I have finally figured out the Redmond murder case. Since I am not extremely quick on the draw, this has only taken me ten years and a few months. I sat in front of the television set Sunday night watching a show based on the Redmond killings called False Arrest,…
ON THE EVENING of October 26, Phoenix artist Rick Bertoni stood in front of a mirror and used makeup to transform his face into a facsimile of a ghoul from the movie Dawn of the Dead. Had he survived till dawn, the onetime godfather of the Phoenix punk scene might…
LATE ONE NIGHT, after everyone else had gone to bed, Dick told Stacie to take off her clothes. “Let me massage your whole body,” he whispered. “Take off your shirt and bra and I’ll just give your whole body a little somethin’.” Dick squirted some baby lotion into his hands…
The owner of a downtown Phoenix gay bar accuses police of using binoculars to spy on him and his customers from an adjacent high-rise. And he’s right. But exactly why this is happening is under hot dispute. According to the bar owner, Steve Johnson of Cruisin’ Central, the problem started…
Stacie Elliget hid from all but a few girlfriends that her father, Mesa Police Department patrol cop Dick Elliget, had been sexually molesting her for years. When she finally tried to get her mother to help her, she got an icy response. “I gave my mom a chance before I…
It’s so peaceful and dark in Barbara Hughes’ neighborhood just south of Carefree Highway that three owls live there, and other wild critters regularly scamper through. But it’s peaceful only on the surface. A battle–so far a polite one–is being waged over whether bulldozers will move in. Hughes lives across…
Passionflies, Squid and Cherry wine New Times feasts on a banquet of local recordings It’s Arizona Music Conference and Showcase ’91 week in the Valley, so let’s celebrate local acts. In the spirit of the event–one designed to focus national attention on Arizona’s homegrown talent–we decided to feature the latest…
IT’S 3 A.M. Those damn sleeping pills just aren’t cutting it anymore. You stumble out of bed. Perhaps you light up a cigarette. Maybe you pop a brew or head for that pint of Haagen-Dazs. But no matter what else you do, you almost certainly turn on the tube. If…
There has been so much speculation surrounding the Arizona State University and Phoenix Cardinals football teams that I decided to see for myself. I drove over to Tempe to see the ASU-UCLA game hours before it was scheduled to start. It was a sunny day with temperatures in the 80s…
Feeling jittery about the recent rash of roller coaster mishaps at the Arizona State Fair? Uneasy riders may want to steer clear of the construction currently under way at the Golf N’ Stuff miniature golf course at Metrocenter. Now going up (so it can come down soon) is Phoenix’s first…
Money slips through his fingers like so much mercury. When the money belongs to a savings and loan, the loss is limited to its depositors–unless the loss is so enormous that the financial institution goes belly up and the taxpayers are left holding the bag. When the money belongs to…
IT POURED ON THE day of Patricia Willoughby’s funeral. Even if headlights weren’t traditional for the members of a processional, the extraordinary number of creeping cars that snaked behind the hearse on the way to the Mesa graveyard would have needed their headlights because of the curtains of rain. Heaven…
Bad things often happen to good journalists. Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio and Juan Williams of the Washington Post played key roles during the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Clarence Thomas. Both, however, have come away from the event with their reputations under fire. This doesn’t really surprise me…
NORTH-CENTRAL PHOENIX is an area of stately trees and solid homes which is often imagined as the heart of the city. Its residents cultivate this identity to a degree unparalleled in newer parts of town: Historic districts quilt the area’s southern fringe, and North Central Avenue blooms with embellishments financed…
What’s it gonna be today? A stabbing, maybe? Or a bloody spat between crackheads and hookers in nearby University Park? These are the sorts of things Cindy Myers thinks about often when she arrives at the Phoenix Museum of History at 1001 West Van Buren. And the executive director of…
LATE SUNDAY NIGHT–Finally, it is over. In Washington, D.C., it is past 2 a.m. This is the hour for stealth; a perilous period when muggers rule the streets. It’s a time for the criminal class to prevail and congressional pay raises to be voted. The faces of the senators are…
Linda Lee Curtis grew up in Great Bend, Kansas, the daughter of an oil-field worker. She moved to Phoenix 11 years ago and settled in a simple clapboard house near the State Capitol. Since that time, she and her husband, Ron, have lived frugally–a 1967 Volkswagen is their transportation–and have…
On October 4, Governor Fife Symington’s official press secretary lied to New Times and the governor’s law firm released a misleading document to the newspaper in an apparent 11th-hour attempt to discredit federal reports that Symington in 1983 had violated banking law. Did Doug Cole, the Governor’s press secretary, deliberately…
OF THE 14 multimillion-dollar bond issues approved enthusiastically by Phoenix voters in 1988, the city’s $15 million proposal to preserve its architectural heritage was uniquely ambitious. Never before had the city even considered devoting such resources to historic preservation. No one familiar with Phoenix’s screwy sprawl would have believed the…
I went back out of curiosity. They were presenting this year’s Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia University in New York City. It was the 75th-anniversary celebration of the Pulitzers, and they had actually taken the trouble to invite every previous winner to come to New York to attend both the ceremony…
Dr. Robert Tamis built his medical practice by making it easier for women to have babies. In the early 1960s, the Phoenix obstetrician was one of the first Arizona doctors to prescribe epidural anesthesia, a treatment that made his patients’ labor and delivery less painful. A decade later, he opened…
When the City of Phoenix put a private consultant in charge of its international-relations program, supporters of then-Mayor Terry Goddard hailed the injection of free-enterprise energy into sleepy old City Hall. But some folks who work closely with the city’s Office of Trade and Protocol claim the results fall more…
