Dr. Mark Salerno steps to a podium, gripping a tattered black shoe. It is a crisp and bright early December morning in Peoria, on 99th Avenue south of Grand Avenue. About 40 people are seated under a tent at the rear of a psychiatric crisis center operated by the nonprofit…
The ASU Sun Devils men’s basketball team has but one pre-conference game remaining to right the ship, and things are looking mighty bleak. We looked in on last night as the Devils lost their second straight game on a three-point buzzer-beater, this one 64-61 to a pretty good Southern Mississippi team. Somehow,…
Russell Jefferson waves at the two women standing in front of his apartment. He hobbles through the crosswalk on Seventh Avenue south of Osborn, pushing a makeshift cart with groceries from a nearby Bashas’. Jefferson’s humble apartment of about a year is his first real home in a decade or…
Mark Goudeau, who already is on his way to death row after nine murder convictions, heard the rest of his prison sentence today–more than 1,100 years on 58 felonies ranging from sexual assault to armed robbery. Unrepentant to the end, the 47-year-old Phoenix man again blamed the world–specifically, his defense…
Arizona State University made it official an hour or so ago, releasing a statement that everyone expected: Dennis Erickson is out as the Sun Devils’ head football coach, apparently effective after the team plays in a minor bowl game somewhere next month. Erickson’s record in Tempe is 31-30, and that…
Fresh from the Thanksgiving holiday, the jury in the Mark Goudeau serial killing case returns to work this morning, scheduled to hear closing arguments in the “penalty phase” of the high-profile case. The jurors’ choices are simple: Death, or life without possibility of parole.The 47-year-old already is serving a life…
Back about a hundred years ago (actually it was September 24) just after Arizona State’s high point of this lost football season, a 43-22 win over USC, team defensive coordinator Craig Bray spoke to an Arizona Republic reporter about “superstar” linebacker Vontaze Burfict. He vowed to keep himself under control…
A few hours from now, the Arizona State Sun Devils will take the field in Tempe against the equally mediocre California Golden Bears in what fairly can be called an “important” game. Remarkably, the Devils still have a very decent chance of making it to the Pac-10 championship game against…
Raven sleeps every night tucked away in an alley in East Central Phoenix. Each morning, he grabs his bedroll and his backpack and shuffles across a quiet street to a sprawling city park. After using the public facilities — “I don’t go on the ground; I go to the bathroom…
Lots of talk in Sportsland about the hiring today in Tucson of Rich Rodriguez as the Arizona Wildcats’ next head football coach. Price tag: 5-year deal for $9.55 million. Nice work if you can get it, huh? ixed bag of opinions about the hiring from what we’ve heard so far, in…
Dennis Erickson, the veteran head football coach at Arizona State University, collects $1,275,000 in salary each year, plus whatever else he pulls in from endorsements and what have you. For this remarkable sum, Sun Devils’ fans have gotten a consistent product in this, the fifth season of the Erickson Era –…
We have a friend who wishes “scientists” would be allowed to study the brains of incarcerated serial murderers. We try to explain that it sound like something the Nazi “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele, might be keen on. Specifically, our friend (a local businessman) is referring to Phoenix’s most…
The jurors may be deciding if Mark Goudeau should go to death row sooner than anticipated, thanks to yet another turn of events in the penalty phase of the recently convicted serial killer’s trial. The `Baseline Killer,’ convicted late last month of nine murders and dozens of other violent crimes…
The penalty phase of Mark Goudeau’s trial continued this morning, with jurors hearing the deeply emotional accounts of the impact that the nine murders have had on the surviving family members and friends. Today’s testimony (continued from yesterday) truly was gut-wrenching. Goudeau stared straight ahead or buried his face in some…
That police detective Mike Meislish led the search of suspected serial killer Mark Goudeau’s home on October 7, 2006, was a godsend. It could have been homicide detective Mike Polk, now in prison for possessing kiddy porn. Or it might have been David Barnes, another dick later fired after his…
It was late Janary 1974, and I took a train from Connecticut to New York City for the rematch between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. I had no idea how or if I was going to get into Madison Square Garden for the fight–but I was determined to give it…
Some people spend their entire lives learning the ins and outs of the “blame game.” If it’s not the crack cocaine or the booze that caused me to go off the deep end and nearly beat a woman to death back in 1989, it’s the victim herself who put me…
We wrote often this summer of the defensive exploits of Arizona Diamondbacks outfielders Gerardo Parra and Chris Young. We remember the game in September (we were at Chase Field that night) when incredible catches by both he and Young made ESPN’s top ten plays of the day. …
Unexpected fireworks this morning at the county courthouse as the newly convicted “Baseline Killer” Mark Goudeau told the judge in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t want to be in court for the sentencing phase of his high-profile case. We weren’t there for the outburst (we are holed up writing…
For legal reasons, jurors at criminal trials don’t get to hear about a lot of things deemed prejudicial to the defendant or irrelevant to the matters at hand. …
The jury in the case of accused serial murderer Mark Goudeau continues to deliberate his fate this morning in downtown Phoenix. Goudeau, 47, is charged with 72 major felonies, including the killings of nine people (eight women and one man) during an alleged crime spree that terrorized the city…
One of the more telling moments during fired deputy county attorney Lisa Aubuchon’s remarkable testimony at yesterday’s disciplinary hearing was her twisted take on office investigators Mark Stribling and Tim Cooning. It came during Aubuchon’s Twilight Zone-like account of what led up to the infamous direct criminal complaint that then-Maricopa…
