There wasn’t much left of Janet when Bob Hirschfeld got done with her. A tall, soft-spoken woman, she takes great pride in her rail-straight posture and unshakable composure. But after three hours of questioning, she seemed shrunken and lost–slumping against the courtroom table and weeping into her hands. Janet knew…
The feds have two questions for top officials of Arizona Public Service Company: What did you know? And when did you know it? New Times has learned that federal investigators plan to visit Phoenix this week to interview several high-level APS managers as part of a probe into whether the…
Ivan Kapetanovic says it happened “just like on TV.” As Kapetanovic and two friends–Marko Belinic and Zeljko Vusir, both Croatian citizens–strode across the parking lot of Scottsdale’s Los Arcos Mall on May 31, 1991, a horde of armed federal agents swung into action. “Down on the ground, now! You’re under…
Tom Owens leans against the gas pump at a convenience mart in Pinetop–a tiny, tree-shaded town on the edge of the Mogollon Rim–and spits a huge glob of tobacco juice on the asphalt. As he fills the tank on his cherry-red pickup, he glares disapprovingly at the clipboard-toting young woman…
Ellen Avilla was a good soldier in the war on disease. For almost five years, while working as a technician in the Arizona Department of Health’s state laboratory, Avilla performed tests on thousands of blood samples–checking them for HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), hepatitis, measles and other infectious and…
Mark Sullivan can smell blood. His body tenses, focusing all energy on the prey. Only 40 yards away, a huge lion sits under a bush, with languid eyes fixed on the human hunters moving slowly toward him. Crouching, Sullivan scoops up a bit of dust and watches as it trickles…
Casinos Checked Out Babbitt @deck:His Denials of Gambling Don’t Fit Record @body:Four Las Vegas casinos ran credit checks on Bruce Babbitt in 1976, when as Arizona attorney general he is said to have run up substantial gambling debts, a previously undisclosed grand jury transcript and a report by the Arizona…
The lead story in the June 9 Washington Times was a bombshell. Under a page-one banner headline boldly proclaiming, “Casinos Checked Out Babbitt, His Denials of Gambling Don’t Fit Record,” Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper gave Washingtonians something to chew on with their morning coffee, as he recounted the lurid…
We all remember the television images of the Gulf War. The pilots flashing the “thumbs up” sign as their jets soared skyward. The video-game smart bombs, streaking across the screen like errant Pac-men, striking and consuming their targets. And the display of roaring rockets that splashed a brilliant line of…
The bomb that ripped through New York’s World Trade Center on February 26 sent a bone-rattling message to everyone whose job consists of keeping airports, military bases and other high-profile targets safe from harm: tighten security. But even as the smoke was clearing from the shattered skyscraper, the nation’s big…
Maybe it was the glint of sunlight off the gun barrels, or the sudden movement of men silhouetted against the desert sky. Whatever it was that caught Linda Mitchell’s eye and caused her to pause by the picture window of her secluded home near Buckeye that day in 1990, the…
Defenders of 12-year-old Kathryn Tomassoni say she is a horribly mistreated waif, driven by years of violent abuse to kill her adoptive mother, Lydia Tomassoni. Prosecutors claim that Kathryn wasn’t abused, but is, in fact, a calculating killer who coldly planned the murder of her mother, shot her while she…
Sean Morgan eats a peanut butter sandwich for lunch every day. “This is all I can afford,” grouses the 20-year-old Arizona State University sophomore, as he leans against a tree on the campus lawn and nibbles his Skippy and Wonder bread combo. “That’s why the people in there piss me…
For more than five years, William Cheshire grimly presided over the Arizona Republic’s predictably far-right editorial pages as the state’s professor of conservatism, sternly lecturing readers on a variety of subjects in his courtly, patrician style. But there was one basic lesson of human nature the professor himself failed to…
How does a debt-ridden electric company with some of the highest rates in the nation and a long rap sheet of safety violations transform itself into one of the country’s top utilities? Officials at Arizona Public Service Company have the answer: Issue a press release. APS President and CEO Mark…
Mayor Paul Johnson thinks he may have found a new way to keep spring training alive in the Valley while enabling Phoenix to score its own major league baseball team–all with one swing of the fiscal bat. While the Arizona State Legislature ponders a proposal to levy a quarter-cent sales…
Shopkeepers at the Camelback Esplanade–the jewel in the crown of developer-turned-governor J. Fife Symington III–are willing to admit the newly elected Arizona leader may be a good politician. But they insist he is a lousy landlord. They’ve endured two years of anemic business traffic through the Esplanade’s twin towers and…
Editor’s note: On February 23, New Times sent staff writer Darrin Hostetler to Saudi Arabia to cover the Gulf War. Shortly after his arrival, Hostetler gained access to Kuwait City and witnessed the final days of Operation Desert Storm. Hostetler is the only Arizona reporter covering the liberation of Kuwait…
U.S. pilots flying Gulf War missions in Apache Attack Helicopters say they are tired of battling the enemy. But it’s not the Iraqi army that’s making them weary. The shooting war is over, and the opposing forces have been easily routed. The pilots’ primary adversary, they insist, is much more…
The Kuwaitis were smiling and gesturing grandly as they led us to the bodies. Half a dozen reporters who had arrived in newly liberated Kuwait City the night before wanted to see evidence of the atrocities inflicted by the Iraqi army during its final, frantic hours of occupation. The locals…
The first battle of Operation Desert Bull began two weeks ago when Phoenix television stations aired a short clip of Terry Goddard in his naval reserve uniform. Fife Symington reacted angrily, accusing his opponent in the governor’s race of taking advantage of Persian Gulf patriotism. “I’m not wearing a uniform,”…
Miss Manners, the 1920s bible of Victorian etiquette for polite society, is quite clear on the subject of money. “Never discuss money at the dinner table or in public, and especially not with strangers. Discussion of the ~`haves’ and `have-nots’: those who have met with fortune and those who have…
