News

The tiny Denver Rock Island Railroad doesn’t have a cowcatcher on its lone diesel locomotive, but it may need one soon. The obscure, thirteen-mile-long railroad is engaged in a ripsnorting feud with the National Western Stock Show, which the Rock Island’s operator accuses of trying to put him out of…

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…

When Denver attorney Jeff North sued Baker & Hostetler earlier this year, the prestigious downtown law firm tried in vain to keep from airing its dirty laundry in public. The firm, which had lured North away from the upper echelons of the federal Resolution Trust Corporation and then kicked him…

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…

part 1 of 2 In a two-week period beginning in mid-October 1993, Spencer Day went on a crime tear that was as remarkable for its workaday brazenness as it was for its repugnance. On October 19 he pulled an eleven-year-old boy off Wood Street in Fort Collins and forced him…

part 2 of 2 Most people know of aversion therapy through Anthony Burgess’s book, or Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 movie by the same name, A Clockwork Orange. In both, the leader of a gang of violent thugs is conditioned to become physically ill at the sight, or even the thought, of…

Timothy Wacker represents perfectly the conflict that mental-health professionals continue to face over the treatment of sex offenders. He started raping his sister when he was twelve, an activity he continued for several years. “The only time it was really hard was the first time,” he says. “After that, rationalizing…

The white stuff: Denver is no better at predicting blizzards than it is at predicting airport openings. After the flurry of prognostications that called for a big dump last weekend, the city canceled the first official flight into Denver International Airport–a United Airlines Stapleton-to-DIA charity deal that was set for…

Bully Button This letter is in response to the November 16 column by Patricia Calhoun, “Benson’s Bully Pulpit,” about the media and Bruce Benson’s loss. I think the media is just too damn nosey, not just about Bruce Benson but about the entire public. The media went on and on…

City work crews are unearthing hundreds of century-old paving stones as part of street resurfacing projects in booming lower downtown. They’re also digging up trouble. Area merchants and residents accuse the city of going back on a promise to save the “pavers,” which advocates say were handcut by stonemasons in…

Conflicts between Boulder street people and police on the Pearl Street Mall are sparking attempts to set up a watchdog panel to review allegations of police misconduct. The Boulder chapter of the ACLU and the Colorado Legal Eagles, a Nederland group affiliated with the modern-day-hippie Rainbow Family, plan to bring…

Earlier this year, when Boulder attorney Peter Rogers lost a routine child-support case for client Richard Kosnar, he appeared to go out of his way to make amends. Not only did Rogers write Kosnar a profuse letter of apology, according to court records, but he even offered to make Kosnar’s…

Park Hill businessman and his wife have received a six-figure, low-interest loan from the City of Denver even though they have a long history of financial problems and until recently owed the city treasury almost $60,000 in delinquent real estate taxes. Johnny and Bernice Copeland, owners of the Holly Shopping…

Richard Iannacito sells nothing but tomatoes at his family business on Cook Street. After years in the trade, he still answers his own phone and scrambles to stay competitive in the volatile produce industry. So when he learned in the spring of 1989 that one of his largest customers was…

part 2 of 2 The Clinic, Politics, and Wes Kennedy By the late Eighties it was clear that the AIDS epidemic could not be dealt with as other epidemics had been in the past. Polio and tuberculosis, for example, affected people in specific ways that could be addressed by a…

part 1 of 2 Dr. Adam Myers arrived at Denver General Hospital in 1974, following a residency program at the University of Colorado in which he specialized in hematology, the study of blood diseases such as anemia and leukemia. He was soon appointed DGH’s director of ambulatory services. But he…

Local boy makes bad: Since former Denverite JT Colfax assumed the name of his favorite strip and hit the road for New York City three years ago, he’s been painting the town red–and now it’s seeing red over his efforts. The street artist’s preferred medium is the photocopier, which he…

Denver filmmaker Ronnie Cramer is worried. “I’m not going to wind up looking like Ed Wood, am I?” he asks. Comparisons to the late Wood, a cross-dresser and anti-auteur who’s the subject of a new biopic called, appropriately, Ed Wood, are a real concern for Cramer (“Framed!” October 27, 1993)…

The Straight and Marrow Regarding “Courting Disaster,” in the November 2 issue: I read with interest Eric Dexheimer’s feature on the biopolitical plight of women with advanced-stage breast cancer struggling to get insurance coverage for bone marrow transplants. Dexheimer explored not just the issues but their history, and he gave…

A popular nurse at the Denver General Hospital AIDS clinic was forced to resign last week–under the threat of being fired–for bending the city’s residency rule. The rule requires that city employees, including those at the hospital, live within the city and county of Denver. However, nurse Georgia Caven contends…