Spittle slid down her face as Juliana Ibarra stood, frozen, in the aisle of the Blockbuster store. She’d run in for a video, looking for an evening’s entertainment for herself and her foster kids. Just another Northglenn mom in a hurry. But Juliana’s entrance quickly attracted attention. There were whispers…

Ron Norris’s family eked out a living as sharecroppers in Scotch Ridge, Iowa. They lived simply, decades behind progress, tilling the fields with draft horses and drawing water with a hand pump. On Saturday evenings they’d sit around the battery-powered radio and listen to the tinny strains of Roy Acuff…

Last June 2, emergency teams gathered for a closed-door meeting at the Colorado Convention Center and learned that deadly anthrax had been released at a Sixteenth Street Mall food court. The dissemination had been subtle — 10,000 to 20,000 spores, a microscopic amount, is all that is needed to infect…

Susan Barnes has made some pretty powerful enemies over the past five years, including countless officers and enlisted men in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, Washington politicos and the presidents of a couple of right-wing think tanks. She’s been accused of being a “femi-Nazi,” of ruining careers, of…

If it’s true that the pen is mightier than the sword, it is equally true that the pen is not as tough as the almighty dollar. Knowing this, town officials who take offense at newspaper coverage of them have sometimes retaliated by pulling advertising from the offending publications. Those days…

Armed with industrial-strength paint remover and blessed with a face that apparently melts into a crowd, a midnight marauder has targeted the ski town of Breckenridge where it hurts the most–right in the tourist industry. Breckenridge police call the culprit, who’s been tossing batches of caustic liquid onto cars with…

When Richard Brady pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last month in the death of security guard John Adamo, he was playing the odds: He could accept the plea bargain from the Denver District Attorney’s office or take the chance of losing his first-degree-murder trial and ending up with an automatic…

A special prosecutor has dismissed criminal contempt charges against Idaho Springs attorney Titus Peterson, bringing to a close a case some lawyers had characterized as a threat to the state’s entire defense bar. “I think the special prosecutor did the right thing,” says Peterson’s lawyer, Paula Greisen. “These charges should…

The year-end edition of this year’s Bolt Action student newspaper at Manual High School provides a window into the world of the next generation. It’s not a pretty view. Gone, apparently, are the days when fellow students told one another to “Stay as sweet as you are” and when soon-to-be-graduates…

Don DeFiore is an early riser, and the way he figures it, if he’s up, he might as well go to work. He often arrives at the City of Denver’s wastewater building a good ninety minutes before the start of his 7 a.m. shift, using the extra time to relax…

Renee Polreis sat on the floor, her back against the sofa, as her son David clambered onto the couch behind her. It was about their eighth trip to the office of Greeley psychologist Byron Norton, who’d begun seeing the pair after Polreis complained that the two-year-old boy, whom she’d adopted…

Here’s a brainteaser for you: A half-dozen thugs chase down and beat up repo man Robert Bradbury, who’s confiscated their tow truck. They stomp on him and punch him–leaving him with a cracked rib and a concussion–before taking back their truck and racing off. Concerned citizen Andrea Anders, a 31-year-old…

The white Nissan pickup backed slowly down the dirt road toward the irrigation ditch just as the sun began to rise. Rocks and dry grass crunched underneath the tires as the truck neared the water, effectively obscuring any sounds from the truck bed where a man, his voice muffled by…

The Denver Police Department, already beset by accusations that its officers manhandled a suspected car thief who crashed into the car of a rookie cop, is reeling under a new round of allegations. And this time, police officers are the ones pointing the finger at their colleagues. Internal scuttlebutt has…

A recent attempt by Denver sheriff’s deputies to remove politics from their wage negotiations resulted instead in fisticuffs between two key players, an act that has serious political repercussions all its own: City officials may now have to discipline–perhaps even fire–two deputies who are arguably among the most influential officers…

If matters go according to Governor Roy Romer’s plan, the state Senate this week will confirm the appointments of four new representatives to Colorado’s State Board of Parole. But if two local prisoners’-advocacy groups have their way, the reshuffling of the board will be neither quick nor quiet. Concerned by…

Accused child abuser Renee Polreis appeared to smirk at prosecutors who were attempting to waylay her defense strategy at a pretrial hearing last week. It may be the district attorney, however, who has the last laugh. Polreis–who is charged in the death of her two-year-old adopted son, David–had been poised…

Jim and Jamie Nesmith are grieving over the death of David Polreis, a little boy they never met but who, under different circumstances, could have become their son. They had hoped to adopt the two-year-old Russian orphan when the woman who’d brought him to this country decided, after just seven…

Last week Karen Bowers wrote about the capital murder case of Jon Morris, a crack addict and small-time hood who prosecutors say savagely raped and killed five-year-old Ashley Gray. Morris’s trial, scheduled to begin March 3, has been postponed until May 19; it’s the first of what are likely to…

Capital punishment cases are always fought aggressively in Colorado, but the legal battle to save Jon Morris turned nasty early on. The 38-year-old Morris’s life will be on the line when he goes to trial in Denver on March 3 for the 1995 rape and murder of five-year-old Ashley Gray…

James Darnell is in a rut. Just days before the 63-year-old Colorado Springs man was slated to go on trial for trying to hire a hitman to kill a woman and her young child, he was arrested for allegedly taking out a murder-for-hire contract on four other people, including a…