Miami Herald has a great column on Bill Kamal past and present from his childhood days to his DC job at WUSA and then WSVN.
Miami Herald
A steady ascent, then swift fall for TV’s Kamal
Posted on Sat, Nov. 06, 2004
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
A steady ascent, then swift fall for TV’s Kamal
Denied bail and abruptly fired, ex-weatherman Bill Kamal saw the success he had worked so hard to achieve evaporate in a matter of days after his arrest on child-sex charges.
By MARGARIA FICHTNER, MEG LAUGHLIN AND CHARLES RABIN
mlaughlin@herald.com
In the volatile TV news business, where stars flicker and fade, weatherman Bill Kamal managed to succeed, holding a prestigious job in Washington, D.C., for 11 years, followed by 10 years at WSVN-FOX 7.
But his fall has been precipitous and swift.
On Oct. 24, when Kamal was arrested in a Fort Pierce police sting while waiting to meet a supposed 14-year-old boy, allegedly for sex, no amount of knowledge, hard work or success could help him. He was locked up without bail because, as Federal Magistrate Frank J. Lynch put it, he “took the overt step of traveling to St. Lucie County to meet who he thought was a 14-year-old boy for the purpose of sexual conduct.”
Declared a danger to society and abruptly fired, Kamal saw the success he had worked so hard to achieve evaporate in a matter of days.
LOOKING GAUNT
As he entered the courtroom Friday for his arraignment, Kamal looked gaunt, barely recognizable as the hurricane hero who had been on the air 403 times in eight days during the recent serial storms. The proceedings lasted two minutes. Lynch asked Kamal if he understood the charge: “use of a computer . . . to . . . entice an individual under the age of 18 to engage in sexual activity.”
”Yes sir,” said Kamal. His attorney, Jeffrey Voluck, entered a not-guilty plea. The trial begins Dec. 2.
Voluck said his client would not be interviewed. None of Kamal’s Channel 7 colleagues would talk, either. But former colleagues, friends and family did.
”When you know Bill and what he went through to get to where he was, this is all the more tragic,” says Pam Pulner, Kamal’s agent through the 1980s.
Jeanne Mozier, who met Kamal in 1988 when she invited him to be grand marshal of that year’s Apple Butter Festival parade in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., was flabbergasted.
”When you’re . . . in people’s living rooms every day, you’re an almost personal celebrity,” Mozier said. “When you go out in public, it’s a major deal, because people feel they know you. . . . Bill would talk about the responsibilities of it. You had to make sure you always looked good.”
Even when he was nabbed after stepping from his black Jaguar outside a convenience store, Kamal was looking good in his sleeveless shirt, shorts and flip-flops. His booking photo could be an ad for a gentleman’s grooming aid, his face composed, his eyebrows, which a Washington Times reporter once described as ”the best . . . in the weather business,” neatly arched.
The youngest of three boys, Kamal, 47, grew up in a Christian Arab family in Lawrence, Mass. He was a smart, friendly, determined kid who knew as a first-grader at the fortuitously named Wetherbee School that he wanted to be a meteorologist.
”Always, always. That’s the only thing he ever wanted to do,” said Judith Simpson, a classmate at Lawrence High School, from which Kamal graduated in 1974.
”If we had a baseball game, and a storm was pending, [coaches would] check with Billy,” said football coach Andrew Reusch.
Kamal’s senior yearbook photo shows a pudgy kid with an Afro.
”He was probably like 280 pounds,” said Don Saab, who was on the track team with Kamal. Finally, said Saab, “he went on a pretty strict diet. He was just sick of being heavy.”
Pulner said Kamal knew from an early age that he was gay and that his father would have disapproved. He attempted to keep his sexual orientation a secret into his 30s.
Both his parents are now deceased.
FIRST TV JOB
After high school, Kamal went through the highly rated meteorological program at U-Mass in Lowell. His first TV job was in Evansville, Ind., in the 1970s. From there, he went to the Weather Channel in Atlanta and on to WUSA Channel 9 in Washington in the ’80s.
In D.C., his reputation and popularity soared. A bartender in Bethesda, Md., named a drink the Kamal Hurricane. Ronald Reagan greeted Kamal by name. Jeanne Mozier invited him to her festival, because, “We knew that if we brought Bill out, he would bring the TV crews with him. He was very magnetic and charming.”
Dave Pearce, WUSA news director from 1982 to 1995, calls Kamal ”one of the finest weathermen I’ve ever seen.” But in 1992, the station let Kamal go.
”I didn’t want to; I was told to,” said the now-retired Pearce. There ”were innuendos that . . . his alternative lifestyle was too alternative,” he said.
”I remember there was some water-cooler talk after Bill showed up at a company picnic in black Spandex shorts,” said Ron Townsend, Pearce’s former boss.
”It started when Bill got the loop in his ear and went on from there,” Pearce said.
Chuck Cowdry, station manager when Kamal was let go, refused to comment except to say, “I’m going to say a prayer for him now, and hope he gets through it.”
Pulner, who calls Kamal ”a sensitive person and brilliant meteorologist,” says he decided to ”come out in a big way” in D.C. after numerous trips to Miami in the late 1980s and early ’90s, the height of the South Beach gay movement.
”He suddenly went,” said Pulner, “from being a reserved Beltway type in a conservative suit to being a bronze, chiseled standout in edgy clothes.”
Pulner, Townsend and Pearce said they never heard any rumor that Kamal had been with anyone underage.
”I’d stake my life on the belief that Bill Kamal would never intend to hurt anyone,” Pulner said.
MOVES TO MIAMI
Kamal left D.C. and moved to Miami. It took more than a year for him to get the job at WSVN.
Roland Steadham, then the station’s meteorologist, liked Kamal’s audition tape, but his bosses were not impressed. Several weeks went by, and Steadham brought Kamal to the studio to shoot another tape. He was hired. ”There was rumor,” Steadham said. “But for some reason, I guess they kind of overlooked it.”
Kamal took over the top job when Steadham left for WTVJ in 1996.
He bought condos in Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach. Fernando Inguanzo, who met Kamal several years ago at Tropics, a Wilton Manors piano bar, said Kamal was always discreet there.
”He wouldn’t even hold hands with anyone,” Inguanzo said.
Kamal would show up late and sing show tunes.
His best, Inguanzo said, was You’ll Never Walk Alone. ”When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high,” it begins.
Kurt Schmidt, owner of Magnum restaurant and bar in Shorecrest, said Kamal often came in. He’d order crab cakes before work and come back afterward for a glass or two of chardonnay.
”Bill has a sweet, well-trained voice,” said Magnum piano player Walt Lena. “He was so shy, he’d hide behind the piano when he sang. I could see his ego was not that strong — kind of like a little kid’s.”
A week before police arrested Kamal and charged him with enticing a minor, Kamal entered an America Online chatroom called Boyzformen. He made plans to meet ”Billy,” who was actually Neil Spector, a St. Lucie sheriff’s office detective who often poses as a teen in chatrooms. In his e-mails to the supposed teen, Kamal mentioned having sex but said it wasn’t the most important thing. The arrest affidavit quotes Kamal: “I’m really lookin 4 a real son . . . i’m not lookin 4 quick sex.”
SETS UP MEETING
Kamal set up a meeting with ”Billy” and drove to Fort Pierce.
”The LEACH task force [Law Enforcement Against Child Harm] is an excellent operation,” sheriff’s spokesman Mark Weinberg said. “Spector and the team have stopped a lot of sexual predators and protected a lot of children.”
Fred Berlin, founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic, questioned the propriety of pedophile stings based on chatroom setups. Berlin said most people who do what Kamal did are not dangerous and are not “sexual predators.”
The stings ”often catch ambivalent men who are lonely and want acceptance — rarely men who would hurt children,” Berlin said.
St. Lucie Sheriff Ken Mascara said those arrested in the stings have a high prosecution rate.
”The last guy I know of got nine years in federal prison,” Mascara said.
Dan Kamal, 53, Bill’s older brother, traveled from Atlanta for the Wednesday bond hearing but was not allowed to speak.
He told The Herald this: “I know my brother to be a compassionate, intelligent person, who would never harm anyone. His family is asking for compassion for him, as well as us.”
Herald staff writer Gail Epstein Nieves contributed to this report.
