At most private prisons, staffers earn far less than state correctional officers, receive less training and are far more likely to quit in their first year on the job. At the Crowley County Correctional Facility outside of Olney Springs, operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, the average salary is…
On a muggy July afternoon, Matthew Romero hit the yard of the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility for the first time. He was looking forward to an hour of exercise in a metal cage. After spending 37 days locked down in a two-man cell, taken out only two to three times…
She stepped quickly to the witness stand. She raised her right hand. She swore to tell the truth. So began the main event in the murder trial of Krystal Voss — the much-anticipated moment when the accused took the stand to tell her own story. Wearing a lavender blouse and…
Until two years ago, Marcia Simmons thought of herself as a pretty lucky woman. She wasn’t fabulously rich, but she did have what mattered to her: an adoring husband, a nice home, and comfortable sums tucked away in mutual funds, retirement accounts and savings bonds for her kids’ education. She…
It took five years, a state grand jury and key evidence from a reluctant witness, but families who lost children in the attack on Columbine High School finally had their worst suspicions confirmed: Top Jefferson County leaders knew something awful about prior police investigations of killers Eric Harris and Dylan…
The girls are twenty feet off the road, climbing stealthily up an embankment to get a better look at grazing elk. Their woodcraft isn’t sneaky enough, though, to evade the iron gaze of Gregg Burgess, who pulls his four-wheeler to the side of the road, steps out and beckons to…
When Robert “Chip” Schooley arrived in Denver from Harvard fourteen years ago, the rate of survival among Colorado’s AIDS patients was grim. The people in his waiting room had a one-in-six chance of dying within a year. “At the time, there wasn’t much of an AIDS program anywhere between St…
Mike Zinna is feeling giddy. After years of battling Jefferson County officials, whom he’s accused of everything from financial malfeasance and moral bankruptcy to bad hairdos, he figures he finally has the bastards nailed. What he has are surveillance videotapes unmasking the people who’ve been sending him anonymous faxes from…
Mike Zinna is feeling giddy. After years of battling Jefferson County officials, whom hes accused of everything from financial malfeasance and moral bankruptcy to bad hairdos, he figures he finally has the bastards nailed. What he has are surveillance videotapes unmasking the people whove been sending him anonymous faxes from…
Folks in Trinidad were relieved to learn last year that the town’s only hospital had obtained the services of Dr. Marci Bowers, an obstetrician and gynecologic surgeon with a distinguished resumé. The community had lacked a board-certified OB/GYN for years, and physicians of Bowers’s caliber — former chair of her…
The team is exhausted, but the goal is in sight. Since heading out from base camp, we have endured unimaginable privations (lunch was a bit rushed), the fury of the elements (I hope those were raindrops I felt pelting my shoulder downstairs) and the harsh demands of the ascent itself…
Harry Elder isn’t the only local builder of luxury houses who’s battled creditors, lienholders and foreclosure actions — and yet manages to live in a million-dollar-plus home he doesn’t own. Paul Lambert, the president of Dorian Homes, has gone to extraordinary lengths to hold on to his dream house, even…
Friend, are you tired of living in a crackerbox? Do you dream of a mansion on a hill? Does that dream include stately stone turrets, wraparound porches, vaulted ceilings, a home theater, and a family room the size of an airplane hangar, suitable for the toddling heirs to your estate?…
Last week’s auction was supposed to resolve the conundrum of who owns Barnum, a 65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex with a fascinating and troubled past. But the rancor and intrigue surrounding the much-contested fossil has only deepened, leaving a group of battered Denver investors crying foul — again. Discovered in 1995 in…
Bill Masters is looking for a meth lab. In the big city, the search would take him down mean streets, to a ratty duplex or a motel bathroom or some tweaker’s garage. But the resort town of Telluride has no mean streets, and the rest of San Miguel County, where…
It wasn’t Elizabeth Gardesani’s idea to confront her tormentor this way. She could think of a lot of places she would rather be than alone in an office with the man who she said had raped her repeatedly. She could think of plenty of things she would rather say to…
John Dunn stands on the deck of his home, pointing out the virtues of country living. On a 160-acre spread in southern Elbert County, they are many. The view from Dunn’s porch is one of undulating hills and gently sloping grasslands ringed by stands of ponderosa pine. A small pond…
In a belated effort to clear the air, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office offered up its souvenirs of a massacre last Thursday. It was quite a show — but not quite enough to dispel the stink that has clung to the biggest criminal investigation in Colorado history. For a few…
In a belated effort to clear the air, the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office offered up its souvenirs of a massacre last Thursday. It was quite a show — but not quite enough to dispel the stink that has clung to the biggest criminal investigation in Colorado history. For a few…
Rita Bertolli first noticed the work crews in the ravine last April. From the kitchen of her family’s home, at the end of a Green Mountain cul-de-sac, she could see them out there, taking measurements and planting little red flags in the high grass. The hubbub struck Bertolli, a 23-year-old…
FWD: SCOTT, DON’T SUFFER BETWEEN PAYCHECKS! THINK BIG! In Scott Richter’s world, size matters. Richter knows that Americans like things big. Bigger penis, bigger breasts. Big savings. Big chance to win big. Think big about the bigness people crave, and big profits could be yours. Richter is a big fellow…
Amid the nourishing chaos of city life, we urban dwellers find ourselves brain-deep in startling juxtapositions. Mid-morning one Tuesday, a formation of squawking geese sweeps its shadow across a used-bookstore window, dimming the dog-eared covers of The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen, and Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol. An instant later,…
