Evalyn Walsh McLean was famous for the blowouts she threw on short notice at the Brown Palace for Denver’s society swells — ice elephants filled with caviar, Bollinger ’26, dance bands, the works. But in the depths of the Depression she took the Hope diamond to pawnshops to try to…
Plagued by massive turnover in recent years, the Adams County Coroner’s Office is starting the new year with a clean slate — really clean. Newly elected coroner Monica Broncucia-Jordan, a former employee who’s suing the county over wrongful termination, has begun her term by firing just about everybody left in…
Jacob Christenson of Parker would like everyone to know that he is very, very sorry about the events of May 9, a few weeks before his eleventh birthday. He did light a piece of paper on fire, but he had no idea it was going to cause so much trouble…
Gruesome video footage taken at a Colorado federal penitentiary of two inmates taunting guards and mutilating the corpse of their cellmate won’t be released to the news media any time soon — even though the videos were shown in open court to two juries in a failed effort to obtain…
Only days after I posted a few remarks about Bill Ritter’s play-it-safe approach to pardons and his reluctance to commute excessive sentences, the departing governor delivered a slew of bolder pardons and even a few commutations, stunning some grateful convicts and raising hackles elsewhere. Ritter won’t have to worry about…
Disgraced ex-lawman Michael Carona, a former hot property in California Republican circles and once dubbed “America’s Sheriff” by an admiring Larry King, has lost his appeal on corruption charges and may soon be one of the more celebrated inmates at Federal Correctional Institution Englewood…
A chronic whine from oil and gas interests has to do with the glacial, foot-dragging pace of government. But a presidential commission report on the British Petroleum offshore well explosion that killed eleven people blasts the now-extinct Minerals Management Service for moving too quickly to approve risky technology…
Twenty-five years ago, hairdresser Sherri Tippie persuaded Aurora officials to let her trap beaver that were gnawing trees on a golf course and relocate rather than kill them. Since that first trapping session, ecologists and water authorities have increasingly come to see beaver as something other than annoying rodents who…
Crocs, the Niwot-based maker of brightly hued, comfy-ugly clown shoes, has had more than its share of PR disasters, from the hysterical reports of Crocs-shod kids getting toes nipped in escalators to the savage reviews from fashionistas to a wacky endorsement from Donald Trump. But all of that’s nothing, compared…
The gin-soaked novelist who declared that there are no second acts in American lives never caught the many acts of Tom Tancredo — former U.S. Representative, presidential hopeful, gubernatorial spoiler…and now late-night talk show host. Starting Monday at 10 p.m., the Tom Tancredo Show will offer a nightly serving of…
An administrative law judge has slapped an $11,300 fine on a charity set up by anti-tax crusader Douglas Bruce–the latest chapter in the murky maneuvering behind three tax-slashing amendments that opponents spent millions to defeat this fall. Bruce, of course, didn’t bother to attend the hearing on the matter two…
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar clearly wanted to make a splash when he unveiled his new “wild lands” policy last week–two days before Christmas (slow news week), at a press conference outside the REI flagship store, just a few steps from his old Denver office when he was a…
In their last days in office, some governors have been known to make bold moves in the criminal justice arena, denouncing ruinous policies and commuting long sentences as a way of highlighting unfair biases in the system. As demonstrated by the modest set of pardons he doled out last week,…
Kids do the darnedest things with LEGO bricks and games, as Joel Warner pointed out in this feature last January. But few projects are quite the labor of love involved in one fifteen-year-old devotee’s astonishing replica of the Denver Public Library on Broadway: 7,000 bricks, two solid weeks of full-time…
If Phillip Ray Greaves II was looking for a life of uneventful obscurity, the 47-year-old Pueblo author wouldn’t have self-published The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-lover’s Code of Conduct, which was banned from Amazon amid threats of boycotts of the site and just got him arrested on…
You could groan at all his time-tested jokes and silly props — the red nose, the garish ties, the tiny kazoo and corny sight gags — and still end up howling with laughter and holding your aching sides. Any way you look at it, Earl Reum, the dynamic Denver educator…
MapQuest, the AOL-owned online mapping service with strong Denver ties, has unveiled a new site that’s supposed to encourage users to contribute data and correct errors in its maps — a kind of cartographic Wikipedia, or what MQ is calling a “neighborhood watch” concept. It’s a great idea — if…
The uproar over the forthcoming billion-dollar makeover at Denver International Airport, including a new hotel and train station, has focused largely on the price tag and the potential hike in air fares that the ambitious expansion might trigger. But the operator of one of the oldest concessions at DIA says…
In these dark economic times, it’s a relief to learn that at least some hard-working students are moving straight from graduation to immediate and steady employment in a booming industry. Qualifications: Four legs, good communication skills, familiarity with the demands of the service sector, dogged determination — and a big…
Less than two years after Teresa Lynn was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the murder of her mother-in-law and the blinding of her husband, her treatment team at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo was already pushing for her to have more privileges, including trips off…
Six years ago, Peter Spitz’s wife, Teresa, shot him three times in his face while he slept, then killed his mother. Spitz woke up blind. The attack and its aftermath are the subject of this week’s cover story, “Blindsided.” It’s a domestic tragedy of such horrific proportions that outsiders wonder…
Now that Denver Broncos management has given Josh McDaniels the heave-ho, the orange hordes are laying odds on the chances of the team’s most celebrated quarterback returning to the team as head coach. John Elway, back with the team? It’s a tempting prospect. But first you’ll have to pry him…
