The world may be a safer place with Jeffery Thomas behind bars, but it sure is a lot more complicated. In January 1993, Thomas (who is serving three life sentences for murdering his girlfriend) was assaulted by guards at the state prison in Limon. Then, after Thomas filed a formal…

Last week, graffiti made local headlines as never before–community leaders decried the defacement of a beloved rec-center mural, a “volunteer” bloodhound was pressed into service to track down spray-paint-toting vandals, and a local radio station opened a graffiti hotline to report acts of vandalism. Just one week earlier, however, Denver…

It’s a sunny July day at Denver’s Washington Park and, over by the picnic pavilion, 150 shorts-clad revelers are eating, drinking, playing games and frolicking to the extent permitted by the 90-plus degree heat. So what’s wrong with this picture? The picnickers are employees of Denver’s Department of Social Services…

part 1 of 2 Fort Morgan hospital pharmacist Andrew Komesu was already in jail facing charges of forging prescriptions and plundering drugs when local police and federal agents discovered his stash. The haul, made in May 1994, was one of the largest in ten years for a DEA anti-drug task…

part 2 of 2 Back at police headquarters, Komesu was singing like a canary. He admitted that he was a morphine addict, Kuretich says, and he admitted forging prescriptions. “He said he’d taken a large amount of morphine so he could start slowly decreasing his use,” Kuretich says. “And he…

Pickup basketball is a physical sport, as evidenced by the playground rule “No blood, no foul.” But when the guy who gets smacked is a Denver cop, the rules change. What began as a friendly game of hoops last fall has evolved into a nine-month court battle in which a…

part 1 of 2 Chris Rodriguez pops up from his plastic chair and begins to pace the length of the interview room at the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City. His voice ebbs and flows as he walks the three steps from the window to the door and back again,…

part 2 of 2 Chris started informing on other inmates almost immediately after arriving back in the joint. He once allegedly turned in another inmate for smoking pot in return for a promise that he could make a few phone calls. His propensity to tattle was common knowledge among the…

The dry-cleaning industry has been hit hard by the popular passion for saving the environment. While some shop owners have undertaken expensive renovations to reduce pollution caused by toxic chemicals, others have been socked with huge cleanup fees. Now dry cleaners are complaining that they can’t bear the costs alone…

part 2 of 2 In the years since Peterson had worked for Marvin Davis and John Masek to find out who was pilfering oil from their pipelines, the business partners had been involved in an acrimonious parting of the ways. As is often the case in such disputes, they devoted…

part 1 of 2 Deadline-grabbing private eye R.W. “Pete” Peterson fits all the requirements of a media darling. He’s glib, likable, quotable and presentable in a slick-haired kind of way. And due to a few high-profile cases (the Denver investigator is credited with locating the daughter that TV star Roseanne…

In retrospect, Terry Casper’s midnight bike ride through Cheesman Park wasn’t the quickest route for him to get to work. It proved instead to be a shortcut to jail, where the 28-year-old Denver man was booked, fingerprinted, photographed and forced to cough up a $100 bond for violating a park…

Escalating tensions along Colorado’s Front Range have resulted in an outbreak of chemical warfare, forcing the government to step in and mediate. “It’s neighbor against neighbor,” says Angela Medbery, co-founder of the Colorado Pesticide Network and an eyewitness to the grassroots campaigns, which she describes as “mini-wars.” The fighting surrounds…

A leaky roof atop the new, $72 million Denver Public Library has caused damage to hundreds of books and has allowed rain to trickle into the office of the city librarian, but DPL officials are looking for a silver lining. “We’ve had great adventure here,” says City Librarian Rick Ashton,…

part 1 of 2 There’s something about Orlando Domena that makes people want to save him–from poverty, from gangs, from himself. Community leaders, from Denver’s chief of police to gang intervention officials, politicians and respected businessmen, offered up jobs, money, a cellular phone and a college education in an attempt…

part 2 of 2 Orlando could have gone to Denver’s Emily Griffith Opportunity School to get his GED, Will says. But, she says, he was reluctant to do so. “At that time he was voicing a desire to stay away from gang influence,” says Will. “He said gang members went…

The room’s only source of illumination is the wavering morning sunlight filtering though the fence, past the basketball court and into a bank of windows along one wall. Already, the dulcet sounds of new-age flute music float from a portable tape player, a backdrop to the soft shuffling of feet…

Four years ago, the Colorado Legislature passed a bill designed to make it more difficult for stalkers to track down their prey. What the law may have done instead is give potential victims a false sense of security. Senate Bill 91-74, enacted in 1992, limits access to driver’s license information,…

Clara Munoz has finally gone home. Last week she boarded an Immigration and Naturalization Service bus bound for El Paso, Texas. Once there, INS agents watched as she and other passengers walked across the bridge into Mexico. At that point, Munoz and her compatriots became the responsibility–and headache–of the Mexican…

Harry MacLean’s vindication arrived on April 4 from San Francisco–a federal district judge overturned the 1990 conviction of George Franklin, who’d been found guilty of a twenty-year-old murder based solely on his daughter’s recovered memory. The judge ruled that Franklin had not received a fair trial. That’s something MacLean, a…

Three former supervisors at the Salvation Army’s Denver drug and alcohol rehabilitation center say the center’s directors blatantly discriminate against blacks and gays–and that people who have spoken out against the “outrageous racial hostility” have been fired, demoted or expelled from the center. Epithets such as “boy” and “nigger” are…

Congress Park residents were pleased with themselves and the system last fall after winning a legal battle to keep a liquor store from opening in their neighborhood. Their triumph, however, lasted only five months. They are now gearing up for an identical skirmish with the same would-be owner, whose most…