LIKE A CHILD hiding a caramel from a playmate, Jim Cryer conceals the plastic key chain with puckish delight. He is about to tell what he calls a nasty joke.” ²In his native Tennessean twang, he begins with what seems like a well-rehearsed question: Have you ever been on Mission…
Just before closing time, Bill Mounts strolls past the bare shelves of Euro Market to the check-out stand. Mounts, night manager of the beleaguered upscale grocery, spies a rumpled dollar bill on the floor. This dollar could save the store,” jokes Mounts, as he grabs the bill and hands it…
NOW THAT THE holidays are over and the reporters and TV crews aren’t hanging around anymore, things are back to normal at Central Arizona Shelter Services. But normal at CASS isn’t exactly quiet. Property owners near CASS, located at 1209 West Madison, have always complained about how the state’s largest…
CASS shut down its outdoor campground in 1990, she says, because the agency didn’t have enough money to operate it. About 200 people per night had been allowed to camp there. As recently as last month, says Orton, the board discussed reopening the outdoor area. One plan was to build…
There, up on the stage, was Annie Leibovitz. At the very sight of the celebrity photographer, the standing-room-only audience in the theatre at Phoenix Art Museum burst into applause. Leibovitz is a tall, angular woman with a nose as prominent as the one that gave the late writer Lillian Hellman…
USING FLASHLIGHTS and kerosene lanterns to lance the darkness, incredulous lawmen warily make their way through the horrific clutter inside the Wisconsin farmhouse. It is the evening of November 16, 1957, and the men have good reason to be wary. They are prowling through Ed Gein’s ramshackle playground of death,…
®MD120¯ Ä CTEXTSETTER Ä 222 Lines Ä Depth 95.4 Picas Ä 15.89 In. Ä 33.94 Col In. ÄÄ ®MDNM¯ ®MDUL¯Agnes Lang says of the car salesmen: ÔWe figured they were honest people.” In July 1989, 77-year-old Agnes Lang bought a car from East Valley Jeep Eagle. After a day of…
Like any successful merchant, Mike Vito gets a lot of satisfaction from the well-stocked shelves in his stores. And so do his customers. Most Phoenix retailers may have had a puny Christmas season, but the seven adult bookstores in the Valley owned by Bookcellar Incorporated, of which Mike Vito is…
To me, Craig Tribken was the white knight in the battle against the forces of darkness. When it was still politically dangerous, Tribken led the way in the battle to create a public park on the site of the old Phoenix Indian School property. The Barron Collier family of Florida…
All in all, it was unconvincing. The catch in Bruce’s throat seemed genuine, but there seemed to be no logic to his confession. No one had held a gun to his head, no one had slapped him around, no one had forced him to answer the detectives’ questions. In fact,…
The investigators say they were reluctant to believe McGraw at first, but at the time he was the best lead they had. McGraw listed an impressive array of hardware allegedly used by the killers, including such glamorous weapons as a plastic Glock pistol and a 9-millimeter Beretta, but none of…
COPS DON’T ARREST people just because they claim to have committed crimes. There are troubled people out there who will confess to practically anything. More than 200 people tried to accept the blame for the Lindbergh baby kidnaping in the 1930s, and the six suspects who were eventually charged in…
When fast feeders locate on a strip shopping center’s pad, the design review boards force them to sing in tune with the strip’s colors and materials-to use blue roof tiles, for example, if same are in the backdrop. This doesn’t necessarily mean good design; it simply relieves conflict. The boards…
AMERICA MAKES the best fast food in the world. This is not an oxymoron. It is one overlooked point of light in our black hole of economic gloom. No Russian morozhenoye franchises are popping up in downtown Phoenix, even though ice cream might be more welcome here than in frosty…
It was early Christmas Eve morning. Wade Arnold, 34, climbed into the back seat of the transportation vehicle at the state prison facility in Tucson. Hampered by leg irons and handcuffs, Arnold moved awkwardly. The night before,” Arnold remembers, I had packed up my 13-inch television set and all my…
When Allied-Signal employee Al Robinson asked for help saving money on his electric power bills, Arizona Public Service Company officials signed him up for their special, after-hours yuppie rate.” And they offered him a no-interest loan to buy a load controller, a device to help him follow the rules of…
THE CHURCH IS in an uproar, everyone is standing. An organ is emitting a frenzy of notes. A teenage girl is shaking and dancing, eyes closed. Two middle-aged women encircle her with their arms, smiling gently. Half a dozen people are banging tambourines. An old woman is repeating “Thank you…
The subject was Halloween cookies, but at Rover Elementary School in Tempe, even that can cause a fight. No, not between kids on the playground. This one took place between the parents and the principal in the school library. In late October, a group of mothers who volunteer at the…
It was an uncommon funeral service. The mourners, most wearing cowboy boots and ranchers’ rough clothes, sat in makeshift pews at the rear of the cavernous Matt’s Saloon on Prescott’s Whiskey Row. The honoree was Dave Horn, an old horse lover and racetracker. For years, he ran the tote board…
I arrived at the Ritz-Carlton hotel early. It was raining heavily. The inadequate parking lot was jammed with cars and trucks sent out by all radio and television stations in town. Governor J. Fife Symington III’s press conference was going to be broadcast live. There was an air of feeding…
LONG AFTER THE shocking videotapes of AzScam had stopped showing up on the evening news, word of the last two indictments crept almost casually into the newspapers. In the main, the stories said that Rick DeGraw, a well-known political consultant for Arizona Democrats, was charged with obstruction of justice. It…
Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien, his bad purple plumpness himself, recently asked all Catholics to boycott Smitty’s grocery chain because the supermarket will be open on Christmas Day. I think that’s a hell of an idea. If there is one sure-fire way to embarrass the sinners tempted to purchase canned goods…
