In Larry Debus’ game, you have to play all the angles if you want to become one of the best. And he’s long been known as one of the best in town. The veteran defense attorney knows that a jury will take stock of how his clients behave, dress and…
The Pink Cat slumps on a folding chair in a makeshift dressing room at Phoenix Civic Plaza. The small cuts beneath his eyes sting, his hands ache, his arms throb. But Scott Walker’s pride hurts worse than his body. He heard the boos and the derisive meows from the small…
In December 1990, New Times profiled Glenna Phelps’ fourth-grade class at Hamilton School in a story headlined “The Real War on Drugs.” Staff writer Paul Rubin interviewed many of Mrs. Phelps’ students at that time for the story. Five years later, Rubin tracked down Mrs. Phelps – who retired after…
Last March, Eve Edwards took advantage of what she sensed was a grand opportunity. She knew her ex-boyfriend, Jerry Ingalls, was immersed in a legal battle with his ex-wife–a top Dial Corporation executive named Joan Potter. Edwards also knew Ingalls had been talking about suing Dial for allegedly conspiring with…
An investigative audit of the Office of the Court Monitor–an agency created in 1991 to assure that court orders handed down in the Arnold v. Sarn lawsuit are implemented–has been completed. Audit results are expected to be made public by the end of the year. Dennis Metrick, program manager at…
State Senator Mark Spitzer strode to the podium at a Prescott hotel and got to the point. The subject of the State Bar seminar in late September was mental health care, a hot topic in Arizona. The Phoenix Republican’s expertise lies in the areas of business and taxes, not social…
It’s easy to see why Andrea Zuhri-Adams’ new restaurant east of America West Arena is dying. The answer is right outside the door of her establishment, All That Jazz. Her lunch customers on a recent afternoon–all four of them–have just left the restaurant, which is located in commercial space inside…
Joe Dugan’s rarely one to complain, but his life has taken on a crushing monotony. For almost five years, the retired steelworker has spent most of his waking hours tending to his wife of 34 years, Sarah. Sarah Dugan is a virtual vegetable, the result of a November 1990 heart…
“This is where that bastard shot my son in the face, tu entendes?” he says.
On January 11, 1994, Attorney General Grant Woods announced the dramatic culmination of an intense criminal investigation. “We allege that hundreds of thousands of dollars were stolen from elderly people who could not care for themselves,” Woods told the media. “They were dependent on Wayne Legg and Webber Mackey to…
The hot talk around the Maricopa County Courthouse in recent weeks hasn’t been about juicy murder cases or Sheriff Joe. What people really want to know is why three court commissioners–Laura Estay, Joel Glynn and Roy Waddell–were forced to resign August 9. The forced courthouse resignations were the first in…
Lying in her bed last April, frail and small, Yvonne Camenos knew she had only weeks to live. Yet she was not embittered. She seemed content in the knowledge that she had fought for as long as she could. So as her mind replayed her struggle against ovarian cancer, she…
One steamy morning in the summer of 1958–no one knows the exact date–a young man named Art Kane took on a daunting task. Weeks earlier, the editor of Esquire magazine had invited Kane to contribute a photograph to an upcoming issue devoted to jazz. Remarkably, Kane never had taken a…
In August 1987, the Secret Service arrested a Phoenix man in Southern California on charges of threatening to kill then-President Ronald Reagan. It didn’t matter to the feds that John Sahhar was being held in the Santa Barbara County Jail on minor charges when guards heard him utter threats against…
In early June, Sheldon Weiner met with his employees at Family Archive Press, a Phoenix firm that published and telemarketed genealogy books. He said he wanted to respond to an anonymous note someone had dropped into a suggestion box. Tell Shelly to smile more, the note had said. This place…
A committee of criminal justice and mental health experts met regularly last year as the debate over Ardrey McFarland’s legal fate raged. The sessions did not always go smoothly. “There are so many angles on this,” says Superior Court Judge Robert Myers, who chaired the committee for a time. “We…
The Rule Dave Alt faced the prisoner at Madison Street Jail. “You made a mistake, dude, a big, big mistake,” Alt told Jimmy Lee Luman in the fall of 1993. “You won’t beat her. Not in your dreams. You might beat the system. But she’s gonna haunt you until the…
They played one song at Phil Girardin’s memorial service last week. “Everybody hurts,” the R.E.M. vocalist droned over and over in the small chapel at a Peoria funeral home. Girardin committed suicide by drug overdose June 8, one week after New Times told his story in a special report (“Mental…
For thousands of Arizonans, the court case known as Arnold v. Sarn was a godsend. The landmark lawsuit grew from a sensitive subject that few people voluntarily broach: how society cares for its seriously mentally ill. Superior Court Judge Bernard Dougherty forced the issue with a ruling in 1985. Maricopa…
Jerry Millison was overcome with anguish on the afternoon of May 12. “He wondered for a second just how screwed up he had to be before someone would help him,” a friend of Millison’s recalls. Millison, 41, had a history of mental illness, substance abuse and three suicide attempts. The…
The 1982 Cochise murder trial and conviction of Art Amarillas drew little attention outside of Bisbee, and with good reason: That Amarillas shot his friend Ismael “Miley” Teran to death in a drunken rage never was in doubt. At trial, Amarillas’ attorneys had attempted to show that his acute alcoholism…
Dick George stuck his television set in a storage room a few years ago and started taking his own pictures. As a longtime employee of the Phoenix Zoo–he’s now its publications manager–his eye and his heart naturally are connected to Papago Park, where the zoo is located. So it makes…
