Before she became a jailhouse lawyer, Christina Jay Acker preyed on old ladies. In 1990, Acker was sentenced to 36 years in prison for kidnaping and robbing a 78-year-old Phoenix woman. That same year, a Colorado judge sentenced Acker to life in prison for beating a 72-year-old Colorado woman to…
If you’re looking for where pay-per-view proceeds are going in the National Basketball Association, look to the West. Six of the 16 teams in this year’s NBA playoffs show their games on pay-per-view–the cable-TV option that allows local fans to see selected home games throughout the season by the game…
Attention, chompers! At a handful of McDonald’s locations around the Valley, drive-through customers like yourselves can do something they can’t do at any of the other Golden Arches in town. Mainly, you’ll have the rare opportunity to get personal with a teen burger drone. Or that appears to be one…
Last week, the Arizona Press Club presented its first-ever Brick Wall Award to Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, because he tends to ignore the state’s Public Records Act. Governor Fife Symington finished a close second in the competition, which was judged by a committee of print reporters and editors. 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…
And Were You Harshly Toilet Trained? Since the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, Phoenix police have responded to at least 20 false bomb threats. Institutions victimized by bomb hoaxes include the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, NewsChannel 3 (the station received mysterious packages thought to be bombs; instead,…
When State Senate President John Greene gaveled the death of a bill extending government health benefits to at least 150,000 poor Arizonans, debate did not end. If anything, it intensified. Opponents remained convinced the bill was nothing more than an expansion of the welfare state, exactly the kind of big-government…
On-the-spot burial permits! Software that can spit out automatic death certificates, with 2,000 causes of death to choose from! This is what technology is bringing to the modern mortuary, and for the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, it’s not a moment too soon. The energy spent chasing down…
Flush with millions of dollars of surplus tax revenue, Tempe will soon place a $70 million bet that developers will flock to its long-sought Rio Salado project. It’s a wager Tempe taxpayers will have no say in. Most city councilmembers, led by Mayor Neil Giuliano, are so confident that taxpayers…
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…
Colorado River rafting guides are used to navigating through and around whirlpools and “keeper holes,” the kind of white-water hydraulic effects that can suck a boat down and hold it underwater. Right now they are finding themselves swamped in the wake of the U.S. Coast Guard’s decision to take away…
Plane Embarrassing Phoenix’s daily papers printed big color photos of America West Airlines’ new Boeing 757 last week. The garish jet has “Arizona” emblazoned on its side, along with a painting of an unfurled state flag. According to the glowing press reports, the plane is meant as a “thank you”…
Gary Giordano is convinced that a decadelong grand conspiracy involving the most powerful business and political interests in the state is finally coming to fruition. Unless it is unmasked, he insists, that sinister plot will destroy the rural community where Giordano lives–New River, Arizona. At a cafe in downtown Phoenix…
Drunkenly scrutinizing the advertising come-on plastered across the front of the side-show attraction, the wino bellows to all within earshot. “Isha fake!” he says, unable to believe that the 40-foot trailer parked outside the shopping center actually contains a giant 20-ton whale captured in the Pacific. “Isha goddamn fake, I…
For 16 months, Alex Gonzalez of Central Pawn Brokers has been pummeling City Hall with claims of wrongful prosecution, and now he figures he is in a position to say: I told you so. On April 3, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office dropped charges of theft and trafficking in stolen…
Woman’s in Tuition “Would you deny this beautiful, bright-eyed child a future education?” That’s the question 200 acquaintances of Valley Art Theatre owner Krista Griffin have been wrestling with recently. Each of them received a flier requesting a $25 donation to put the Tempe moviehouse magnate through another semester of…
Employees fired in the wake of an undercover sting at Phoenix Newspapers Inc. say they have learned that honesty is not the best policy. Although they say they were assured they would not be fired if they were forthcoming about drug or alcohol use, some employees who confessed were terminated…
Rosalind Hall is a welfare mother. Two months ago, she got a job. It’s nearly caused her to lose everything. She doesn’t make enough to stand on her own, and because she’s employed, she’s lost the assistance that would help to change that. Hall is stuck in “the system.” A…
Debby Kosobucki vividly recalls her first gig as a topless dancer. It was 1984, and she was 28 years old. She had fled a broken marriage, packed up her three daughters and moved to Phoenix from Washington state. She chose Phoenix for her fresh start because she had read there…
Ruben and Concepcion Valencia find that the harder they try to reach for justice, the more elusive it seems. Not only is their son dead, but a man they say pointed a gun at them not long ago was released by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. The Valencias think the…
Congress is busy scaling back, even getting rid of welfare payments to folks like unemployed teen mothers and hungry schoolkids. But it’s also under pressure to restore benefits to a different class of beleaguered constituents–restaurant owners. Before the mid-1980s, businesses could deduct 100 percent of their meal costs, as long…
With Friends Like These . . . If you’re following the state legislative circus, you’re familiar with Senate Bill 1290, the so-called environmental audit bill. Environmentalists and other non-cranks have dubbed 1290 the Polluter Protection Act. It would allow corporations to escape prosecution for polluting, provided they disclose their misdeeds…
