Teenage Wasteland Gone but not forgotten: Hooray for Amy Silverman! Hooray for New Times!! Someone has finally noticed that another youth has died in the hands of ADJC (“Suicide Watch,” April 3). The AZ Repugnant found this boy’s life to be too insignificant to take up more than three inches…
Gas may be over $2 a gallon, and movies will soon blow through the $10 barrier, but hey, at least you still have the New Times Music Showcase. For a $7 wristband, we present 41 local artists and Los Angeles band Maroon5 at a time when the pursuit of happiness…
Deloy Bateman begins each school day long before dawn. He rousts five of his teenage children from bed at 2 a.m. An hour later, the clan arrives at the Colorado City public school. Soon, a few other kids join the group in Bateman’s well-stocked science laboratory. After two hours of…
Valley anarchists have never had it easy. At nearly every public demonstration they sponsor or attend, they find themselves confronted by mounted police with pepper spray as undercover cops snap their photos and beer-guzzling frat boys hawk loogies on their heads from the balcony of Hooters. Yet feds and frat…
Heart to Heart Heartless: I read your article “Lost Hearts” in New Times this week (Amy Silverman, March 27). My husband, Donald Westendorf, died on April 7, 2002, after waiting three and a half years for a heart transplant. This article really angers me because I feel his death was…
On the morning of Sunday, March 23, Roy Roman Jr. looped a belt around his neck and hanged himself at Adobe Mountain School. He is the third boy to kill himself in less than a year at the Phoenix detention facility run by the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections. Officially,…
Arizona is a tough-on-crime state. Between 1977 and 2003, the number of Arizona prison inmates increased nearly 1,000 percent, from 3,229 to 30,083. But as legislators and policy leaders toughened sentencing requirements, they failed to provide enough money for housing these prisoners. As of February 2003, the Arizona Department of…
Dr. Arnie Serota was furious. On February 27, 2002, a young man had fallen while rock climbing at Mount Lemmon near Tucson. He died of a head injury a few days later at Tucson Medical Center. The death was tragic, the 19-year-old strong and healthy. As medical director of Donor…
At last, The Spike has finally found something to watch on TV besides Celebrity Fear Factor. This show, which airs on most channels and practically around the clock, is called The War in Iraq. Yep, nothing better than coming home after a hard day at the office, plopping on the…
I feel naughty about my respect for Evan Mecham, so I’m badly conflicted when I see him walking toward me through the Capitol Mall between the Arizona House and Senate buildings. Should I scold him for the Bircher-right idiocy he helped galvanize in Arizona over the last half a century,…
Charles F. Long II, the controversial director of a boot camp for wayward youngsters who’s facing murder charges, has lost his private defense attorney apparently because he can’t pay the $50,000 fee. Earlier this month, Superior Court Judge Ron Reinstein allowed prominent defense attorney Ulises Ferragut to drop out of…
Brian Callan, the Marine Corps war veteran whose life ended tragically last year in the parking lot of a Phoenix car dealership (“Welcome Back, Warrior,” November 21, 2002), has been awarded a posthumous service medal. Greg Aurand, an old Marine buddy of Callan’s who lives in Idaho, enlisted the aid…
You’re hopping mad and thirsting for retribution. Little Bush has launched his dirty war, and the fatwah is really on! But before you go driving a truck full of fertilizer or strap on a chest full of explosives, think twice about what you plan to blow up. Hoover Dam or…
Jumping Through Hoops The Devil and Mr. Ruiz: What a story on the ASU basketball program and its excellent coach, Rob Evans (“Devils’ Advocate,” Paul Rubin, March 20). I am not a big fan of the team, but reading about the ups and downs of this year grabbed me and…
Rob Evans faces his basketball team in the locker room at Wells Fargo Arena. It’s mid-November, 10 days until opening night, and Arizona State University has just finished a dress rehearsal for the 2002-2003 season, an intersquad contest in which the prospective starters got thumped by the second team. The…
It’s one day before Arizona State University’s first official practice of the 2002-03 season. The basketball staff meets at Rob and Carolyn Evans’ beautiful Ahwatukee home at 8 a.m. to discuss the upcoming season. The gathering includes the three assistant coaches Russ Pennell, Tony Benford and Dan O’Dowd. Derrick Wrobel…
The leader of a renegade branch of the Mormon Church, now 47, had sexual relations with an underage girl who bore him a daughter in July 2000, records obtained by New Times indicate. Warren Jeffs, Prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (FLDS), apparently lives…
Sex and the City Mr. “Plig”: John Dougherty’s article about polygamy was great (“Bound by Fear,” March 13). He should get a Pulitzer for the way he’s dug into the dirt in this filthy corner of the planet. What keeps being missed is that the “pligs” have been allowed to…
In a predawn raid on February 24, 30 local agents from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency, acting on a directive from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh and Attorney General John Ashcroft, roused three local business owners from their beds and charged them with felonies. Mary Louise Stone, 58; her…
Sixteen-year-old Ruth Stubbs wanted to marry the boy down the street. So she revealed her desire to a religious leader, a man held in the highest esteem in her rural, isolated community straddling the Arizona-Utah border. On a December morning four years ago, Ruth sought the advice of the Prophet…
Joseph Smith, a 24-year-old New York farmer, founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 6, 1830. Relying heavily on Old Testament teachings, Smith introduced polygamy to fellow “Saints” in 1843 in Nauvoo, Illinois. A year later, Smith was assassinated in Carthage, Illinois. Polygamy became a fundamental…
Have you ever gotten behind the wheel and done a California roll you know, slowing to a crawl but not coming to a dead stop at a marked intersection? Of course you have. Luciano Arriaga Jr., 35, was accused of this minor moving violation. It cost him 10 years in…
