Andrew Thomas was said to be appreciative of the Arizona Supreme Court’s appointment of retired Chief Justice Ruth McGregor as a referee in the ongoing county feud. Thomas’ reaction didn’t make much sense then, and it’s making even less now that McGregor isn’t ruling his way. As you may recall, Thomas filed a motion with Special Master McGregor…
Two teenage girls made history at a border checkpoint in Yuma, but it’s hardly a record that will make their families swell with pride. The two unnamed girls, ages 18 and 19, were arrested by border patrol agents for attempting to smuggle 47 pounds of meth into Arizona — the…
A Glendale man who shot and wounded a Glendale police officer was sentenced to 24 years in prison by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge. Prosecutors charged 29-year-old Jeremy Kent with attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault, and misconduct involving weapons following the 2006 shooting of Glendale police Officer Jeremy Esh. Kent, according to…
A new grand jury convened by Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas has indicted Mary Rose Wilcox on 42 criminal counts after problems were alleged in the first go-round. Thomas’ office released newsof the grand jury’s finding this afternoon. Not only did a second grand jury manage to reach the same conclusion…
An alleged crime ring tied to local nightclubs, high-end car dealerships and the hip-hop community used millions in cash from a Mexico media family — but authorities don’t know why. With officials including Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon in attendance, police outlined the highlights of a suspected white-collar crime spree that resulted in the arrests of five…
Elizabeth Johnson, the mother of the missing eight-month old baby, Gabriel Johnson, appeared before a Maricopa County Superior Court judge this morning, via-video feed from the Maricopa County Jail and pleaded not guilty to charges relating to the child’s disappearance. Johnson pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping, child abuse and…
The roundup of alleged crime ring members we told you about on Thursday also snared Mario de la Fuente Manríquez, a Mexican media mogul who owns cable TV companies, a Nogales, Sonora TV station and newspaper. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, and police officials are scheduled…
With the capture of the “First-Aid Bandit,” later dubbed the “Band-Aid Bandit,” last week, there appeared to be an opening for a poorly named bandit to start robbing Phoenix banks. Not to worry — the “Déjà vu Bandit” has filled that void. Agents in the FBI’s Phoenix office are looking…
Saying that attorneys for Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas made a procedural error, U.S. District Court Judge G. Murray Snow rejected the “amended complaint” they attempted to file last week in their racketeering lawsuit against county officials.While that ruling has nothing to do with the merits of the case, it…
The Arizona Game and Fish Department may have some explaining to do over the death of the last known jaguar in Arizona. A report filed by the Department of the Interior alleges that the initial capture of the cat, known as Macho B, was probably intentional and violated the Endangered…
Three people arrested yesterday have been accused of bilking a bank out of $750,000 and running a network of shady businesses with the infusion of millions of dollars of capital from Mexico.The crimes spanned the last decade, police say, and included businesses that would be familiar to many readers, including:* CBNC,…
Did you hear the one about the guy who broke into a head shop and stole $300 worth of fake weed? Probably not, because it’s not a joke — some idiot actually did it on Monday night in Flagstaff.In the police blotter of yesterday’s Arizona Daily Sun, there is a…
A Mexican national suspected of murdering a woman in 2003 was busted by U.S. Border Patrol agents near Nogales.Guzman Badilla-Corona, 28, better known in the crystal-meth community as “Indio,” was trying to cross back into the United States from Mexico when he got picked up by border agents. After running Badilla-Corona’s fingerprints…
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has spared no expense in his quest to read e-mails penned by court administrators — filing a lawsuit, an appeal after he lost the lawsuit, and finally a special action after he lost the appeal.But Arpaio isn’t done yet, as county records make clear. Indeed,…
We’ve heard of all sorts of fevers — cat-scratch, valley, fevers where the only prescription is “more cow-bell” — but we weren’t familiar with the variety that a Phoenix man claims made him “violently ill,” prompting a lawsuit against PetCo.George Heitzman claims he contracted something called rat-bite fever after he bought…
A Phoenix meth addict woke up from his pipe dream early Sunday morning and began viciously attacking his 85-year-old mother, thinking his house was under attack by an intruder. The woman, Eva Fitzgerald, called 911 just after 2:30 a.m. and told police that her son was hitting her. Operators could…
The highly publicized search for the Tempe baby who went missing in December has hit a roadblock, but a babysitter, who may be one of the last people to see the child alive, is describing her time with the 8-month-old to San Antonio news outlets. From everything that has been…
A rodeo performer accused of torching his Carefree-area home in 2007 to collect the insurance money has been arrested after more than a year on the lam. Aaron Jeter, 41, conspired with two other men to burn down the custom-built home at 613 West Galvin, just north of Carefree, a Maricopa…
Reason, the influential libertarian magazine devoted to “free minds and free markets,” has published a piece criticizing Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas as “Sheriff Joe’s Enabler.”The piece was published online yesterday.In it, senior editor Radley Balko explains that “[f]or all of Arpaio’s tough on crime preening, Thomas may actually be…
There’s no shortage of discouraging news for Arizona today. In a prior post, we told you about Maricopa County’s dismal national ranking in terms of job loss, and the latest news on the education front isn’t any better.According to the annual report from Editorial Projects in Education, Arizona ranks fifth-worst…
We knew Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was desperate to read e-mails penned by judges and court staffers. But even we had no idea he was this desperate. According to documents obtained by New Times, Arpaio has actually agreed to pay Washington, D.C., attorney Carter G. Phillips $990 — per hour…
Winchester, the small Oro Valley cancer-surviving dog that was found semi-conscious and lying in a pool of his own feces on New Year’s Day, died Thursday after fighting off death for about two weeks.Winchester went missing on New Year’s Eve and was found by a dog-sitter in his owner’s yard…
