Thank God I’m having 40-weight coffee with Phil Gordon at Starbucks. Because taken straight, Gordon can make a guy awfully sleepy. The position to which Gordon aspires apparently has the same effect on Phoenix voters. Of the 1.3 million residents of what soon could be America’s fifth-largest city, only 125,000…
“We are under attack,” declared fundamentalist Mormon Prophet Warren Jeffs from his pulpit in Colorado City during an August 10 sermon. “We need the Lord’s protection,” he warned members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS). Utah authorities are investigating Jeffs for allegedly having sex with…
When Colby Lingenfelter sits in the bar and drinks his beer, he drinks it faster than most people would. It’s one big gulp, rest, repeat. Impressive work, really. But then again, he is a member of the United States Beer Drinking Team. The team was organized a year and a…
More than a year into a federal investigation of alleged abuse of children in his agency’s custody, Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections Director David Gaspar has resigned. Neither Gaspar nor Governor Janet Napolitano, who accepted his resignation last week, mentioned the investigation or other problems that have plagued the agency,…
Un-PC Red light, green light: In the article “Geeks Gone Wild!” (Jimmy Magahern, August 14), I think the writer might have been somewhat overly sympathetic to the “geeks.” So they were not watching the road, going through an intersection, when they were almost broadsided by a truck “running” a yellow…
Rusty Chiles is halfway through executing a left turn on the corner of Seventh Street and Ash in Tempe when he and his buddy Slipnode, riding shotgun in Chiles’ white Nissan Altima, experience a simultaneous “onosecond” — cyberspeak for that split second in time between decision and consequence when you…
The call came into the Phoenix alarm room at 6:38 p.m. last Monday. Within seconds, Phoenix notified Rural/Metro Fire Department to respond immediately. A mother had just found her 2-year-old girl floating face down in a pool in the 16600 block of West Hilton Avenue in the far West Valley…
In early 2000, Don Elliott gambled his retirement savings on the life expectancy of five AIDS patients. The Chino Valley retiree invested $112,000 in viaticals, a type of an investment that allows the terminally ill to cash in their life insurance policies while they’re still alive and spend the money…
Ward Games Dens of iniquity: In my opinion, Arizona and Utah must look seriously at custody cases, sending or keeping little girls in polygamous organizations whether First Ward or Second Ward. A look at the Stubbs family reveals just how many girls in one family can be underage victims (“Eyes…
Sheriff Gets Poll Axed When W. Steven Martin announced that he’d try to unseat Maricopa County’s longest-running embarrassment — Sheriff Joke Arpaio and his stale “I’m tough on criminals” routine — the most hopeful sign that the radio commentator knew what he was doing was his creative slogan. “If you…
Culture Shock Prophet margin: A very strong case can be made that the polygamists of northern Arizona and southern Utah are, at their core, a criminal cult subsidized — in large part — by tax dollars (“Dirty Tricks,” John Dougherty, July 31). It is a truly shocking and generally underexamined…
“This is laughable,” scoffs Cindi Nannetti, Maricopa County’s sex-crimes bureau chief, as she finishes reading a three-page report prepared by the Colorado City Police Department — an agency controlled by fundamentalist Mormon polygamists along the Arizona-Utah border. The report briefly summarizes more than a decade of sex crimes by Dan…
Six days a week, a large group of teenagers quietly leave their homes before first light for a predetermined location in Tempe. By 4:30, they have gathered directly under the Loop 202, near Mill and Curry avenues. The teens — almost all of them girls — chat for a few…
An Arizona Department of Public Safety investigation has linked a call to former independent gubernatorial candidate Dick Mahoney’s cell phone to forged state Attorney General’s office documents circulated to the press last September. The The fake documents appeared to be internal AG memoranda strongly suggesting that then-Attorney General Janet Napolitano…
On a recent Monday night in a strip mall parking lot on Camelback, Jeremy Kinison takes a swig of lighter fluid, then holds it in his cheeks as rain extinguishes the small torch in his left hand. He fumbles for a lighter and flicks it repeatedly as fissures of lightning…
Our Town Philadelphia story: I for one thought when I read the cover of New Times this week — “Robrt Pela compares notes with that Philly columnist who dissed Phoenix” — you were really going to lay into Don Russell and give him many of the reasons we Phoenicians are…
A parade of pedestrians streams down Roosevelt Street on a warm First Friday evening in April, bringing life to an urban stretch that is desolate on most other nights of the month. Like colorful spring blossoms sprouting up from barren plots of desert, the dusty sidewalk and parking lot next…
“Dinnner” Companion The Spike presumes that most people who have been to Mill Avenue in Tempe have run into Dennnis (with three ns) Skolnick. This is the guy who calls himself the Mill Avenue Food Critic. For a small donation that allegedly goes to help the homeless or homeless cats…
In Cole Blood Bad medicine: Kudos to New Times and especially to Cole Bailey Sr. (“Skinhead Slayer,” Susy Buchanan, July 17). I look forward to the day that I read about the cowardly skinheads getting a taste of their own medicine. I also hope Mr. Bailey finds the peace he…
Psych Job The Spike is thrilled to report that famed Wyoming attorney Gerry Spence has signed on to work his formidable legal magic for a Phoenix man charged with killing his mother and 7-year-old niece. The Spike spotted Spence in town for a July 1 hearing before Superior Court Judge…
Abbreviated Response XOXO from NT: Just read your story (“The Mile High Guys,” Jimmy Magahern, July 10). I met my fiancée while I worked for HP (1996-2002). We met in OGG — I lived here in PHX, she lived in ORD. Knowing that the distance was a non-issue, I didn’t…
Alone in the dark, Cole Bailey Sr. pilots his black Escalade around sleek, moonlit curves that make up the hundred-mile descent from his mountaintop mansion to the sprawling valley below. Bailey lives on a hill above Prescott, and regularly does business in Phoenix and Tucson, traveling between the destinations so…
