Erik Dyce won’t spend the waning hours of December 31 partying like it’s the end of 1999. He’ll be ringing in the new year in a windowless office in the basement of the Denver City and County Building, bracing for the worst. Dyce will be one of hundreds of amateur…
As the head of a halfway house for hard-to-place parolees, Bob Sylvester devoted a great deal of time and energy to teaching hardcore felons how to stay out of jail. But this week Sylvester himself was in the dock, accused of exploiting and sexually violating the men he was supposed…
Closed callsLast week the state legislature approved $345,000 for new security measures at the Capitol, including gates at the entrances to the drive and the installation of security cameras. Sergeant Don Smith, head of the executive security unit of the Colorado State Patrol, which oversees security at the Capitol and…
My favorite memories are typewritten. In 1970, I pasted this paragraph, with attached fantasies, into my journal: I never went any further with The Night of the Owl, but it seemed permissible to give myself a review in the New York Times, because after all, I didn’t just write; I…
To say that KVCU-AM, known as Radio 1190, is in the bowels of the University Memorial Center on CU’s Boulder campus is no exaggeration; it’s located in the UMC basement at the tail end of a crowded labyrinth of corridors and is so near an open-air loading dock that DJs…
Buddy Bell had been in town all of five minutes when he started talking in riddles. “The situation here can be as perfect as a situation can be,” Bell explained at the October 20 press conference where he was installed as the Colorado Rockies’ new manager. “I understand that no…
He told himself that Lenny was gone, that he would not be coming back, but Robert MacLaren couldn’t make himself believe. He talked to the police and he talked to the doctors, and he saw his little brother lying on the hospital table, ashen skin under a white sheet, all…
Rafael Maldonado came to the United States from Mexico to attend high school in Oxnard, California, in 1985. He received a temporary green card in 1990 when he married an American woman, but his card expired in 1992, and he divorced a year later. Maldonado was afraid that he might…
Like a lot of new house buyers, James and Sonia Mayrath couldn’t wait to move into their dream home. They even took a video camera with them on their trips to the construction site, eager to record the building process as it unfolded in an emerging subdivision in Longmont. Four…
A slow-growth political insurgency that’s stirred up traditionally conservative Golden will mount its biggest challenge yet in next week’s election, when three candidates who have operated a “shadow council” for the past several months make a bid for seats on the city council. They promise to change the pro-business slant…
Denver police officer Daniel O’Bannon was late to his own trial on October 18 — he was still in the loo when Denver County Judge Celeste C de Baca called the courtroom to order just after 10 a.m. — but it didn’t affect the outcome: O’Bannon was cleared on a…
Working hardAs an employee of the Half Price Store at 10755 West Colfax Avenue in Lakewood, it was Debbie Archer’s job to make the displays — including twenty or so mannequins — “visually appealing” to encourage customers to buy clothes. Apparently, she was so good at it that the mannequins…
“Colorado Studios announces the launch of the first sitcom to be produced in Colorado and is kicking off a search for the pilot script…Anyone, anywhere, is invited to submit a script…Any kind of sitcom will be considered — there are no limits…There are no specified target audience demographics.” — actual…
The rising popularity of Latin music isn’t just hype. It’s fact — but you wouldn’t know that by looking at the ratings of Denver’s Spanish-language radio stations. On the most recent Billboard Hot 100 chart, five of the thirteen biggest-selling tunes in the United States — ‘N Sync and Gloria…
Douglas Bruce doesn’t do mellow. Squaring off against a room full of legislators and lobbyists, the anti-tax activist is a study in petulance. He frowns at the testimony of his opponents. He passes urgent notes to Legislative Council staffers, leaves his seat to whisper to a state senator, sits down…
Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part series. You can read last week’s installment at https://westword-preprod-wpvip.md-staging.com/issues/1999-10-14/feature.html By the early afternoon of July 8, 1995, the horrific last ride of “Wild Bill Cody” was drawing to a close. Three women were dead in a townhouse on West Chenango…
Journalists aren’t that good at math. That’s why they choose to spend their careers writing instead of crunching numbers. But math is as important to journalism as crisp prose. Without it, there wouldn’t be a newspaper business, and as every good reporter knows, adding and subtracting numbers — especially numbers…
Editor’s note: Shortly after last week’s announcement that no indictment will be filed in the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, a small foreign faction left a yellow legal pad on the back stairs at Westword. Our experts say that the handwriting exhibits several points of comparison with that of Boulder District…
Stood upNearly three weeks before 28-year-old Desmond Howard Derrick scaled the Pioneers Monument statue near Civic Center Park on October 14, claiming to be armed with dynamite and forcing the evacuation of nearby buildings and the closure of Colfax, Lincoln and Broadway streets during rush hour, he’d invited “all Westword…
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12 6:20 a.m.: Flop — copies of the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News hit the driveway. The Post gives little indication that the investigation into the 1996 murder of six-year-old Boulderite JonBenét Ramsey is on the cusp of a climax. Even though a grand jury appointed…
July 28, 1999, Jefferson County Detention Center: William Lee Neal walks in with a grin on his face and his hand extended. “I’m Cody Neal,” he says, shaking hands like a used-car salesman, warm and ingratiating. “Cody’s a nickname…My friends call me Cody.” He glances through the glass partition to…
The good news is that a toxic plume is creeping out from underneath the former Lowry Air Force Base slowly, at only about a foot per year. The bad news is that the federal, state and city agencies in charge of cleaning it up are moving even more slowly. Eleven…
