In any other burg, the decision over which fancy-label bottled water to sell at the local opera house would cause scarcely a ripple of comment. But this is Aspen, Bub, where no official action is too small for parsing by folks who think globally, snipe locally. Town leaders in the…

Only two people truly know who inflicted fatal injuries on Kyran Gaston-Voss a year ago, and they know it beyond any doubt. One of them, Kyran’s mother, has always maintained her innocence. The other, the mother’s ex-lover, changed his story dramatically in the days after eighteen-month-old Kyran was airlifted from…

The stark shale cliffs rise north of the interstate, towering over the town of Rifle. From below, the 3,500-foot stone pillars look forbidding and lifeless, like books placed on a shelf for show. But to Joe Clugston, there’s nothing dead about the geologic upheaval looming over his home — not…

When Nick Morales began teaching Chicano studies at Metropolitan State College of Denver several years ago, he relied heavily on the standard textbooks in the field. Those texts had a great deal to say about the Chicano experience in California and Texas, but Colorado was scarcely mentioned. “My students were…

After hours of walking the streets of Sheridan, hiking up driveways and picking her way through trailer parks, Vicki Johnson has this part down. She knocks on the door, rings a bell if there is one. Another knock; if there’s no answer, she rolls up the flier and wedges it…

When Renee McGaw purchased her East Washington Park home five years ago, she knew the kind of investment she was making. A single mother, she plowed every dollar she could spare into the house, redoing the kitchen and bathrooms, replacing gutters and repainting, determined to see her equity grow. The…

Sam Howe loved being a Denver cop. He also loved to clip stories about crime and police work from the newspapers. Fortunately, he worked at both jobs for a long, long time. Howe began his law-enforcement career as a deputy city marshal in 1873 and became a member of Denver’s…

Forget Kobe. Adios, JonBenét. To hell with Court TV. Crime ain’t what it used to be. A place is shaped by its resident evil as much as its good, and by how the community deals with its transgressors. If you want to understand why it was once a privilege to…

Debi Drewes was in the kitchen of her Athmar Park home when she heard the crash. It was shortly after seven in the evening on September 11, 2001 — a day already overburdened with tragedy and grief. Drewes grabbed her portable phone and headed outside. A Taurus sat on her…

As an aspiring attorney-to-be, William Safford figured he’d found the ideal job at Auraria’s Student Legal Services. The 23-year-old Metropolitan State College of Denver student was working with lawyers and paralegals, helping other students with legal problems and earning cash to defray the cost of an education that he hoped…

Randy Goin remembers his first visit to a methamphetamine lab six years ago. It was the beginning of a long and disturbing chemistry lesson. A Thornton narcotics detective assigned to the North Metro Drug Task Force, Goin didn’t know quite what to expect. He’d heard the horror stories about crazed…

Jack McCroskey is a man of many opinions — some pungent, some pure acid. Take, for example, these barbed appraisals from his recently self-published book, Light Rail and Heavy Politics, a score-settling history of the Regional Transportation District’s fumbling efforts to bring 35 miles of not-so-rapid transit to Denver: RTD…

In pursuing a murder case against Krystal Voss for the death of her son, Kyran, the prosecutor and police in Alamosa may have disregarded critical evidence and developed a theory of the crime that is medically impossible. Among the most glaring problems: 1. The autopsy report. Voss admitted shaking her…

An accident. A terrible accident. That was the first story told about how Kyran Gaston-Voss got hurt. The baby fell. The baby hit his head. It was an accident. That’s the way it always starts, of course. The baby fell, the baby tripped, the baby leaped out of my arms…

Depending on your job, there could be fifty good reasons to bring a gun to work. If you happen to work in a law firm, make that a hundred. The top five: 5. Compare muzzle velocity with that smug paralegal’s puny .32. 4. Annual brief-shredding contest, semiauto division. 3. Elegant…

The seven men sat around the defense table Tuesday afternoon, murmuring quietly to each other and exchanging hearty good-luck handshakes with their attorneys. The tension was thick, anticipation high. Shortly after 4 p.m., the jurors filed into U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel’s courtroom. The seven men, now deathly silent, tried…

Atif Gamal can open the door or close it. Either way, he loses. If he keeps the door closed, the walls start to close in on him. His room at the 11th Avenue Hotel is not much larger than the average prison cell, and he’s had enough of prison life…

“Welcome to the John Inmann Work and Family Center. Welcome home.” Mario Salinas stands in a cramped conference room, studying the faces of the eight men and one woman gathered around the table. It’s half-past nine on a Tuesday morning, but the director’s orientation speech always begins the same way…

It’s spring. The birds are singing, the bees are strumming their little guitars, and in the petition-happy town of Berthoud, the locals are headed for another special election, locked in the throes of what Yogi Berra calls “déjà vu all over again.” For the fourth time in less than three…

Former guard Duane Coleman got to go home. Embattled director Brian Gomez got a new job. And the teenage girls of Colorado’s Youthful Offender System got a change of scenery — though whether the move will help salvage the troubled program remains unclear. Personnel changes and revamping seem to be…