Governor Fife Symington’s chief henchmen went to the Mesa Tribune last week for a long-awaited powwow. By the time it was over, John Dougherty-the Trib reporter whose scoops about the savings-and-loan scandal consistently have embarrassed the governor and other politicians-was off the big story, possibly for keeps. Several sources present…
Gordon Fischler once planned to be buried “forever and a day” between his wife and his uncle in a Tombstone cemetery. (After all, Fischler was the Tombstone marshal for a decade.) But someone beat him to it. “They’re telling us to forget that `eternity together’ stuff, unless we dig up…
The courtroom is hushed. Earl Morris swallows hard. He is playing to a small audience. Its numbers are few, but they are totally mesmerized. If Morris were a veteran actor, this tiny crowd of spectators might be discouraging. It might even tempt him to deliver his lines too swiftly. He…
At trial, Balkan will likely argue that the statements of the Tucson suspects-none of which mention Doody or Garcia or seem to describe either of the boys-are legitimate confessions. “And I think the sheriffs are going to say, `Yeah, yeah, you’re right, [the Tucson suspects] did it,'” Balkan says. “I…
PLUNGING SOUTH down Dysart Road from Glendale Avenue, into the great wide nothingness of the West Valley, everything is rubble and scorn. It is about five miles from the Circle K on Glendale Avenue to the Whataburger on Van Buren, past the faux oasis of Litchfield Park, with its palm…
Doody told detectives Caratachea approached him asking for help in defeating the temple’s “motion sensors”-floodlights activated by movements on the grounds. This may have been the “intrusion alert” exercise Joseph Burner said Doody told him he was going on. Earlier this month, new evidence surfaced against Caratachea when two juveniles…
“He even said he was at the scene at the time it happened-he mentioned Alex’s name, he mentioned Rolando Caratachea,” Rowlett said. “They had gone in there for robbery purposes, to get what they wanted and leave, but one of the monks woke up, and he [Doody] didn’t want nobody…
About a third of a million dollars in federal funds earmarked to fight AIDS wound up mostly unused and in limbo for the past three months because of local infighting that has even professional politicians shaking their heads. The money finally was freed up last week, but there still exists…
Governor Symington goes to Washington! On Thursday of this week, J. Fife Symington III is scheduled to appear before a Congressional committee looking into the fall of Southwest Savings and Loan. If Symington, a Harvard man, were also a diarist, here is how he might describe the upcoming events: Dear…
When Howard Cosell stepped down from his 35-year career as a radio sportscaster recently, his departure was barely mentioned. This was strange. In his best years, Cosell’s name was on everyone’s lips. He was the undoubted star of Monday Night Football when that show was one of the hottest on…
I have touched the highest point of my greatness; I haste now to my setting. I shall fall Like a Bright exhalation in the evening, And no man see me more. Shakespeare, Henry VIII For great professional athletes, the last act is the most difficult to perform with grace. It…
For two years, Valentin says, he was unable to remember his own name. While he had once been an accomplished musician, his musicality had apparently been beaten out of him-he could no longer hold melodies in his mind; they were suddenly slippery, evasive, lost. Other parts of his personality seemed…
Robinson also says he does not know why Weaver and Schilling were not notified prior to Brown’s release. He is sure, however, that the oversight wasn’t the police department’s fault: Such notification is the responsibility of the agency that’s holding the prisoner, in this case the sheriff’s department, he says…
A good way to hit the jackpot in the Arizona Lottery may not have anything to do with luck. According to some unhappy lawmakers and business people, all you have to do is make promises about creating jobs.” Apparently, it also helps if your business is fund raising. Stung by…
MILES AWAY FROM asphalt, in a secluded lodge north of Lake Pleasant, the Russian blusters and frets. Mad with dislocation, he drags his prison-damaged leg from room to room, bellowing for the interpreter, sounding like a wounded bear. Valentin Bodrov, the son of a traitor, has a child’s capacity for…
IF YOU LIVE in the inner city, it isn’t difficult to imagine that you will become the victim of a crime. At least, it hasn’t been difficult for Chris Schilling and Jeff Weaver to imagine it during the nearly three years that they’ve lived in the historic Story District, south…
And, of course, Victor was aware of the ice-pick assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in August 1940-lending grim veracity to Trotsky’s warning that “Stalin seeks to strike, not at the ideas of his opponent, but at his skull.” Even so, Victor Kravchenko appeared before the committee, speaking in…
Big Brother is watching as you leave the Sky Harbor International Airport parking lot. This is not fiction. It’s fact. But why? High-flying speculation over that question has been circling the airport parking lot for some time now, ever since Sky Harbor inaugurated a practice that smacked of something right…
Agnes Lang sums up her first head-on collision with the legal system in her 79 years like this: “It was as much of a lemon as that car those people sold me.” The Tempe resident sued East Valley Jeep Eagle in 1989, claiming salesmen had hoodwinked her on the value…
Twelve-year-old John Johnson was playing with his buddy in a ditch behind his east Phoenix apartment earlier this month when he found a cardboard box stuffed with bloody needles. The seventh-grader raced home to show the discovery to his mother. “He was scared,” recalls his mother, Sarah Fluhardy. “I could…
You’re Mike Tyson. Many boxing fans predicted you would be the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. You had talent, speed and power. You displayed great courage in the ring. For a time, you dazzled crowds the way the young Muhammad Ali did. You were undefeated and people said you…
The other day I came across a fascinating mystery novel. If I am right, this book is not only going to sell big, but it could make a difference in the current industrial war being waged against us by Japan. Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun serves two purposes. On one level,…
