When the flames from the arson fire were put out last month, investigators discovered human remains in the upstairs bedroom. While dental records were the only way to identify the charred body of 24-year-old Michael Despain, there was one piece of physical evidence the fire did not destroy: The male…
Whizzing through a run-down residential area of East Jefferson Street, the airport-bound out-of-towner suddenly snaps to attention. Risking whiplash as he takes another gander at the red, white and blue architectural oddity–a ramshackle hacienda whose ragtag desert landscaping is adorned with painted wagon wheels–he gasps in disbelief. “What the hell…
Most days, Linda Rawles rises at 8 a.m., drinks a Diet Coke, reads the morning newspaper and goes about the business of running for Congress. If she gets up any earlier, she vomits. Her husband, Tom, however, is an early bird. He’s on the freeway to Phoenix–and his dual career…
After New Times published highlights of a police report detailing the lurid goings-on at a postseason Phoenix Suns sex party (“After Midnight,” June 15), most of the Valley’s media outlets declined to cover the story, citing a litany of absurd excuses. The only thing perhaps more absurd is what happened…
Dying to do lunch with the dead? Two self-styled “psychic grief counselors” say they’ll not only put you in touch with a deceased loved one, but they’ll throw in the soup and sandwich to boot. And all for a mere $750. “This is an all-day process,” explains Renee Harel, a…
Towering trees line the twisting country lane leading to the top of Seminary Ridge in the horse country of Lutherville, Maryland. At the crest of the hill, where Mays Chapel Road bears sharply to the left, lies an old wooden post marking the entrance to one of Baltimore County’s few…
“Freeze, FBI!” Brian Kingman thought he was being robbed. He’d just left a private jet on the tarmac at Scottsdale Municipal Airport with two gentlemen who had in their possession a rolled Picasso painting of a cubist Mona Lisa that was thought to be worth millions of dollars. Two men…
For a time, those in the business of putting child abusers behind bars were wondering if Hannibal Lecter was running loose in Arizona. Their concerns stemmed from a report issued by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy, which is affiliated with Arizona State University. The 94-page report, titled “Arizona’s Child…
Jeffery Lynn Blain, at 37, has heard more than one man’s share of bad news, yet he does not give in to self-pity or succumb to depression. He fights on, tenacious, unyielding, a dead man who refuses to attend his own wake. In 1991, Jeffery was informed that his brother…
Tara McCabe, a thin and thirtysomething woman with a world-weary grin, thought she had found a slice of paradise three years ago when she moved to Walker, a Bradshaw Mountain hideaway that started out last century as a booming gold camp. In a world of encroaching concrete, Walker is a…
Editor’s note: Staff writer Paul Rubin followed Arizona State University’s baseball team from opening day in January until the last out at the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, three weeks ago. Coach Jim Brock–who died of cancer on June 12, four days after his team’s season ended–allowed New Times…
“Na na hey hey kiss them goodbye!” That’s the public’s overwhelming advice to “Mr. X,” a two-timing Casanova whose true-life love plight was revealed in the June 1 issue of New Times (Love’s Savage Spreadsheet”). Mr. X’s romantic dither came to light after New Times obtained the original copy of…
He rode out of the west on a muggy evening in June, the sun starting to sink like a shot of bad whiskey on the horizon. Unarmed and hatless, he strode through the door of the Apacheland Book Company, boldly ignoring the “Closed” sign posted in the window. No one…
Tossing restlessly on her pillow, Jean B. took some solace in knowing that at least she’d tried to make it work. But after 28 years of connubial bliss, she could no longer tolerate what her husband had introduced to their marital bed. “I was being victimized,” says Jean, whose unhappiness…
Seated at the conference table in his windowless office last week, Ted Williams looked like a man with a $40 million headache. For almost a year, Williams has been in charge of Maricopa County’s Health Care Agency, which runs the county hospital, neighborhood clinics and various other programs that tend…
Arizona Public Service Company is quietly laying off hundreds of workers at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and replacing 200 union tradesmen with nonunion workers. APS, which manages the nation’s largest commercial nuclear power plant for a consortium of seven utilities, plans to eliminate at least 497 positions at…
Paul Sterrett stood in the late-May sunshine outside a Scottsdale post office, waiting for someone to sign his petition. The cardiac care nurse at John C. Lincoln Hospital was on loan from his employer to Arizona for a Healthy Future, the campaign to increase the state tax on a pack…
The comparisons stick in the back of your mind. The O.J. Simpson story is merely the opposite side of the coin to the now-infamous Phoenix Suns sex party. The difference is that in Los Angeles, two people died and it caused an immediate media explosion. In Phoenix, a woman may…
Shane Stant spent the last weeks of his freedom literally shoveling shit. He’d taken a construction job in rural Oregon while he was waiting to be sentenced to prison. He was working for meals and not a paycheck, and one of his tasks was to dig the excrement out of…
For her ride, the quinceaera has chosen the bed of a 1978 Chevy El Camino with a lipstick-colored, scooped-out interior. She floats in her velvety hot tub on wheels like a cloud, swaddled in sequins as the driver pilots the car toward the aging church on 17th Avenue just south…
It has been more than a year since Kathy Smith and Kim Seagraves, two longtime advertising saleswomen for the U S West Direct Yellow Pages office in Phoenix, were abruptly fired from their jobs for reasons they did not understand. Now, the reasons are becoming clearer as two federal agencies…
It was May 21, and the Valley was in mourning. The Phoenix Suns had just been eliminated from the NBA playoffs by the Houston Rockets after a roller-coaster, seven-game series. To many, the loss was especially bitter, because they feared it would be superstar Charles Barkley’s final game in uniform…
