Is There an Echo? What do former Phoenix mayor Paul Johnson and Michigan state senator Debbie Stabenow have in common? Plenty. Both are Democrats. Both paint themselves as outsiders bucking special interests. Both–until August 2–hoped to nab their party’s gubernatorial nomination and face, in all likelihood, the state’s incumbent Republican…
Drivers leaving the Squaw Peak Parkway to head west on Bethany Home Road quickly find themselves running a gauntlet of graphic signs. The signs will never be featured in a City of Phoenix public relations brochure. “You Are Now Entering the Worst Run City in the Galaxy.” “Vote ‘NO’ on…
When I read Bishop Thomas O’Brien’s challenge in the Arizona Republic recently, I decided this would be a trial worth watching. The message, read from the pulpit in all Catholic parishes, announced that the church was being forced to go to trial because of the excessive demands of the suit…
I must now find a new way to amuse myself. Baseball is gone, never to return–in this season, at least. What is left? There are so many experts spouting off about the ramifications of the baseball strike, they have worn me to a frazzle. They come boring in from all…
I could never get the killing out of my mind. For one thing, I never could make any sense of it. Besides, I never could learn enough from contemporary newspaper accounts to put all the pieces together. On August 16, 1986, Eric Kane, 16, was found murdered in a room…
John Thul walks to the back of his nearly completed $8 million sheet-metal-stamping plant and gazes at the undeveloped rangeland stretching for miles to the north. His face fills with the distressed look of a man who’s been had. Thul points to a lone creosote bush, about 150 feet away…
It was a sweltering August day in 1966, and two young lawyers were hiking deep within the Grand Canyon. Jon Kyl and Tom Kleinschmidt–both promising associates with the Phoenix firm of Jennings, Strouss & Salmon–had spent the night camping near the Colorado River, and now they were heading home, moving…
Calling itself the Committee for Clean Air and Better Transportation, a group of Valley business leaders wants Maricopa County voters to approve a referendum this fall. The measure would extend by ten years a half-cent, 20-year sales tax that expires next year, and add another half-cent tax. Most of the…
Because Maricopa County’s Asian population might, at times, be barely noticed if it weren’t for restaurants, George Cole figured it was time to try to pull things together. To build a sense of community, he says, he is using the printed word. The Asian American Sun, the 12-week-old, English-language newspaper…
He is dead and he is cremated, but the tragedy of Michael Despain’s short, troubled life is not over. In death, Michael has achieved an awful notoriety as Phoenix’s first hate killing, a crime category law enforcement began tracking in 1990. Michael’s memory, however, is now the hostage of a…
Bishop Jimmerson walks around in the sun instructing a miniature work crew on the art of makeshift construction. It will create three bedrooms from two in the house sitting behind a square, dirt yard with no sidewalk. The street here, near Broadway Road, is not paved. The city does not…
Christophe Leininger and his opponent waltz sideways across the mat, like white-jacketed dancing bears, each one pawing at the sleeves and lapels of the other’s judo uniform, searching for a good grip and a moment’s imbalance. It’s late June, in a run-down, old Mesa gymnasium where the judo event of…
It was New Year’s Eve 1991. And Dean Brewer wanted a little cash. Like he had so many times before, Brewer tapped into Charter Title Agency escrow trust funds at the Bank of America. And he simply transferred other people’s money–money held in trust for real estate transactions–into his personal…
Top managers over at the Arizona Republic and Phoenix Gazette must be feeling a little underappreciated right now. And no one could blame them. They have surveyed their own staff, and the results–well, they’re nearly unbelievable. After all the improvements management has made over the last few years–including the addition…
When you think of Laughlin, Nevada, you think of: Slots! Blackjack! Dice! Drinks! Action! And Girls! Girls! Girls! But that’s not all there is in Laughlin, Nevada; I have two words for you: American Superstars. A fake Roy Orbison, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Charlie Daniels, Blues Brothers (not to mention…
On March 18, 1992, Joquitta Palmer neatly completed a handwritten application to the State of Arizona. “We want a sibling for our son,” the 29-year-old woman printed. “We know there are a lot of unwanted children and we want another one to love.” She and her husband, Cleveland, wanted to…
Pinal County prosecutor Sylvia Lafferty refuses to file charges against Joquitta and Cleveland Palmer for the murder of TaJuana Davidson. Lafferty claims she can’t prove within a legal certainty who inflicted the girl’s fatal injuries last November 2. Lafferty used to work in Pima County, where she earned a reputation…
The World’s Best Run City may also be the World’s Most Paranoid City–at least as far as press relations goes. After placing a routine request for documents relating to Phoenix’s curfew program, New Times happened upon a copy of a “confidential” city missive informing the city council, the mayor and…
Make a ranking of high-risk occupations, and the job of circulation-desk clerk at Phoenix Public Library would surely fall very low on the list. Aside from the occasional paper cut, the off chance of dropping a book on the foot and the potential threat of asphyxiation from gamey odors wafting…
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…
