Story on Largo firefighter website had familiar ring to blogger

The articles paranormal researcher and author Sinthyia Darkness publishes on her blog can range from sublime profiles of haunted cemeteries, to current events blurbs, to retellings of tragic incidents in Florida's history.

One of those accounts, which Miami-based Darkness posted in February 2008, bore a setting familiar to local residents:

"On Sunday March 29, 1953, there occurred a disaster for which the city of Largo is famous," she wrote.

The 1,300-word article told the story of one of the worst fires in the city's history, a blaze that killed 33 elderly residents of Littlefield's Nursing Home.

The story wasn't just slapped together from random bits and pieces from the Internet like so many other blog posts — it was a labor of love, and hours of research, Darkness said.

"I went to the library for several weeks sifting through old newspapers researching this story," Darkness said.

But, to her surprise, she found that a year after her story was published at sinthyiadarkness.blogspot.com, someone else had taken her story, published it word for word, except for one change:

"Special thanks to the ladies at the Largo library," Darkness wrote at the end of the story.

"Special thanks to the ladies at the Largo library, more thanks to Tony Massaro for collecting the history," the copied version read.

That site was www.iaff2427.org, the official website of the Professional Fire Fighters of Largo, and Tony Massaro, an employee there.

After being called out by the author of the article last week, the fire union has since removed it from its website. But Darkness is still fuming.

"I am really shocked as well that they left those credits in but yet removed my name and added his, a man who had absolutely nothing to do with the story," she said.

Dale Rosko, president of the union, said any infringement on Darkness' work was unintentional.

"It was supposed to be thanks to one of the firefighters for finding it," Rosko said. "They weren't trying to do anything wrong. We did explain it was an accident."

Though apologies aren't enough for Darkness.

She is also asking for compensation from the fire union, which had been using the story on its site since August of last year.

Dominick Tao can be reached at (727) 580-2951 or dtao@sptimes.com