased.

In 1986, he was negotiating with Kramer to buy his USA Racing Team, and it is said that some cash had come to Aronow as part of the intended sale. But Ben Kramer had also delved into other pursuits that had him indicted for multiple serious drug offences. Because of this, US Customs Services indicated they would not purchase Blue Thunder boats if Kramer was involved.

So the sale was nullified but it is said that Aronow held onto the cash advance. On February 3rd 1987, Don Aronow was shot and killed in his car on Thunderboat Row between his office and Saccenti’s shop. Allan “Brownie” Brown was one of the first on the scene followed closely by Bob Saccenti. The murder remained unsolved for nearly a decade until Ben Kramer was finally charged with hiring a hitman named Robert Young to do the deed. Both were jailed for extended terms.

When I visited N.E. 188th St. in the late 1980s, within a year after the 1987 assassination of Aronow, the manufacturers located there included Magnum, Cigarette, Apache, Pantera, Tempest, and Cougar, along with the huge Fort Apache Marina and what was then the recently vacated Formula facility. At the head of the channel was Hi-Lift Marina, at the time the largest dry-stack storage facility and capable of fork-lifting 35-footers three levels up.

The street already had an unsavory reputation of drug-running in those days, and on that trip I was shown where Aronow was shot while sitting in his Mercedes. I talked to Bob Saccenti and toured Fort Apache Marina, ate in the restaurant there, and saw the 41 Apache Warpath #69 . Almost all of the manufacturers that were there on the street at that time have now moved elsewhere and high and low-rise housing developments have taken over the area.

I was invited back to Thunderboat Row in 1993 during the Miami Boat Show. The purpose was to visit Bobby Moore’s Custom Marine high performance rigging shop located in the original Cigarette facility. I sat across the desk from Bobby in what was Aronow’s original office and maybe even Aronow’s desk. The walls were beautiful wood paneling with rounded corners and Bobby jokingly wondered if maybe when the building was torn down there might be cash stuffed in the rounded corners.

Bobby Moore was a multi-time world offshore racing champion and was considered one of the world’s best-ever throttlemen at the time. He had maintained boats for both Dick Bertram and Don Aronow and is credited with “inventing” the throttleman position in racing. I had met and interviewed Bobby many times in the past at races. He was a soft-spoken and true gentleman and always had time for you. And boy did he know his stuff. I was at his shop with the specific purpose to set a world speed record and I had invited my good friend and now fellow BoatBlurb writer, Captain Bill Jennings, himself a past world champion offshore racer, to join me.

The idea was to take an off-the-shelf production boat, powered by off-the-shelf production engines and propellers and setup for pleasure boating, and set an unofficial world speed record as the 'World’s Fastest Production Pleasure Boat.' The boat was a new 40-ft Douglas Skater pleasure catamaran powered by one of the very first pairs of Mercury Racing 900SC production engines coupled with regular Number Six outdrives. The package had been purchased by a husband and wife, and Bobby Moore was rigging it all up for them.

Bobby had just installed a new prop set that morning and thought the new choice would gain a few more miles per hour. I must say I was a bit nervous, but I trusted Bobby Moore’s experience and know-how implicitly. With a full load of Bobby at the helm, Bill, myself, and the husband and wife owners on board, we set off onto the Intracoastal headed south toward Miami where the channel was fairly wide.

We had to make several passes at well below full throttle due to the sighting ahead of large sportfishing yachts churning up wakes of six feet or more. Finally, we had a clear path and Bobby went for full throttle and optimum trim. Captain Bill had a handheld GPS and I took a picture of the screen as we topped out at maximum RPM at 141.3 mph (227 km/h) with five people on board. We all agreed that made for a fairly fast production pleasure boat and the boat owners were very pleased. And yes, it was an unofficial world speed record and it has been surpassed many times since then. As Mercury’s production engines increased in horsepower and production boats became stronger and lighter the standards have gone much higher with time.

It is sad for me to report that Bobby Moore died last year at his home in North Carolina. His son Billy, himself a seasoned and respected and winning throttleman, has taken over Bobby Moore’s Custom Marine on N.E. 188th Street, which is now a marina as well as a custom rigging shop. Still located in the old Cigarette facility, it along with quiet Hi-Lift Marina at the head of the street are sadly all that remain of what was once busy and notorious Thunderboat Row. Except for the vivid memories of all who set foot there in its heyday.

For a little extra throwback, you can watch the 2009 documentary "Thunder Man" below:

#culture #innovatorsinboating #formula #formulaboats #cigarette #donzi #apache #pantera

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VÉHICULE Presents: Ben Kramer's Apache 47' Powerboat vs. Haulover Inlet

VÉHICULE presents Ben Kramer 's Apache 47' race powerboat, freshly restored to its original state. After over a year of tireless work between 2019 and 2020, the good-as-new masterpiece finally had its first startup in 2020 and is ripping Floridian waters once again.

Apache powerboats were built on Miami's legendary NE 188th Street . Dubbed as "Thunderboat Row," this strip of land was first developed by Don Aronow as early as the 1960s and grew to be the world's capital of powerboat manufacturing.

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In the summer of 2020, VÉHICULE had the exclusive chance to speak with powerboat legend and race car driver Lorne L.—current owner of this historic Apache. Check out the story of his boat's provenance and how this restoration project came to be   here .

Read more about Ben Kramer in VÉHICULE .

VÉHICULE'S CONTENTS ARE THE PRODUCTS OF INTENSIVE, DIRECT SCRUTINY MAKING FOR A CONCISELY TAILORED CATALOG OF AVANT-GARDE TRANSPORTATION. IT ISN'T INTENDED FOR EVERYONE. LEAVE YOUR E-MAIL TO BE THE FIRST TO HEAR ABOUT VÉHICULE RELEASES.

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