I wanted to see, face to face, what kind of punks attack and beat a wheelchair-bound paraplegic. There were two of them, a hatchet-faced piece of meanness called Ted Roper and his 200-pound sidekick, the expressionless Richard Brown. Both men carry a badge for the Bullhead City Police Department. I…

The man from China sat in his chair and wept. Thousands of miles from his homeland, Quan Lu had been answering questions in an airless room in Florence, Arizona. “It must have been difficult for your wife,” said the man sitting next to Lu, and with that simple remark, the…

Pastor Fred Pettison moved his congregation to midtown Phoenix after his church on the south side was destroyed by a fire bomb. These things happen when you are gay, like Pastor Fred, and your ministry is to homosexuals and lesbians. No one was charged in the arson, one of many…

Last month the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour devoted a segment to Arizona. The idea of the broadcast, loosely speaking, was to discuss the sheer wonder of living in a state where seemingly normal adults have actually elected into office the stunted race-baiter Evan Mecham, tsetse fly survivor Rose Mofford, a Shriners’ caravan…

That’s certainly one viewpoint. But it ignores entirely the faculty’s feeling that its members had no say in campus matters. And Dr. Walker was widely viewed as ruling the campus like Idi Amin Dada. Walker enforced a gag order that forbade all faculty and staff from making any public statements…

The romantic mirage of small-town life is bucolic contentment. This is one of life’s sadder delusions. In remote Arizona, the disputes are loud, frequent and messy. Worse, the intimate potholes of your life fascinate your neighbors. Your debts, your love interests, your spouse’s shingles-it’s all grist at the local coffee…

Here’s an interesting way to begin your day. Lie awake in bed before the sun comes up thinking about explaining to the woman who cares for your 3-year-old that you are not a cocaine dealer. No matter what the morning newspaper says. Television reports had begun airing that charge about…

Over a period of time, I have become more than just skeptical of County Attorney Richard Romley and his partner in the AzScam sting, then-Police Chief Ruben Ortega. Nothing personal. It’s just that after years of covering these two, it is my opinion that both Romley and Ortega are more…

On April 15, Leona Helmsley will report to prison. One of those desperate dowagers who wipes on the cosmetics with a catcher’s mitt, the hotel hostess was convicted of being a tax weasel. On the very same day that Helmsley begins serving her sentence, the rest of us will have…

Abraham Cox, a precocious 7-year-old, attends a progressive school in Tempe. On this particular Friday evening, inside Tanner Chapel A.M.E., Abraham’s parents watch civil rights heroine Rosa Parks sign copies of her autobiography. Their son is devoting considerable energy to slipping artfully within range of the television cameras taping the…

Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien, his bad purple plumpness himself, recently asked all Catholics to boycott Smitty’s grocery chain because the supermarket will be open on Christmas Day. I think that’s a hell of an idea. If there is one sure-fire way to embarrass the sinners tempted to purchase canned goods…

I sat in the church pew while others discussed the dead man. It was Saturday and cool, the noon air so crisp in the desert that it didn’t seem possible a fresh grave had been dug. At the news of Ted Mote’s passing, friends and relatives were so overcome with…

I watched as they unloaded the shooting victims from the ambulance. One after another they were gently lowered to the pavement and then pushed quickly through the emergency-room doors. The victims were indistinguishable on the gurneys with tubes feeding into their veins and pressure bags cloaking their limbs. You could…

Like a parent who has forgotten his child’s name, Dr. Marc Baker tells me for the dozenth time that he is not a member of Earth First!. And for the 12th time, he is correct. It is also true that when FBI agents fired their flares into the desert night…

Ending his weeks of testimony with the sort of outburst you might expect from a witness who had Tourette’s syndrome, paid FBI informant Ron Frazier told the jury that he had been on the verge of gunning down the members of Earth First!. Under cross-examination by defense attorney Gerry Spence,…

After a bellyful of paid informant Ron Frazier and undercover FBI agent Michael Fain, it’s possible to lose sight of what a great country America is. Defendant Dave Foreman, though, has managed to keep his grip on reality. Over lunch one day he explained his sense of patriotism: “Ronald Reagan…

Jane Chapman’s life was wonderful. After college, there was Stanford Medical School, then she and her husband David migrated to Hawaii and it was there, in paradise, that they raised an infant daughter, Lana. One day a doctor told Jane’s husband that he had prostate cancer. David was 35. The…

LS2Moonlight and love songs Never out of date Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate Woman needs man and man must have his mate That no one can deny It’s still the same old story A fight for love and glory A case of do or die The world will…

There was not a sound in the courtroom as the witness identified himself. “My name is Ron Kermit Frazier.” The prosecution has two star witnesses, one an undercover FBI agent, the other this man, a paid informant. Both infiltrated Earth First! and gathered the evidence that led to the arrests…

Last week the fifteen good people in the jury box watched a parade of FBI agents step into the witness stand. This jury, like all juries, is composed of citizens who are chosen because they are like the rest of us. They do not summer in Portofino. They work for…

In Washington, D.C., a gentleman boards a jet and flies across the country to Arizona. This man is a lawyer from a city of lawyers. He is Mr. Daniel Fromstein, a prosecutor with the Department of Justice of the United States. Once in Phoenix, Fromstein must drive from the floor…

This is where you want your children to grow up. Prescott. It is clean. It is beautiful. It is peaceful. On a Sunday afternoon in Prescott, the appearance of tranquillity is everywhere. Just off the town square, the local sports tavern, Penelope Parkenfarker’s, hosts a friendly full house as the…