In his first moments of freedom in almost nine years, Victor Donald bought coffee and sunflower seeds at a Circle K, then asked his wife, Leticia, to cook him a bowl of grits. Superior Court Judge Frank Galati had just released the 34-year-old Phoenix resident from prison after an extraordinary…
A Maricopa County jury took only a few hours last week to inform an aggrieved bear hunter that his lawsuit was way off target.That’s how long the panel deliberated in the case of Paul Hobel, who had sued a Utah man after an April 1997 shooting accident on the San…
The tale that Kim Logerquist told on the morning of January 12, 1992, was shocking. Logerquist sat in the offices of a Green Bay, Wisconsin, attorney and spoke of her onetime pediatrician, Dr. John Danforth. Then 29, the nurse said she’d recently had “flashbacks” of events that allegedly had happened…
This is a story about three camouflaged hunters, two big guns, two dead cows, one bear, and a stray bullet.It happened on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, about 200 miles from Phoenix, and is now being told in Maricopa County Superior Court. A jury has been asked to decide…
DJ Logic — Cajun House, Scottsdale: Extremely focused and fresh live band infused with late-Miles sensibilities mixes and matches seamlessly with spinmaster Jason Kibler (he’s Logic). Jill Scott — Celebrity Theatre: Philadelphia soul sister wowed the packed house at this venerable theater-in-the-round, saucy, sultry and sunny all at once. And…
Last spring, the Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church in west Phoenix seemed ready to implode. Families and friends — most of whom had fled the oppressive Communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in the 1980s for a new life in the States — had become blood enemies. Elim’s controversial pastor, Dorin Druhora,…
In April 1999, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Michael McVey sentenced Lucia America Diaz to five years intensive probation on charges that she stalked her onetime gynecologist and fired bullets into his Glendale office. The judge could have sent the Mesa woman to prison for 12 years, but at the…
If you’re thinking of hiring a woman by the name of Connie Zakrajsek to be your attorney, think again. Maricopa County court officials recently learned that Zakrajsek — who has held herself out as a lawyer “in good standing” — is anything but.Now, judges have been warned to be on…
Phoenix native Debbie Knight says she’s satisfied with the prison sentence meted out November 9 to infamous “Internet Doctor” Pietr Hitzig. Hitzig was sentenced in a Baltimore federal court to almost four years in prison after his conviction on 33 counts of illegally prescribing medicine, often to patients he treated…
Dr. Brian Finkel, the Phoenix abortion doctor now under criminal investigation for allegedly molesting several of his patients, has been suspended from practicing medicine.Citing a recent New Times article that detailed the allegations and Phoenix police reports, the Arizona Board of Osteopathic Examiners voted on October 13 to suspend the…
A vase of plastic flowers rests on its side atop a tiny unmarked grave in Section 53 of Phoenix’s Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery. Valeria Rico Romero was 10 months old when she drowned in a bathtub in September 2000. Valeria’s 24-year-old mother says that, maybe someday, she’ll be able to…
On August 31, Arizona State Prison inmate Mark Koch finally got some good news. It happened more than five years after prison officials transferred him to a super-maximum unit in Florence, solely because he’s an alleged gangbanger. In a decision that is sending ripples through the criminal justice system, U.S…
Editor’s Note: The names of the women who filed police reports against Dr. Brian Finkel have been changed to protect their privacy. Carol awoke in her Phoenix home on the morning of March 1, 2000, dreading the ordeal ahead. “I’m a grown adult,” she says, “and I had made an…
The Arizona Supreme Court on July 16 upheld the death-penalty conviction of James “Butch” Harrod in the 1988 execution of Phoenix heiress Jeanne Tovrea. While the high court’s unanimous ruling pushes the 48-year-old Harrod one step closer to execution, it does nothing to get to the bottom of one of…
A federal judge has convicted Fen-Phen doctor Pietr Hitzig of illegally prescribing the now-banned diet-drug combination over the Internet to patients he’d never examined in person. The 58-year-old West Virginia man faces up to 104 years in prison when he is sentenced in Baltimore on August 16.One of Hitzig’s 12…
I was watching CNN on the evening of June 1. The news hit me hard. “It was the beginning of the Sabbath weekend,” anchor Bill Hemmer said, “and countless young Israelis were out to enjoy a Friday night. The mood shattered, though, when a suicide bomber wandered into the crowd…
Nancy Etta Elliston, the longtime leader of Arizona’s private fiduciary industry, was sentenced Friday afternoon to six years in prison for stealing money from clients over a period of several years. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Louis Araneta ordered the 50-year-old Glendale resident to report immediately to the state prison…
A few hours after Kelly Blake set fire to herself and her three kids on the morning of March 20, 1998, a Phoenix police detective spoke with her surviving child.Detective Dave Swain had the unthinkable job of telling John Fausto Jr., then 14, that his 9-year-old sister was dead, and…
Jane Dee Hull turned around and smiled at the two widows who were standing behind her.”I’m happy to have this bill in front of me — at last,” the governor said, moments before she signed into law House Bill 2393. “I know how important this is to you and everyone…
Prostitutes often frequent the parking lot of the Tempe Bowl on Apache Boulevard, so police keep a close eye on the area. When Officer R.M. Monteton cruised the lot on the evening of September 12, 2000, he got an eyeful. Monteton saw a man and a woman having sex on…
The tortured personal and legal saga of Luis Sharpe took yet another turn April 19 when a judge released the former Arizona Cardinals star to a Phoenix drug rehabilitation center.Sharpe appeared before hearing officer Aimee Burr Faust wearing a black-and-white-striped jail outfit that said “Sheriff’s Inmate — Unsentenced” on its…
Federal authorities prosecuting the infamous “Internet Doctor,” Pietr Hitzig, visited the Valley late last month as their case against the West Virginia man nears trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Manuelian and two others conducted interviews and gathered evidence in preparation for their case against Hitzig, who is now scheduled to…
