News

Cranky Calls Criticism last week of a US West-backed bill that would deregulate the monopoly phone carrier prompted an attack on the state’s consumer advocacy group by the bill’s sponsor, House Majority Leader Doug Dean. The proposal is a watered-down version of a previous bill that was defeated earlier in…

Mayor Wellington Webb traveled to London in mid-March to meet with government and business officials and to formally open Denver’s new British trade office there. He also took time to observe London’s current mayoral race and to offer personal grooming advice to Frank Dobson, a Labor Party candidate who is…

Whenever someone asks Marcus Roybal about her ethnicity, which seems to be happening a lot these days, she simply glances at the back of her 82-year-old hand and checks the color of her skin. “Chicano,” she says. But if you really want to know the truth, she’s part Sioux and…

A lot of businesses have dispensed entirely with printed memos, preferring instead to go with the electronic variety. But the Rocky Mountain News is still doing things the old-fashioned way, and we’re glad they do — because a couple of memos intended for News employees that found their way to…

Ramsey Tough Very good tag-team coverage in the March 23 issue of the continuing Ramsey screwups. Although I enjoyed Michael Roberts’s outing of Ramsey sympathizers in “The Message” and Patricia Calhoun’s continued bashing of the Jeffco persecution — oops, make that prosecution — in her column, the reader’s choice prize…

There are many fine bowlers in the state of Colorado. There is George McDonald, who, in his 68 years on this piece of earth has won 36 state and local championships, a record that makes people like John Wooden, UCLA’s Wizard of Westwood, look like a flash in the pan…

Joshua Beckius is 21 years old and living in limbo. When he was sixteen, he received a forty-year sentence for second-degree murder and was immediately placed among adult prisoners in the Buena Vista Correctional Facility. There, he attacked another inmate. The next stop was the Colorado State Penitentiary, where he…

Dayton James’s daughters were the center of his life, and he was the strong and certain linchpin of theirs. Although he and their mother divorced when the girls were small, James saw Darcy and Daytona every week. He took them bowling or to dinner; he let them select movies. Sometimes…

Josh Beckius was fourteen years old when Dayton James was killed in an armed robbery at Boulder’s Basemar Cinema Savers; prosecutors believe Beckius served as a lookout. He was sixteen when he was sentenced — as an adult — to forty years in prison. By contrast, the three teenagers who…

The state health department has proposed a settlement in a bitter dispute over water pollution from natural-gas wells in Las Animas County, but federal environmental officials say Colorado has gone easy on the polluter, and at least one person wonders if the administration of Governor Bill Owens — who worked…

Editor’s note: In the early hours of March 22, 2000, a mysterious intruder entered our offices through the unguarded lackeys’ entrance, consumed all the beer in the fridge, slapped 2,183 tiny luminous stars on our ceiling and left the following diary excerpts, which were written on stationery swiped from the…

The son also rises: Senatorial progeny Colin Lee (don’t call me Nighthorse) Campbell has been raking in the gubernatorial appointments. In December, Governor Bill Owens asked him to serve on the eleven-member Colorado Utility Consumers Board, which makes recommendations on policies to the Office of Consumer Counsel, and in February…

Once in a while, someone comes into Johnny’s Newsstand who is not a regular customer. Imagine! The Johnny of Johnny’s Newsstand is Johnny Kareski, and such occurrences fascinate him. Exhibit A: “Check this out,” he says, from behind the cash register where he keeps a guitar, sheet music, his first…

In late 1996, just days after their six-year-old daughter JonBenét was found murdered in their Boulder home, John and Patsy Ramsey hired Pat Korten of Rowan & Blewitt, a Washington, D.C.-based firm adept at crisis management — a specialty perfectly appropriate for the situation in which the Ramseys found themselves…

“Sight Unseen,” by Eric Dexheimer, March 16, 2000 I was appalled when I read Eric Dexheimer’s story about Carole Abbott. It is bad enough that she did not protect her daughter, but that she is also a so-called “expert” in child abuse is truly horrifying! Her husband may wind up…

In the unhappy and shameful world of sexual abuse, the case brought by Denver cops in the first week of November last year barely rated at all. It began with a private complaint to friends — known as an “outcry” among professionals in the field. Late last summer, the now-22-year-old…

By now, most of the state knows who John Fielder is. Anyone who has been inside a local bookstore, read the Rocky Mountain News, watched News4, done business with Norwest Bank, passed the Colorado History Museum or opened their Public Service Company bill has certainly come across his name and…

William Henry Jackson, 1843-1942 Job before becoming a photographer: Civil War soldier, bullwhacker for a freighting company along the Oregon Trail. Beginning of photography career: Opened a studio in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1868. Moved to Denver: 1880. Name of company: W.H. Jackson Photo Co. Corporate sponsors: Union Pacific Railroad, Hayden…

On the afternoon of June 10, 1999, suspected drug dealer Xavier Davis was puttering around Aurora in his silver Hyundai when he received a call on his cell phone from his buddy Nathan Brown, aka “Lil’ Nate.” Lil’ Nate, FBI agents believe, was looking to purchase dope from Davis, who…

One frigid night in December, hundreds of people stood shivering in what seemed to be an endless line outside the Denver Zoo. The people driving by looked on in envy. Sure, they were warm, but they weren’t going to get to see the holiday light display. They were too busy…

Former Central High School student Terry Mosley was found not guilty of first-degree assault by an Adams County jury last Thursday. The jury deliberated for a little more than two hours before ruling that Mosley had acted in self-defense when he struck Hinkley High School student Levi Cumins with an…