Phoenix Fire Department Chief Alan V. Brunacini likes to boast that getting into his department is as difficult as getting into medical school. The Phoenix Fire Department is, in many ways, an elite organization. So it was no surprise that of the 1,709 people who showed up at Phoenix Civic…
Ivan Kapetanovic says it happened “just like on TV.” As Kapetanovic and two friends–Marko Belinic and Zeljko Vusir, both Croatian citizens–strode across the parking lot of Scottsdale’s Los Arcos Mall on May 31, 1991, a horde of armed federal agents swung into action. “Down on the ground, now! You’re under…
Few human physical acts capture the imagination or wrench the emotions like branding, the “kiss of fire.” –Fakir Musafar in Body Play magazine Some like it hot–red-hot. Like, for instance, Jennifer Saunders, a 20-year-old “modern primitive” who doesn’t mind making contact with small pieces of metal heated to nearly 2,000…
Waiting for his trial to begin, J.D. Campbell smiled the confident smile of a prominent citizen, a pillar of the community of Peoria. Sitting in a small justice courtroom in Peoria on August 9, the local real estate mogul and businessman seemed certain that justice would smile back. Clad in…
As this matter unfolds, you will find that what happened to Mr. Jordan was the kind of random violence that all the public is concerned and afraid of. It could have been any of us. It could have been anybody who happened to get tired at that time. –Jim Coleman,…
On a moonless, June night, a purple light bobs and hovers along the barbed-wire fence marking the northern boundary of the Gila River Indian Reservation on the far side of South Mountain Park. Joe Bigelow is hunting for scorpions, scanning his ultraviolet lamp across the desert gravel until a scorpion…
One of Sarah Dugan’s last thoughts before her life changed forever was particularly sweet. It was the morning of November 2, 1990, and Sarah was at work as a quality-control supervisor at the American Express administrative complex in north Phoenix. She walked over to a colleague’s desk inside the building…
August 5, 1993, was not a good day for the Anderson family. The Andersons have for many years operated topless nightclubs in Kansas. Recently, they tried to set up shop in Arizona with a club in which the dancers would most likely be scantily clad but not topless. Last Thursday,…
One of the enduring privileges of being an editor is brushing up against the ideas, aspirations and suspicions of the teeming masses. The suspicions are particularly interesting, because they often lead down paths that converge at the Trilateral Commission and/or cattle mutilators. After lawyers, ministers, therapists, psychics and relatives have…
We have to distrust each other. It’s our only defense against betrayal. –Tennessee Williams If I had never trusted Dennis DeConcini, things would never have gotten so bad. That’s why it’s so hard to be around him these days. You sense the aura of approaching doom. His eyes are set…
The 1969 Chevy pickup truck that Yuma farmer David Davidson sold to Jesse Van Myers was rusted and in dire need of repair. But that heap of a truck was what Martin Mowbray, an administrator with the Farmers Home Administration, needed to nail Myers. Myers had been the federal lending…
Chuck Bowden, the lizard king of Arizona authors, is shedding some skin this summer. A Tucson-based essayist, bird watcher and former newspaperman, Bowden has made his literary nut writing books full of his own deep, dark rumblings about life in the Sonoran Desert. His latest book, Trust Me: Charles Keating…
Until the 1960s, the banks of the canals that flow from the Salt River and fan across Phoenix were oases, de facto promenades bordered by shady cottonwoods. Phoenicians walked there and swam there, and, according to many an old wag, even water-skied. But in the 60s, swimming in the canals…
Environmentalist Debbie McQueen was aghast last October when she opened the public file she had obtained from the state Department of Environmental Quality. The file was on Marsh Aviation, a crop-dusting company that had been the subject of numerous McQueen complaints. Inside the file, McQueen found a handwritten note that…
Too many of Joe Calo’s friends in the Italian-restaurant business and the drug trade here in Phoenix were being systematically murdered. Seven died in less than a year–June 1988 to February 1989. The cops figured this could not be written off to mere coincidence. Especially since in so many of…
Arizona liquor czar Howard Adams is under attack from his own people. They are concerned that the kind of politicking and deal cutting that led the Arizona Republic to dub Adams the “Mr. Inside” of Phoenix City Council in the late Eighties does not translate well to the field of…
Tom Owens leans against the gas pump at a convenience mart in Pinetop–a tiny, tree-shaded town on the edge of the Mogollon Rim–and spits a huge glob of tobacco juice on the asphalt. As he fills the tank on his cherry-red pickup, he glares disapprovingly at the clipboard-toting young woman…
The Lady Kings won a game a couple of Saturdays ago, and for the first time in team history, Phoenix’s all-female hockey club was not in last place. Karmel Scott scored on a breakaway with less than a minute to play, giving her team a 2-1 victory over the mostly…
I sat there watching Congressman Dan Rostenkowski proclaim his innocence of all wrongdoing. Everybody in Chicago calls him “Rosty.” Very few people now alive remember when Rosty wasn’t the congressman from the 8th Congressional District who lived in the family home in the 32nd Ward–the Polish ward. In Chicago, that’s…
You could tell right off that Grant Woods was upset. “This was so bad and so outrageous,” said the attorney general in a phone call to New Times managing editor Jeremy Voas. “It’s absolutely fucking ridiculous.” Mr. Voas did not disagree. We had asked Woods to be photographed, telling him…
George Golden is not now and never was a fan of rock n’ roll music. And, at the age of 79, it’s a virtual certainty that he will not soon convert. But in early March 1957, the 40ish Golden was singing a considerably different tune. A phenomenon named Elvis Presley…
On December 16, the day he would be killed, Fred Schrader got up before dawn, made a pot of coffee, turned on the TV, and sat down to watch the morning news. His wife, Elaine, was still asleep when she first heard the creaking of the approaching bulldozer. In her…
