ORLANDO — A Texas man is asking a prominent Orlando lawyer to make good on a supposed $1 million challenge.
Dustin Kolodziej, a recent South Texas College of Law graduate, sued Cheney Mason last week in Houston federal court. During a 2006 Dateline NBC appearance, Mason said he would pay $1 million to anyone who could show how his client, Nelson Ivan Serrano, gunned down four people in the time prosecutors said he did.
Mason said the lawsuit was ridiculous. "I'm really unconcerned about it," Mason said. "When it's over, somebody or some group of people out there are going to have to face the consequences of filing such a false, stupid lawsuit."
Prosecutors argued that Serrano killed his former business partner, a prosecutor and two others at a Polk County manufacturing plant in 1997. Serrano was eventually convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
A surveillance video captured Serrano at an Atlanta hotel the day of the murders, but prosecutors explained that Serrano bought airline tickets under three names so he could appear to be in Atlanta the afternoon of the slayings.
Serrano's attorneys said it would have been impossible for him to commit the murders and make it back to Atlanta, an argument Mason repeated during the television interview.
In his suit, Kolodziej says he retraced Serrano's route — flying from Atlanta to Orlando, driving to Bartow and then getting back — within the required time. He sent a video of the trip to Mason along with a letter demanding the $1 million, but Mason refused to pay.
News
