Like a parent who has forgotten his child’s name, Dr. Marc Baker tells me for the dozenth time that he is not a member of Earth First!. And for the 12th time, he is correct. It is also true that when FBI agents fired their flares into the desert night…
In northeast Phoenix, a family of women tells an eerie story of footsteps on the roof, blood in the living room and midnight strikes by a black-clad “Ninja” that sounds like a script from a Hollywood thriller. “Living hell,” “terrorism,” and “sickening” are some of the words the women use…
Now is the time for all good people to come to the defense of their Pee-wee. I can’t tell you whether he did it. After all, I wasn’t sitting behind the long-haired, goateed man in that Sarasota, Florida, adult movie theatre on July 26, my eyes riveted on his hands…
Mo Udall ended more than his own Congressional career when he retired this spring, conceding at long last to the withering disease that has dogged his footsteps for so long. As Udall stepped down, Arizona slipped from pre-eminence to oblivion in the pecking order of the U.S. House of Representatives…
The white lines of the batter’s box are pristine in the slanting morning sunshine, and the base paths are clean and untrod. In the outfield, looking like white flowers against the green grass, 52 bodies in baseball uniforms sprawl and 52 right legs stick into the air, stretching in preparation…
Ending his weeks of testimony with the sort of outburst you might expect from a witness who had Tourette’s syndrome, paid FBI informant Ron Frazier told the jury that he had been on the verge of gunning down the members of Earth First!. Under cross-examination by defense attorney Gerry Spence,…
Perhaps we’re too quick to criticize political figures. Take the case of Mary Rose Wilcox, for example. She is now seeking a fifth term on the Phoenix City Council. As she embarks on her campaign, some express cynicism over her role in the Indian School dispute: During the city council…
There was a time when people believed that Conley Wolfswinkel was the richest, and therefore one of the most interesting and talented men in Arizona. Phoenix magazine reported that he would soon appear on Forbes’ list of wealthiest men. “Some of my closest friends are the Charlie Keatings, the Gary…
One Saturday evening a few weeks ago, a dozen parishioners filed into the Hellenic Orthodox Church of Saint Nectarios, a tiny house of worship located in the backyard of an East Phoenix home. Once inside the stucco structure, the devout bowed their heads in preparation for a special prayer ritual…
Seven-year-old Tina Harris looked up at her mother and blurted out the truth. “You told me if I ever was afraid to do anything, if I didn’t want to, I didn’t have to,” Heidi Harris says her daughter told her on that early evening of April 14, 1987. Tina told…
If you thought the Phoenix Cardinals were woeful last season, you should talk to a handful of Tempe residents about the off-season–specifically, the night of May 7. Nearly three months after two Cardinal players, Eric Hill and Willie Williams, allegedly harassed a restaurant crowd and a college professor, bitterness lingers…
I had been in Phoenix exactly one day when I saw a news story on TV about former Governor Evan Mecham’s plans to publish a newspaper. At the time, Mecham refused to give a publication date for Arizona Newsday, but he said that when it did start, it would be…
After a bellyful of paid informant Ron Frazier and undercover FBI agent Michael Fain, it’s possible to lose sight of what a great country America is. Defendant Dave Foreman, though, has managed to keep his grip on reality. Over lunch one day he explained his sense of patriotism: “Ronald Reagan…
I don’t know of a more astonishing failure in the present Congress than Representative John J. Rhodes Jr. Rhodes’ decision to avoid playing a role in the Indian School land swap is beneath contempt. It is a clear act of expediency compounded by cowardice. The amazing thing about Rhodes’ sorry…
The battle between Beauvais’ Fitness and Aerobic Center and members of the gay community appears to have been settled–but not without a low-key protest. Three dozen members of Phoenix’s gay community gathered the evening of July 15 at the gym on Eighth Place south of Camelback. The gay men were…
Three years ago this week, thirteen-year-old Myron Traylor had just finished his paper route and left his South Phoenix home with his mother, Debbie, to visit his grandparents. About a half-mile separated the two homes in South Phoenix. Myron and his mother traveled on foot because Debbie did not have…
A Mesa veterinarian is being investigated by the state for alleged incidents of animal abuse, including the mysterious death of a chow puppy. The vet, William T. Gray of Sysel Animal Hospital in Mesa, denies he’s an animal abuser and blames a former employee’s spite. Late last month, the former…
I am coming out of an ABCO on one of those torrid days that send shoppers actually scurrying from the store’s air-conditioned sanctuary to their cars. I am moving at a good clip when I see the gray-haired man out of the corner of my eye. He is preparing to…
I had forgotten how manipulative and deceitful Pete Rose can be. Rose was back on national television the other day attempting to convince everyone he never bet on the outcome of baseball games while managing the Cincinnati Reds. Recently released from Marion Federal Prison, where he served time for income-tax…
Jane Chapman’s life was wonderful. After college, there was Stanford Medical School, then she and her husband David migrated to Hawaii and it was there, in paradise, that they raised an infant daughter, Lana. One day a doctor told Jane’s husband that he had prostate cancer. David was 35. The…
Ex-Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Philip Marquardt probably doesn’t remember Richard Mendez, but Mendez remembers the judge. And Mendez says he knows just how Marquardt must be feeling as the judge’s own August 9 sentencing date for marijuana possession approaches. That’s because Mendez himself faced Marquardt for sentencing on a…
In late May, only weeks after announcing record losses for a second straight quarter, America West Airlines chairman Ed Beauvais boasted to nationwide airport executives meeting at the Phoenician resort that the airline would soon expand service into Mexico. As one onlooker put it, “The most disturbing thing about Beauvais’…
