Scott Virzi’s legal odyssey started in October 1992, after undercover police arrested him for buying child pornography at a Phoenix hotel. In June 1995, a jury convicted Virzi under Arizona’s unyielding Dangerous Crimes Against Children laws. Virzi–an investigator for Nevada’s Gaming Control Commission when arrested–faced 48 years in prison without…
Earl Wilcox, the lanky husband of Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, walks into the offices of New Times carrying two notebooks. He’d called earlier to say that he has incriminating information about Tommy Espinoza and wanted to deliver it in person. He sits down at a table and opens…
How do you breathe life into a more or less inanimate object? Throughout the ages, that question has perplexed alchemists, philosophers and clerics. More recently, it has befuddled the Dole for President campaign. Let’s face it: Whatever you think of the man’s politics, character and experience, in an era where…
Governor J. Fife Symington III is all but surrounded. Creditors who allege he committed fraud are seeking to prevent him from erasing $25 million of debts in bankruptcy court. One creditor has even raised the suggestion in court filings that the governor used a front company to hide assets. The…
Bat-Battering Boys Will Be Boys In his August 23 column, Arizona Republic sports columnist and Devil worshiper Bob Jacobsen reported one of the “light moments” out of the Arizona State University football camp in Payson. Seniors Juan Roque and Jake Plummer had tossed a moving bat into the freshman cabin…
Who’s Minding the Stir? I’m really getting sick of people slamming Sheriff Joe Arpaio (“Hangin’ With Sheriff Joe,” Tony Ortega, August 22). I guess if these bleeding-heart liberals were willing to have their taxes raised, Arizona could build nice, new, fancy jails. If we take all the money Arizona has…
AND NOW, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HERE HE IS–THE FABULOUS VIC CAESAR!!!!!! What’s that? What’s that I hear you saying? Who’s Vic Caesar? How about a singer, songwriter, actor, producer, writer, bon vivant extraordinaire? An Entertainer, for all you beautiful people out there tonight. Vic Caesar is a show-biz legend in…
One day, Don Dietz was a healthy 52-year-old on an eight-mile bike ride, and the next day, he was bleeding to death from an illness he’d never heard of. It was December 1991, and Dietz had just flown in from Lubbock, Texas, where he was a professor of Spanish literature…
Snell Johnson was in trouble. A successful businessman one day, the target of an SEC investigation the next. So begins a 1992 segment of “The Rest of the Story,” a syndicated program in which radio commentator Paul Harvey “completes” a tale by revealing behind-the-scenes information in that halting, highly inflected,…
Times have long been tough at the Valley’s No. 2 daily newspaper chain, the East Valley’s Tribune Newspapers. They may be about to get tougher. The occasionally feisty papers that provide the Valley’s only significant daily alternative to the Arizona Republic are tough places to work. Reporters and editors get…
The Valley’s coffee-house scene is about to get a huge caffeine jolt. Seattle-based Starbucks Coffee Company has decided to launch a full-scale assault on local Java Man and Woman. Look for the first stores to arrive possibly as early as the end of the year. Starting in 1971 with one…
And You Can Forget About an Aisle Seat It’s not uncommon for businesses to manipulate news coverage by threatening to withhold advertising from newspapers. Car dealers, real estate agents and grocers–all big-money advertisers–are as adept as they are notorious at intimidating editors and publishers. Their efforts often reshape the news…
Since 1981, residents from the poor, mostly Latino south Tucson neighborhoods that now are in the Tucson International Airport Area Superfund Site have had little reason to trust government officials. And this spring, their confidence eroded more, after the state killed a long-standing appropriation that paid for half of a…
Since moving into a Sunnyslope town house that abuts the Phoenix Mountains Preserve ten years ago, real estate agent Dan Galvin has enjoyed his spacious “backyard”–a scenic stretch of mountainous desert. Hiking enthusiasts, he and his wife, Lori, frequently walk their dog through the outdoor retreat, returning home via the…
Muffler–A chamber attached to the end of the exhaust pipe which allows the exhaust gases to expand and cool. It is usually fitted with baffles or porous plates and serves to subdue much of the noise created by the exhaust. –John Deere Fundamentals of Service manual Muffler Man–A man made…
Pigging Out Should the esteemed young entrepreneur guest columnist Paul M. Fleming spend less time with his bankers and hobnob a bit with “the people,” he might discover that many of us support alternative approaches to food production with our feet and our wallets (“Meating of the Minds,” August 22)…
To Ken Parker’s father, a cowboy who wrangled dudes in the 1940s, the area south of Sedona was unremarkable grazing land known as Jackass Flats. But to Parker, it was a land of opportunity, and he wanted to cash in. The time was 1979, before the crystal worshipers had begun…
Richard Anderson and Bruce Babbitt were the best of pals growing up in Flagstaff during the 1950s. They lived half a block away from each other, played childhood games together, skied together, went to school together. And one day, Anderson remembers, he punched Bruce Babbitt in the face. The youngsters,…
For a man charged with the herculean task of policing Arizona government and resolving citizen complaints, Pat Shannahan has headquarters that are, at least for now, humble. The Office of the Ombudsman is housed in the basement of the historic Carnegie Library, which stands about a mile east of the…
Detention officers at Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Madison Street Jail made a grisly discovery on August 9. In the sixth-floor psychiatric ward, they found 44-year-old inmate Thomas Bruce Cooley hanging from bedsheets that he had tied to one of his cell’s air vents. Cooley was cut down and taken to Barrow…
He Don’t Need No Steenking Quotes The Arizona Department of Commerce’s crack public information officer, Don Harris, is often at a loss for words. When New Times asked six months ago whether he’d gone to the Super Bowl, Harris drew a blank. He performed an encore Monday when questioned about…
New Leash on Life Thank God someone finally wrote about something that has been bothering me all my life; and I hope someone, somewhere (i.e., writers, producers, etc.) will read M. V. Moorhead’s “Pet Reprieve” (August 1). I hate it when animals are hurt in movies. It is not necessary!…
