But the sheriff saved his harshest discipline for the employees who released Adams' confession tape to the media. He fired one, demoted another and suspended yet another. In response to Cook's actions, his opponent in the general election took out a recall petition against him--even before Cook had been sworn in for his second term. While Cook's career is under attack, Adams is home free. The Mohave County Attorney's Office decided not to pursue criminal charges against him. Typical of Mohave County, the office wasn't notified of the charges against Adams until more than a month after the investigation began. The sheriff hasn't said much about the incident, except that he denies a cover-up. He has been somewhat less than entirely candid, however. When several members of the media in Mohave County first questioned him about the "porno" video, the sheriff said there was no such tape. In an interview with New Times, Cook nodded his head "yes" when asked if the reason he denied the tape existed came down to semantics. He didn't consider a striptease "pornographic."
@rule:
@body:The twins are on the run again. After the county prosecutor in charge of MAGNET cases wired them $85 at a Western Union in Las Vegas, they became paranoid that police would track them down. A member of the Aldabbagh family lives in Las Vegas, as well. And everyone at Solid Gold--now called Dream River--knows that they were the ones who spied for the police. "There was a girl, Sheryl, she ran into some problems," one dancer said recently, "so she came here to work for the cops. . . . Her boyfriend used to come in here with a wire."
For Sheryl and Milton, that's just one more thing to worry about. They are on their own, and they know it. They can't contact their friends from home, and they have few friends from Mohave left. At least they've had enough of working for the police, after a stint last month with another narcotics enforcement team in Oregon ended abruptly--they think they were let go because of word of the trouble they caused in Mohave County. "We kind of wanted to get out of that line of work, anyway," Sheryl says. But finding real jobs remains difficult. How do they explain their employment for the last two years? And, they say, MAGNET won't even give them references. The twins remain desperate, angry, helpless and vengeful. They were used, degraded and humiliated. And now they think they're in danger.
"We were put in the same position we were after we were arrested, except now we have our car," Sheryl said in December. Actually, they don't even have that anymore: Earlier this month, strapped for money, they sold it for $4,000 below book value.
