A fumbling reviewer once threw David Sedaris a backhanded compliment by declaring that his writing was void of trenchant social commentary: “He appears to have little interest beyond his own life and his family.” “It’s so true,” Sedaris says, laughing. “When I read that, I felt a little sting of…
Having a gold mine next door can be a wonderful thing, bringing wealth and jobs to the community. Or it can be an environmental nightmare just waiting to happen, a stockpile of hazardous waste that could poison the water, kill wildlife and blight the landscape for generations to come. It…
Jeremy Garcia was the first to see the Special Forces commandos. Well, they said they were Special Forces. But the two men didn’t look like any commandos Garcia had seen before. Their heads were covered by camouflage hoods studded with pieces of red sponge. They wore thick green canvas breastplates…
You are not the kind of person who settles for easy answers. You never swallowed the Warren Report. You think the Church Committee’s investigation of the CIA lacked balls. You just know they pulled the plug on the Iran-Contra hearings and the Vince Foster affair before they got to the…
The Story They Don’t Want to Tell On the morning of Judgment Day, minutes before they launch their deadly assault on Columbine High School, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold complete their last video project together. Guns loaded, bombs and extra ammo packed in duffel bags and trench coats, they take…
Best-selling author Bryce Proctorr has a fat publishing contract and a debilitating case of writer’s block. Fortunately, he’s just bumped into fellow writer Wayne Prentice, who has a career that’s stalled in mid-list oblivion and a manuscript no publisher wants. That’s the setup in Donald Westlake’s new novel, The Hook…
The man on the phone says he doesn’t want anyone to know his name. He may wind up being the star witness in a police perjury trial, but right now he doesn’t need to have his name in the newspaper. That stuff can get you killed. Still, it takes only…
It was all over in three minutes. At 1:47 p.m. on September 29, 1999, a Denver SWAT team, acting on information contained in a fatally flawed search warrant, burst through the front door of 3738 High Street. At 1:50 p.m., Ismael Mena lay dead on the floor of his bedroom,…
When officials at the U.S. Bureau of Prisons set out to build a supermax penitentiary capable of holding the most dangerous inmates in the federal system, they didn’t mess around. Opened in 1994 at a cost of $60 million, the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum outside of Florence, Colorado, better known…
It’s ten minutes after nine. Room 205 comes alive. The children file in to the murmur of the Pledge of Allegiance, recited in English and Spanish over the public address system. They pull their chairs from the tabletops, where they’ve been stacked overnight, and sit down quietly — quietly for…
For the record, Douglas Bruce is not a socialist. You don’t have to be one, he says, to despise the regressive tax structure in the state of Colorado, which heaps an unjust load of the state and local tax burden on the backs of the poor. “This is really a…
A veteran official of the Colorado Department of Corrections resigned last week in the wake of controversy surrounding two sexual-harassment lawsuits that have cost the state more than a million dollars. The departure of Joe Paolino, associate warden of the Territorial Correctional Facility, came three weeks after a $287,500 settlement…
Warning: The language in this story may be considered inappropriate for children and quite possibly revolting by any adult not employed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. Whatever else you might say about Joe Paolino, he’s not shy about handing out compliments. One woman who worked for him says he…
William Vance Turner told them he didn’t do it. They didn’t believe him, of course. Three years ago, anything a prisoner had to say about what was going on inside the special housing unit (SHU) of the federal penitentiary at Florence would have been dismissed by authorities as pretty damned…
On November 2, 1999, all was sweetness and light at the headquarters of the Regional Transportation District. After years of crushing defeats and internecine warfare among the agency’s elected board of directors, RTD finally managed to win strong voter approval for its plan to borrow $457 million to build a…
Juan Toribio could see signs of trouble the first day he walked into the cafeteria in Pueblo. They were gang signs, flashed from table to table among the baby-faced convicts of Colorado’s Youthful Offender System as they tucked into their meatloaf and cheese mac. In 1997, Toribio was convicted of…
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…
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…
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…
Saturday, July 17, 1999. Grace Aragon drives 170 miles from her home in Denver to the Kit Carson Correctional Center, a private prison on the outskirts of Burlington, just ten minutes shy of the Kansas border. She comes to visit her son Kenny, who at age 22 has already served…
The anonymous message showed up in the voice mail of World Class Limousine last month. “It’s good you run black cars,” the caller said, “because you’re going to need them for the funeral.” “I expected some flak over this, but not to this extent,” says Major Marcks, the operator of…
John Cominsky wants people to know that the Tranzport Hood is easy to use. He demonstrates this by putting one on. The change in his appearance is remarkable. In seconds, Cominsky no longer resembles an inventor and enterprising businessman. Instead, he looks like a dangerous maniac. A maniac with a…
