The charges sounded more fitting for a mob kingpin than an alleged eco-arsonist. U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton solemnly drove home the severity of the 22 federal counts being levied against Mark Warren Sands, the Phoenix marketing consultant accused of being the Phoenix Mountains Preserve arsonist. Seven counts of extortion affecting…
The rumbling engine of a crop duster’s airplane jolted Frances Sebring awake. The cooler in her mobile home was sucking in the vapor of chemicals that were supposed to have landed on a nearby cotton field. The cloud of insecticides swept across the mobile homes of Sebring and her two…
Three pictures and a poem, published more than a year ago in a Glendale Community College literary magazine, have more than a dozen conservative Republican legislators demanding more than the right to determine what type art is acceptable.Some now want the president of the college fired, along with the faculty…
The financial controller got the phone call just before lunch on March 1. Eight officials from the Arizona Department of Revenue had stormed Norman’s Arizona at 40th Street and Campbell. They wanted access to all of the restaurant’s files. But Norman Fierros, the eatery’s owner, didn’t know where anything was…
Jane Dee Hull turned around and smiled at the two widows who were standing behind her.”I’m happy to have this bill in front of me — at last,” the governor said, moments before she signed into law House Bill 2393. “I know how important this is to you and everyone…
Suspension of Disbelief Cover story: On June 2, I entered my place of work, a local grocery store. I passed right by the New Times stand to see an attractive young lady with a pleasant grin on her face looking back at me. I had to look again to realize…
The bear appeared suddenly. Tony Fabriger had spent five cold and wet days on Kodiak Island, home to the world’s largest bears, with no sign of the fabled browns, not even a giant paw print in the spring snow. The unpredictable Alaska weather, sunny when the float plane dropped him…
Ramon Gomez isn’t used to being on the defensive. Gomez, Chandler’s most strident Latino activist and the self-appointed president of an organization called the National Civil Rights Movement, has spent the last four years in a perpetual pit-bull snarl. Along the way, he’s annoyed and embarrassed local officials with a…
The Arizona Museum for Youth has a reputation for innovative offerings. Yet in the coming months, it will be giving families access to something they won’t find at many other major American children’s museums.Gun lockers. The lockers aren’t part of some new museum campaign to entice the pistol-packing crowd toward…
A great egret flies over the eroding Salt River bottom near Central Avenue, but apparently has no reason to stop. The river that might have been its habitat decades ago is now just a human dumping ground.But with money from the Arizona Water Protection Fund, the degrading river will be…
How’s It Hanging?Bod squad: So, is there really no such thing as “bad” press (“Hook, Line & Sinner,” James Hibberd, May 31)? Quite a few things within the story were left a little open-ended. Life Suspended is a performance group, it is not a part of the church. Not all…
Word was, after last year’s gizmo-heavy and hype-fueled Kid A, the next Radiohead album would be a return to more melodic, mainstream music. But Amnesiac, recorded during the Kid A sessions, is just as fucked up as its predecessor. And we mean that in a good way. Kid A, released…
Jennifer Kindelspire is 20 years old. Petite and pale. Big brown eyes. Kinda quiet. The other Church members fear her. They call her a monster. They say Kindelspire can outpull anybody. Nobody wants to go up against Kindelspire. She’s like a bull. She once pulled an armored truck across a…
Gladys Nuvangyaoma didn’t plan to buy a car when she and her son dropped by Joe Florek Volkswagen Audi in Flagstaff last September.But Nuvangyaoma, who lives nearly two hours from Flagstaff on the Hopi Reservation, instantly fell in love with a 1998 red Ford pickup she saw on the lot,…
Souse ArrestFuzz busters: It’s a part of the policemen’s job to “serve and protect” the citizens they work for (“Cop Out,” Amanda Scioscia, May 17). This was a blatant abuse of the power that policemen have. I think they need to be reprimanded. I am a retired Navy petty officer…
Prostitutes often frequent the parking lot of the Tempe Bowl on Apache Boulevard, so police keep a close eye on the area. When Officer R.M. Monteton cruised the lot on the evening of September 12, 2000, he got an eyeful. Monteton saw a man and a woman having sex on…
Nikos Michas was only 5 when his father left town. From then on, it was just Nikos and his mother Alyce against the world.Alyce spent as much time as possible with her son while working strange hours to meet the bills. It was a tough grind, but when Nikos graduated…
Off-Road RageDishing the dirt: I started riding here in the Valley 28 years ago and I have seen a lot of changes regarding off-highway vehicle use here and in California (“Rec Room,” Amanda Scioscia, May 10). No one gave a hoot that we were out there riding because, I feel,…
Nothing in Jeff Taylor’s bearing suggests he was once a drug addict. He is well-dressed and well-spoken. He has the sinewy body of a state champion mountain bike racer, which he is. Seven years ago, however, his bedroom was a shrub. “It was a pretty nice bush,” he says. “I…
Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in all her life; it was all ridges and furrows; the balls were five hedgehogs, the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and to stand upon their hands and feet, to make the arches. …
Carol Mercadantr steps carefully around the hospital room and stops at the head of the bed. She leans over and, with all the delicacy of a mother and her newborn, gently combs David Trippy’s hair back into a pompadour. Her movements are slow and kind of hypnotic, a grace born…
Rayann could stay mad at anybody in her life except Brandon O’Bier. Brandon had this sweet cowboy plain talk and unbowable optimism and screwball humor that let him hover above bad days or sidestep his occasional naughtiness. Besides, she had seen his good heart too often. She would get mad…
