November 2-3, 2020 -- Trump and the Garden State Parkway
On Sunday, with two days before Election Day to go, pro-Donald Trump motorists decided to block traffic on the Garden State Parkway near the Cheesequake Service Area at Mile 123. The New Jersey Turnpike Authority stated: "[The caravan] stopped at Cheesequake and eventually continued north. It backed traffic up for about five miles. The vehicles exited at 135 [Clark/Westfield].” It is fitting that the low-information Trump fanatics chose to display their irresponsible antics on the Garden State Parkway. The choice of the toll road should remind voters in New Jersey and around the United States what occurred above the Garden State Parkway in 1989.
On October 10, 1989, while Trump was being investigated for his mob ties to the already-operational Trump Plaza Hotel Casino in Atlantic City, three Trump Organization officials were killed in a suspicious helicopter crash in the Jersey pinelands, just off the Garden State Parkway.. Killed were Trump's Atlantic City operations chief Stephen Hyde, 43; Mark Grossinger Etess, 38, the head of the yet-unfinished Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City; and Jonathan Benanav, 30, the vice president of Trump Plaza Hotel Casino. The pilot and co-pilot were also killed. Hyde, Etess, and Benanav were persons of interest to the FBI, Secret Service, and state law enforcement in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York in money laundering and counterfeiting probes. Etess was the former vice president and general manager of Grossinger's, the hotel in the Catskills owned by his family and where a number of “Borscht Belt” Jewish comedians got their start.
The helicopter was rented by the Trump Organization from Paramount Aviation, but the actual owner of the aircraft was FSQ Air Charter Corporation, one of many murky firms with which Trump has conducted business throughout his jaded business career. Eyewitnesses claim they heard a loud “bang” before the chopper broke up in mid-air and plummeted to the ground. The rear rotor section was found almost a mile from the crash site near Forked River, New Jersey. The pilot, Robert Kent, had been in radio contact with the tower at nearby McGuire Air Force Base, but never indicated any problem with the aircraft. Even more suspicious was Donald Trump’s last-minute change of plans just before the helicopter took off from the 60th Street Heliport on the East River in Manhattan. Trump was to have joined the three executives on the flight, but he said something had come up and he could not join them.
The following video describes Trump's mob activities in and around Atlantic City in the 1980s and the circumstances that took the lives of five people in a Trump-linked mob hit in the skies over the Garden State Parkway.
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