The bailiff read the jury’s verdict: Defendant John Fife Symington III was guilty on seven counts of fraud. Last Wednesday, as Judge Roger Strand began wrapping up the most important white-collar-fraud trial in Arizona history, the governor was impassive. Still as a rock, Symington listened to Judge Strand announce his…

Editor’s note: In 1994, New Times printed Volume I of “The Best of Fife.” The New and Improved Volume II incorporates the best of Volume I while adding all of Fife’s greatest accomplishments since. And it’s fat-free. The Early Years Best Pedigree: J. Fife Symington III What can we say?…

His Holiness Pope John Paul II is expected soon to plumb deep into his papal infallibility. Some four million Roman Catholics–many of whom are Europeans and are inspired by recent sightings of the Blessed Virgin in places like Bosnia-Herzegovina–are lobbying John Paul to proclaim that the Virgin Mary is “Co-Redemptrix,…

James Warne III called a press conference earlier this month to whine about his company, Westech, once again. Warne told reporters about the injustices done to his family business by the Arizona Department of Health Services. A fourth-generation Arizonan, Warne is the former president of the now-defunct Westech Laboratories Inc.,…

Last Friday afternoon, as the criminal trial of Governor J. Fife Symington III drew to a close, prosecutor David Schindler got one last chance to persuade the jury to find the governor guilty of 19 counts of bank fraud, one count of perjury and one count of attempted extortion. Schindler…

In late July, Mesa city councilmember Jim Stapley sued fellow councilmember Joan Payne. Stapley claimed that Payne had slandered him by calling him a “pervert in polyester” on a local radio talk show. Stapley also sought an injunction in Maricopa County Superior Court preventing Payne from talking about him over…

I knock on the door, let myself in. Melody Baker can’t hobble from the living-room couch to the front door unless she takes the morphine prescribed by her doctor. And today, she is trying to forgo the morphine. She wants to explain to me, in the most clear-headed way possible,…

The first bullet entered Brian Patrick Lindsay’s head and tore through his tongue. The 20-year-old Subway sandwich shop clerk grabbed his face and collapsed near the cash register. As he lay on his back, he was shot five more times at very close range, and then he was kicked by…

On one of their first dates, Ann Olin Pritzlaff and J. Fife Symington III watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a movie about the escapades of two rogue bank robbers who are aided and abetted by a mousy schoolmarm named Etta Place. Has former schoolteacher Ann Olin Pritzlaff Symington…

Iolanda and Pasquale Ranalli immigrated to New York from Italy in 1953. Middle-aged and poor, they had modest aspirations–to raise their three children, and then to save enough money for a happy retirement in America. But life in America was more of a struggle than they had envisioned. Unable to…

Across the street from the house where 8-year-old Lee Holmes lives, there is an empty doghouse, presumably built by a neighbor who has since moved. Scrawled on the doghouse is this epithet: “Bear the Shithead.” The doghouse sums up the ugly vibe I get from Lee’s central Phoenix neighborhood. This…

When I was a kid, a cat lady lived near my grandparents. The cat lady’s cheeks were rouged in perfect round circles and she muttered to herself. Everyone said she was crazy, and that she smelled funny because she had hundreds of cats in her house. Sometimes, I would sneak…

Eleven years ago, after her father suffered a stroke, a middle-aged housewife and mother named Charlotte Walton suddenly found herself at the helm of Maroney’s, the family dry-cleaning and laundry business. Walton put in long hours at Maroney’s, which has two locations in Phoenix. As company president, she rarely took…

Kim MacEachern, Mary Simmerer and Peggy Guichard-Watters are women of unusual courage and honor. But these three environmental regulators have learned, painfully, that in a government ruled by J. Fife Symington III, state workers who display courage and honor may well find their heads on the chopping block. Three weeks…

Tony Freman needed his mother. He had been selling drugs on Minneapolis street corners, which got some people irritated with him. So he jumped on a Greyhound a few months ago, hoping to meet up with his mother in Phoenix. He hadn’t forgotten that when he was small, he and…

Saturdays and Sundays, Rosa Banuelos wakes up at first light and packs her car with whatever is needed to replenish her stock of merchandise–fresh sugar cane, maybe, or smiling Virgencita statues, or a dozen fat brooms from Sonora. Banuelos, who lives in Gilbert and works as an inspector for an…

In the wake of a report that Scottsdale served 70,000 residents drinking water laced with illegal levels of a suspected carcinogen, city officials have responded by lobbying Governor J. Fife Symington III and one of his appointees, Russell Rhoades, director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. The New Times…

Early in 1995, Mary Simmerer stumbled upon an alarming situation. Simmerer, who manages a section of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality that monitors compliance with drinking-water regulations, discovered that on one day–November 24, 1994–the city of Scottsdale served approximately 70,000 of its citizens drinking water containing illegal levels of…

In late September, New Times detailed the troubles of Phoenix attorney Ted Segal–including allegations by several former clients that Segal had defrauded them of their life savings (“The Living Lawyer Joke,” September 26). The clients, mostly frugal but financially unsophisticated working-class people, had been persuaded by Segal to “invest” their…

In 1987, officials at Arizona’s Department of Health Services promised they would study the high rate of childhood leukemia death in one portion of west Phoenix. The last phase of the study, which searches for causes of the so-called Maryvale cancer cluster, was to have been completed in 1991. More…

In Mesa, Catholics who burn incense in religious ceremonies and actors who smoke onstage are violating the city’s new antismoking ordinance and must pay up to $200 each time they do either, according to a lawsuit filed against the city. The Superior Court lawsuit was filed in August by three…

Highs and lows; peaks and valleys; you win some, you lose some. That’s how Marlene and Charlie remember the past eight years. It all began when the elderly Phoenicians sustained neck and back injuries in an auto accident and failed to recover sufficient insurance money to pay medical expenses. After…