The smell of manure, sweet and earthy, permeates everything in and around the tiny farming enclave of Wiggins. Its musk is carried in the wind as it blows across the brown, dusty fields and then settles in the streets and stores and tiny backyards of the houses in town–an appropriate…

part 2 of 2 In the weeks following the original confrontation with her daughter in the therapist’s office, Barbara Huttner succumbed to serious depression. For the first month, she says, “I’d sit around the house in dirty sweats, watching TV and drinking coffee all day long.” Her face broke out…

part 1 of 2 Barbara Huttner pulls a thick wedding album from a shelf in her family room and flips through it, looking for a picture of her daughter. The volume contains dozens of photos that have been ripped into pieces and defaced with a black marking pen, the faces…

When local journalist Stephana Major takes the stand to defend herself against charges that she diverted nearly $10,000 from bank accounts of the Colorado Association of Black Journalists, she might well claim her arrest was a case of mistaken identity. Major, after all, has told police that the blame for…

Arizona sheriff Richard Mack says he’s not interested in feuding with Denver police, but events are heading in that direction anyway, with a little help from a coterie of “patriots.” Mack, who heads up the thirteen-member Graham County Sheriff’s Department in eastern Arizona, says the issue concerns a miscarriage of…

James Colden’s face peered from a dozen “Wanted” fliers hung throughout the City of Arvada’s administrative offices. Contact police if he shows up, the fliers warned, because Colden is potentially violent. But Colden’s only “crime” is in getting a divorce. And Colden–who has filed a notice of intent to sue…

Doug Shadoan’s weenie-wagging hoochie-coochie, which he performed last August 17 while clad in a black dress and wig in front of his second-story Edgewater apartment window, earned him a $275 fine and a thirty-day suspended jail sentence for public indecency. Because he was already on probation for a Peeping Tom…

The morning chill was still in the air December 14 when the news flew up and down Colfax Avenue: “Shorty’s dead. Murdered. The midget hooker is dead.” The street people knew before the media, before the coroner, before many of the cops on the beat. Another dead prostitute. But Belinda…

In the mudfight that was last month’s Adams County sheriff’s election, incumbent Ed Camp was accused of–among other things–firing deputies who’d opposed him politically (“Cop-A-Doodle-Doo!,” September 28). And though Camp lost his bid for re-election and leaves office next month, it appears that loyalty is still high on his agenda:…

Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton won attention and re-election this fall with the help of slick TV ads touting her crime-fighting skills. One such commercial, implying that Norton keeps our streets safe by personally contesting felons’ appeals, featured mug shots of some of the state’s most heinous criminals. As the…

Linda Carlson watches intently as Rob Manierre’s three Arabians canter about the small corral, their tails aloft and sailing behind them like banners in a breeze. When the equine trio finally stops, Carlson, owner of the Boulder firm Equi-Sense, makes her way through the mud and manure to the seven-month-old…

John and Jim Cipriani hope to accomplish in federal civil court what police and prosecutors have been unable to do for the past four years–prove that Colorado State Patrol trooper Bob Benefiel murdered their sister, former El Paso County sheriff’s deputy Cecilia Cipriani Benefiel. Benefiel has denied killing her (“A…

It was twilight when Jack Ducey’s family arrived at his dark hulk of a house in north Denver. They’d come when their phone calls went unanswered and they spotted the newspapers collecting on his stoop. There was no sign of life. To the contrary, one of Jack’s dogs was lying…

Get past the unending stream of annoying television ads and Amendment 11, the “Workers’ Choice of Care” initiative, is essentially a labor-management dispute in which voters are being asked to act as arbitrators. Unfortunately, they’ll have to make up their minds based largely on high-priced media campaigns rife with exaggeration,…

Officer Bob Kishell is cruising slowly past Faith Lutheran Church School when a young woman dashes through the rain and sleet to reach his patrol car. “Hi, Robin,” Kishell says, as he rolls down his window. Robin speaks hurriedly, hugging herself against the cold. A man has been skulking in…

The political circus comes to Adams County every four years right about now. And the race for county sheriff often occupies the center ring. Eight years ago, when sheriff Bert Johnson was awaiting the start of his trial on sexual assault and harassment charges, he was still debating whether to…

Douglas Clark, a military doctor at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, is facing criminal charges and a court-martial as a result of sexual harassment accusations brought forth by a female civilian radiation therapist. Army officials are now considering a request by Clark to resign from the service rather than…

Rob Betts loves industrial rock, dislikes authority and has a grudge against police. And for more than a year now, the Denver college student has channeled those traits into editing The Denver MonkeyWrench, a funky underground newsletter with an anti-cop bent. Not surprisingly, Betts’s creation has earned him a special…

Teresa Hailey, state director of the Miss Colorado Metroplex pageant, would have done well to commit her organization’s mawkish creed to heart. “Be too large for worry,” it reads, “too noble for anger, too strong for fear, too happy to admit the presence of trouble.” On June 12, however, nearly…

Colorado’s prisons received a passing grade earlier this year from a U.S. Department of Justice consultant hired to conduct a study of sexual harassment in the workplace. The results could have been a point of pride for the state’s corrections system, which is badly is need of some positive press…

Sometimes old soldiers don’t die–they just become political liabilities and get shuffled out a side door. And thus ends the career of Major General John France of the Colorado National Guard. France has been under scrutiny since last year, when he was named in a civil suit accusing him of…

part 1 of 2 Teresa Schoepflin used to dream of returning triumphant, college diploma in hand, to teach at the rural consolidated school she’d attended in tiny Mulhall, Oklahoma. That dream seemed about to come true in 1983, when she was awarded a basketball scholarship to Oklahoma State University in…