A&E’s Neighborhood Wars To Showcase Herkimer Drug Thug Curtis Cool, AKA Curtis Doolen

Herkimer Crime Goes Big Time Again

Our partner, Junkin Media, the producer of A&E’s popular Neighborhood Wars, has licensed our videos of our former neighbor, Curtis Cool, aka Curtis Doolen. Cool was the first of a series of abusive neighbors next door at 328 Pleasant Avenue who tried to drive us from our home. 328, allegedly controlled by Herkimer County’s largest producer of meth amphetamines, was later home to drug dealer Kimberly Vargas, aka Kim Bormann, and her son Jordan Bormann. Their harassment and the hulking Jordan’s savage assault on me (Berry) was the subject of the first A&E documentary for which we provided the clips. (Herkimer DA Jeff Carpenter ensured Jordan was fined $200 and sent home to his mother.)

Herkimer Monster Mom Kim Vargas — Kimberly Bormann Vargas. Sadly, not a caricature.) Son Jordan Bormann in backgrfound

Junkin Producer Evan Garland suggested the Curtis episode after coming across our blog post about Herkimer Police Officer Jason Crippen refusing, as duty officer, to register a complaint about Cool’s obvious menacing and criminal harassment. You’ll be seeing extracts from the same clips Crippen saw. See if you agree with him.

Evan and his team are brilliant at separating the wheat from the chaff in the original clips and sharing the resulting gripping footage with A&E’s worldwide audience.

Here’s the blog post that sparked Evan’s interest:

Officer Jason Crippen, Curtis Cool And The Nanny Nanny Boo Boo

I’ll post a link to the Cool episode when it’s available.

Stay safe, Herkimer.

“Where Have All The Bodies Gone?” Redux: Herkimer County Coroner Race Heats Up: Dan Enea vs. Vincent Iocovozzi

Stephen Ames Berry

11/7/24 Update: Vincent Iocovozzi won, 2,970 to 2,557. Congratulations to Mr. Iocovozzi on his win. Perhaps he’ll uncover some murder victims on his watch.

The Herkimer County District 3 Coroner’s race is no longer a shoo-in for an Enea. Herkimer’s Enea family members, mostly all funeral directors, usually run unopposed or very gently against each other.

This year, though, Herkimer funeral director Vicent Iocovozzi is running against Dan Enea. Both are contending for the seat vacated by Dan Enea’s uncle, Vincent Ena. Iocovozzi appears well-qualified, having the professional qualifications Daniel Enea lacks. But says he’ll get.

Herkimer Coroners Vincent Enea (leftg) and nephew Daniel Enea — Herkimer Coroners Vincent Enea (left) and nephew Daniel Enea

Refreshingly, Iocovozzi vows “to never use my position for my own financial gain when it comes to involving family’s decisions pertaining to the choice of a Funeral Service Firm”. Here’s the letter to the My Little Falls newspaper in support of Iocovozzi that triggered a brouhaha. Daniel Enea responded on his Facebook page.

The appropriately somber Vincent Iocovozzi.

We have no dog in this fight. Just still seeking an answer to our 2016 post, “Where Have All The Bodies Gone?” Because the Herkimer crime figures are still unbelievably murder-free over the long haul of the Eneas as our coroners. If you’ve risked walking crime-ridden Herkimer’s streets over the last decade, or been menaced or assaulted by its cop-coddled gang filth, you’ll find those stats hard to believe.

May the best man win.

Stay safe, Herkimer. Things are improving, but this isn’t over yet.

Here’s our 2016 post:

Where Have All The Bodies Gone? Is Herkimer’s Coroner Doing The Job?

Climate Migration and the Gangs of the Rust Belt. A Cautionary Tale

Stephen Ames Berry

Moving north to climate safety? Lovely county up here, but it’s not all apple blossoms and 4H. Please read this book before you make any firm plans: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D7SW861Y

Wife Linda and I relocated from Sarasota to Central New York in 2013. We’d done our homework. We knew Florida was doomed and that the Rust Belt was a sweet spot climate safety zone. And so far that’s proven true.

We did our homework, checked out Realtor, identified possible relocation spots, pulled the crime stats for those places we could afford, and bought a very nice old house for very little money–very little being what we had. Herkimer, a historic New York village near Utica, became our home.

We moved in on March 13, 2013. Soon after that, the long years of warfare began with the trafficking gangs that controlled Herkimer, their presence hidden from research–the police didn’t register complaints—statistically, Herkimer’s crime rate was similar to Nantucket’s. Herkimer had gotten rid of many unwelcomed newcomers before. Two more “old, weak people” didn’t seem much of a challenge. They had no understanding of the power of social media. But we did.

We videoed it all blogged about it and fielded a YouTube channel through all those long years. And now that it’s over and we won–with a lot of help from the Feds–I put it all in the book, which relies heavily on our blog and the videos. You wouldn’t believe me otherwise. “What county is that?” we sometimes asked each other.

It’s all in the book: the in-your-face corruption, the wholesale drug and child trafficking, the protected, gang-run neighborhoods, the menacing, the poison gas attacks, the blogger beatings, the cop-proof thugs.

I’m a science fiction writer. This is my first and last work of nonfiction. I didn’t enjoy writing it. But we all have a duty to warn. Pass it on. There are a lot of Herkimers and ambush predators up here in the Rust Belt.

From Gork’s summary of the related X post:

The post promotes Stephen Ames Berry’s memoir “This Is Our Place!”, detailing a Florida family’s decade-long struggle against a Rust Belt trafficking gang, tying into climate migration—a concept supported by a 2021 study in Nature Climate Change predicting 200 million climate migrants by 2050 due to rising sea levels and economic shifts.
The Rust Belt’s transformation from industrial decline to a potential climate migration hub is underscored by Danny Schleien’s 2021 Medium article, which notes its historical population loss reversed as people flee coastal climate risks, challenging the narrative of its permanent economic stagnation.
Berry’s work aligns with emerging research, like a 2023 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, linking climate-driven displacement to increased crime rates, offering a gritty, firsthand perspective on gang activity amid environmental upheaval.

A&E’s Neighborhood Wars Showcases Herkimer Thugs Jordan Bormann and Mom Kim Vargas

Stephen Ames Berry
Linda J. Kaidan

We’re delighted to announce that herkimerpost.com is now partners with Junkin Media, the producers of A&E’s hugely popular Neighborhood Wars. The series is currently the third most popular show on A&E and 252nd overall on TV. It streams on 11 services with all episodes available.

Our first Herkimer Neighborhood Wars show, Season 6, Episode 14, aired on May 28th. Entitled “All Barking”, it’s part two of the episode. It features Herkimer’s own Kim Vargas, aka Kim Bormann and her son, Jordan Bormann, harassing their elderly neighbors and sending one of them–me–to distant Albany Medical with a traumatic brain injury. In its first week alone, the Bormann episode had 483,000 views, per the A.C. Nielsen ratings, double that of our well-viewed Herkimer Child Trafficking series.

Junkin Producer Evan Garland reached out to us after coming across my YouTube video of our confrontation with expectant-mom-tasering cop Jason Crippen. Evan asked for more videos, to date licensing eleven of them. The May 28th episode is a skillful editing of three of our Vargas-Bormann YouTubes: Yard Nazis, Blinded by the Light and Murder on Their Mind. The HD quality is flawless, the editing brilliant, the narration superb, the action intense. The audio is so crisp you can hear my head slamming kachunk! onto the pavement from Bormann’s murderous shove.

Which of Herkimer’s abundant thugs may be up next on A&E? From the videos they’ve already licensed, I’d guess Jason Crippen, Joyce Barton, Shianne Hill and Curtis Doolen, aka Curtis Cool. (We have more.)

Stephen Berry on camera interview by Evan Garland of Neighborhood Wars. Linda Kaidan serves as Production Assistant. ("I'm not going to be interviewed, Evan. The lights make me look like a freshly dead ghoul.") — Stephen Berry on-camera interview by Evan Garland of Neighborhood Wars. Linda Kaidan serves as the Production Assistant. (“I’m not going to be interviewed, Evan. The lights make me look like a freshly dead ghoul.”)

We spent an intense but enjoyable afternoon online with Evan and his team, interviewed about the Vargas-Bormanns, Bormann’s attack, Herkimer crime, police misconduct, the village’s history, and the region’s importance as a climate change refuge–enough material for many future episodes.

Neighborhood Wars is always thirsting for fresh content. And our cameras are always rolling, awaiting auditions.

Stay safe, Herkimer.

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Here’s our 2016 post:

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