Despite the threat of a lawsuit and allegations that its investigators tried to frame an innocent man, the Arizona Department of Public Safety continues to try to link Phoenix landscaper Leslie Merritt Jr. to four shootings in 2015 on the I-10 freeway. Court documents recently unsealed by superior court Judge…
It has been 15 years since Robert Fisher allegedly butchered his wife and two children before blowing up the family’s Scottsdale home. After more than a decade on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list, Fisher has yet to be apprehended. But the 15-year anniversary, coupled with recent media coverage, has fueled…
In 2012, Rebekah Mellon, a 31-year-old mother of one, was charged with the first-degree murder of her husband, who was found shot to death in the family’s Phoenix home. In a bizarre twist, the shooting was recorded on video, thanks to the family’s indoor surveillance system. When the case goes to…
When it comes to orchestrating a civil rights-themed public spectacle in Phoenix, the Reverend Jarrett Maupin cannot be beat. Billed as a protest of police brutality, the event that took place Friday at 24th Street and Camelback Road in the city’s tony Biltmore area lacked the spontaneity, the fear and…
Andy Barrios, the driver in a 2015 Christmas-night car crash that killed three men, including popular Phoenix rapper Jose “Low Key” Hernandez, failed to make a July 1 initial appearance in Phoenix municipal court for the low-level misdemeanor he faces stemming from the fatal collision. As a result, the court…
Ex-Minuteman and anti-immigrant vigilante Chris Simcox declined to speak on his own behalf during his sentencing today in a Phoenix courtroom. “I have nothing to say, Your Honor,” the former kindergarten teacher said, as he stood before Judge Jose Padilla. He was dressed in stripes with his wrists handcuffed in…
Anger and activism met with the blunt reality police force on the streets of Phoenix on Friday night in a dramatic, hours-long confrontation filled with tear gas, pepper spray, and pepperballs. New Times was, at times, at the heart of the action that stretched into early Saturday along Seventh Street…
A Phoenix driver who allegedly killed three men, including popular local rapper José “Low Key” Hernandez, in an auto crash last year, may wind up serving no more than a month in jail if he’s convicted, despite having admitted to drinking the night of the accident and to running a…
Visit sunny Arizona, stay for seven to ten, behind bars. That could be the Arizona Chamber of Commerce’s new slogan for the state, based on a recent analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which shows that from 2006 to 2014, Arizona’s incarceration…
Federal authorities have charged a Phoenix police officer and his cousin for setting off a wildfire near the ghost town of Cleator while target shooting with tracer ammunition. Tom Sario, who has worked as a Phoenix officer for nine years, “is currently working on a non-enforcement position,” says Sergeant Jonathan…
Ex-border vigilante Chris Simcox’s name now can be added to the list of infamous criminals to emerge from the Minuteman movement. On Wednesday, after deliberating for a day and a half, a Phoenix jury found the onetime anti-immigrant firebrand guilty on two counts of child molestation and one count of…
Monday morning, during the last day of ex-border vigilante Chris Simcox’s trial in Phoenix on six felony counts related to child molestation and exposing minors to porn, a video of one of his alleged victims dealt serious damage to Simcox’s cause when the prosecution played it in court. Simcox, who…
A Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community police officer has resigned following accusations that he sexually abused a woman in his squad car. On May 26, Scottsdale police arrested 45-year-old Jay Wu, a decorated Salt River officer who’d been with the department for 10 years. He was released him on his…
Taking the stand Thursday, during day 12 of his trial in Phoenix for child molestation, former Minuteman and onetime Fox News regular Chris Simcox attempted to undermine the credibility of his accusers, calling one child “extremely precocious” with a penchant for foul language, and another, his grown daughter Linsey Randich,…
Former border vigilante Chris Simcox probably won’t be getting any Father’s Day cards in jail, judging from the testimony of three of his daughters on Monday, during the Minuteman Project co-founder’s ongoing trial on six counts of child molestation and furnishing pornography to minors. Two of the daughters who took the…
Shitcanned. A local TV news outlet has fired one of its top reporters after he was arrested for public defecation. CBS 5 (KPHO) news director Dan Wilson confirmed to New Times via e-mail today that reporter Jonathan Lowe “no longer works for the station.” When New Times wrote about the bizarre incident,…
Four decades after little Gary Ray Hose vanished, his brothers are certain he was murdered by their mother in 1974 and buried on a piece of land in Pinal County. Following two unsuccessful searches, Guy Hose, now 50, says detectives from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office have given up on finding…
On Thursday, May 19, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge sentenced Tracy Elise, head priestess of the now-defunct Phoenix Goddess Temple, to four and a half years in prison for numerous felony counts related to running a house of prostitution. The long-running case received international attention and was the subject…
Former border vigilante Chris Simcox came face to face with one of his accusers in a Phoenix court on Wednesday, May 18: a pretty, 8-year-old girl with long brown hair, who likes to read and used to play with Simcox’s two daughters, who are about her age. She testified about…
Goodyear Police arrested CBS 5 journo Jonathan Lowe Monday afternoon while he was on assignment, reporting on a former Arizona State University football player who allegedly sacrificed the family dog by putting him in a smoker in order to appease an angry God. That doesn’t begin to explain the kind…
A jury acquitted a former Phoenix police officer of criminal sexual assault charges last week, clearing the way for his accuser to seek damages via a civil lawsuit – which she’s already in the process of doing. Court records indicate that the 23-year-old woman, whose name New Times is withholding, filed a…
The Phoenix Police Department is launching a series of anti-DUI memes to go along with a Cinco de Mayo enforcement effort this weekend. Using photographs well-known for their meme-making potential, the department’s “web ‘guru,'” Officer T. “Chad” Amos, created a series of 14 public-service announcements that will launch at 5 p.m. on the PPD’s…
