Everyone around the old Bisbee courthouse expected former Maricopa County Attorney Tom Collins to have a cakewalk in his first trial as rural Cochise County’s first full-time drug prosecutor. They were wrong. On its face, the marijuana-for-sale case against three Mexican men seemed open-and-shut, quite unlike the Collins-led “drug probe”…
The crisis of pedophilia in the Roman Catholic priesthood exploded in 1985, when a pasty, bespectacled Louisiana priest named Gilbert Gauthe admitted under oath that he’d sexually abused 37 young male parishioners. Gauthe was sentenced to twenty years hard labor with no possibility of parole. The Catholic Church doesn’t keep…
In its answer to the lawsuit, the diocese admits that Father George molested the children but denies negligence. Father George, who has a separate lawyer, denies he even molested the boys or that he was negligent. In his answer to the lawsuit, he asks that the case be dismissed. The…
Screening for pedophiles is nearly impossible because they often appear to be psychologically healthy people, experts say. As a result, they’ve cropped up not only in the Diocese of Phoenix, but in churches of all denominations, Indian reservation schools, Scouting groups and any other organization where there are children. And…
A VALLEY NATIONAL BANK executive recently called his company a “sleeping giant.” Hell, it’s practically comatose after last week’s frightening stock plunge onto Wall Street. Looks like VNB CEO JIM SIMMONS, one of the last surviving good ol’ boys of Arizona finance, sure has the Midas touch. He scooted out…
This Halloween, my son is demanding to be outfitted like his favorite two-bit Japanese creature-feature star, Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster, and his expectations are high. I’m sure he thinks he’ll be able to climb into the thing, fly off, barbecue cities with his multiple fire-breathing noggins, and stomp the sushi…
Mary Jo West kidnaped? . . . Yeah, right. After the first reports of the alleged abduction, the buzz on the street was that Mary Jo faked the crime. First of all, she was snatched after leaving a stress-reduction workshop. Didn’t that tell you everything you needed to know? Then…
It was the kind of press conference reporters show up for even when they’re not working. They put on their best suits and get their shoes shined. They make sure they have fresh batteries in their tape recorders. Senator John McCain had promised to give his version of Richard Nixon’s…
The long, lean black man takes a break from tinkering with a car beneath the South Phoenix sun. Drenched with sweat, he falls onto a tattered couch under a paloverde tree. “I remember sitting under a shade tree as a kid watching my dad fix a car,” the man says,…
There’s a story about the late Gilbert Cady, ASU’s long-time finance wizard, that helps explain why the campus looks the way it does today. Rudy Turk, director of the University Art Museum, tells it: “Gilbert was a delightful guy, but he was very tight with a dollar. We were in…
Motorola office worker Betty Piott figured that, at age 54, she had her life pretty well settled. She had a steady income. She had a house on South 16th Street near Broadway Road that was hers, free and clear. She lived there with her husband, Virgil. And in a separate…
Jude LaCava? He’s the new sports-talk host on KTAR. He moved here from Ohio. Jonathon Brandmeier? He’s the morning-drive jock on WLUP in Chicago, a former radio star in Phoenix and arguably the hottest radio personality in the country. “Karen”? She’s a mystery woman. She is either LaCava’s bisexual former…
Please, somebody, make our sportscasters stick to reading scores. Please. On Sunday night, CHANNEL 12 sportsmouth BILL DENNEY hosted a so-called “debate” on the PROP ONE stadium issue, and he couldn’t even get the intros right. He turned to stadium opponent EILEEN JEFFERY and said, “Are you just a housewife,…
There are two ways to search for a good, reliable baby sitter. One. You can run a help-wanted ad, interview dozens of prospects, and discover you wouldn’t trust any of ’em with your ant farm, let alone your kids. But you’ll hire the one you distrust the least because if…
The FBI has opened an investigation into the campaign of terror waged from the state police headquarters against Leon Woodward. Although a spokesman for the FBI refused to provide details, agent Gary Wildebrandt interviewed Woodward and his wife on the afternoon of September 26. At the same time the FBI…
August and most of September came and went, leaving the Cubs in first place for the homestretch. But following the games from my Phoenix base had become utterly unfulfilling, due partly to my self-disgust for being a mere cable Cub fan and due also to the fact that the radio…
Some people never abandon hope that Phoenix could truly be a wonderful city. Like us. We hang on, even faced with a Phoenix City Council election where a few pathetic candidates contemplate nothing more significant than their hangnails. Come on! You guys allergic to fun? We’re not. Even as we…
Look like cancer x-rays, don’t they? Look closer. They’re really pictures of how Phoenix has grown since 1940. But as Ed Abbey used to say, “Growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Phoenix now spreads out over 420 square miles–the seventh-largest land mass of any city in the nation–and…
YES on Prop 2, to authorize $15 million in bonds for historic preservation, including $5 million to buy the Tovrea Castle. Also, YES on the companion Prop 103 to give the city the authority to acquire and maintain historic and culturally significant properties. We’ve got so little to preserve, we…
Look no further than these photos for evidence of why the next city council should apply thumbscrews to anybody who opposes more protection for neighborhoods in the path of street-widening projects. Hardest hit are the central Phoenix neighborhoods, where city street engineers are cutting ever-wider swaths to accommodate people commuting…
Among the first things the new city council should do–right away–is decree the blue palo verde as Phoenix’s offical tree. And then, the council should require the big blue in all official city landscaping and should encourage citizens to plant the trees in their yards. The council should do these…
It’s cool here in Phoenix in the spring of 1999, and one of the coolest things of all is the city’s Maglev transit system. Unlike the old noisy, cumbersome, ValTrans proposal that savvy voters rejected with a laugh way back in the Eighties, the new Phoenix Area Maglev system has…
