COPS DON’T ARREST people just because they claim to have committed crimes. There are troubled people out there who will confess to practically anything. More than 200 people tried to accept the blame for the Lindbergh baby kidnaping in the 1930s, and the six suspects who were eventually charged in…
When fast feeders locate on a strip shopping center’s pad, the design review boards force them to sing in tune with the strip’s colors and materials-to use blue roof tiles, for example, if same are in the backdrop. This doesn’t necessarily mean good design; it simply relieves conflict. The boards…
AMERICA MAKES the best fast food in the world. This is not an oxymoron. It is one overlooked point of light in our black hole of economic gloom. No Russian morozhenoye franchises are popping up in downtown Phoenix, even though ice cream might be more welcome here than in frosty…
It was early Christmas Eve morning. Wade Arnold, 34, climbed into the back seat of the transportation vehicle at the state prison facility in Tucson. Hampered by leg irons and handcuffs, Arnold moved awkwardly. The night before,” Arnold remembers, I had packed up my 13-inch television set and all my…
When Allied-Signal employee Al Robinson asked for help saving money on his electric power bills, Arizona Public Service Company officials signed him up for their special, after-hours yuppie rate.” And they offered him a no-interest loan to buy a load controller, a device to help him follow the rules of…
THE CHURCH IS in an uproar, everyone is standing. An organ is emitting a frenzy of notes. A teenage girl is shaking and dancing, eyes closed. Two middle-aged women encircle her with their arms, smiling gently. Half a dozen people are banging tambourines. An old woman is repeating “Thank you…
The subject was Halloween cookies, but at Rover Elementary School in Tempe, even that can cause a fight. No, not between kids on the playground. This one took place between the parents and the principal in the school library. In late October, a group of mothers who volunteer at the…
It was an uncommon funeral service. The mourners, most wearing cowboy boots and ranchers’ rough clothes, sat in makeshift pews at the rear of the cavernous Matt’s Saloon on Prescott’s Whiskey Row. The honoree was Dave Horn, an old horse lover and racetracker. For years, he ran the tote board…
I arrived at the Ritz-Carlton hotel early. It was raining heavily. The inadequate parking lot was jammed with cars and trucks sent out by all radio and television stations in town. Governor J. Fife Symington III’s press conference was going to be broadcast live. There was an air of feeding…
LONG AFTER THE shocking videotapes of AzScam had stopped showing up on the evening news, word of the last two indictments crept almost casually into the newspapers. In the main, the stories said that Rick DeGraw, a well-known political consultant for Arizona Democrats, was charged with obstruction of justice. It…
Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien, his bad purple plumpness himself, recently asked all Catholics to boycott Smitty’s grocery chain because the supermarket will be open on Christmas Day. I think that’s a hell of an idea. If there is one sure-fire way to embarrass the sinners tempted to purchase canned goods…
City Councilmember Linda Nadolski is on her way out, but before she leaves, she wants to do something mildly quixotic. She wants, she says, to do the right thing: an antidiscrimination amendment that would extend protection to gays, the disabled, unmarried couples living together and people in the military. Currently,…
Browse through the Christmas releases at your local video store and you’ll find all the usual chestnuts like It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street and A Christmas Carol. You’ll also find fast-buck fruitcakes like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Ernest Saves Christmas and Silent Night, Deadly Night (Parts…
Al Heinze was powerful for a while. And why shouldn’t he be? Heinze was the man who made life fine and mellow for the men who run the various prosecutors’ offices around the state. Anytime a prosecutor wanted to go out of town on a seminar, it was the money…
The following excerpt from the diary of Governor J. Fife Plushbottom III was delivered to New Times by secret courier: Dear Diary: Once again, history proves that I have taken the correct course. My mother was so cheap. She balked at first when I asked her to lend me the…
Almost reverently, they stood in line. In their hands were clutched the oversize volumes of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North’s best-selling memoir, Under Fire. Blissfully, they withstood an early morning downpour while waiting patiently for their hero to arrive at a place in Tempe called Books Etc. “I fell in…
The banter across the tennis nets at the Pointe at Tapatio Cliffs was as warm as the February afternoon sunshine. This was a tournament, but a friendly one. The organizer, Jac Rothschild, personally had sent out the invitations to 30 buddies. With a twinkle in his eye, he referred to…
IF ROY ROGERS and Dale Evans had run Alfred Hitchcock’s Bates Motel, it might have looked pretty much like the east Mesa landmark known as the Buckhorn Baths. Only less so. “I like to think that we’re offering people `old world charm,'” says 84-year-old Alice Sliger, who, with her late…
To find out the real history of Tucson you have to go underground. Down into the two-street underpasses that connect the university neighborhoods with downtown. Dank, dark, spotted with puddles of urine, they are places where drug deals go down and drunks take siestas. With its twirled Moorish columns and…
1. Charlie Keating finally took the great fall. These days the headline writers use words like “fraud” and “bilked” in writing about him. Not too long ago, Keating was Senator John McCain’s biggest backer. He did everything for McCain. He held fund-raising events. He flew the senator around on private…
SHERIFF TOM AGNOS doesn’t look embattled. His August open-heart surgery, a wrongful arrest lawsuit and the occasional political obituary notwithstanding, the sheriff appears serene. Though the investigation of the murders of nine people at Wat Promkunaram, a Thai Buddhist temple in the west Valley, has been criticized by everyone from…
Last summer, Joan Shafer sat in her husband’s study, sifting through her “nostalgia file,” the letters of condolences she had received in the month since her husband died of lung cancer. She looked at the dozen framed certificates on the wall, marking the training programs her husband, Dick Shafer, had…
