Given his immediate charm, it wasn’t surprising that Christopher Lance Johnson sold cars for a living. In fact, that was how he and Betty got together. She wanted a black Mustang convertible. Chris, a good-looking, smooth-talking 21-year-old she met through a friend, found her one. The romance was soon off…
Despite the efforts made to streamline Colorado’s domestic-violence system, it can still move dangerously slowly for some victims. Afraid and frustrated, some reach out to the extreme end of the victim-services spectrum: They call Mike Newell. Newell, a former Denver cop, teaches women how to work the system–keeping a journal…
Forgive Dave Thomas if he brings a private perspective on domestic violence to work with him. He lives with a small reminder of its devastation every day: his six-year-old niece. As the district attorney for Jefferson County, Thomas says he was already “pretty involved” in the issue from a professional…
The TV news show 48 Hours portrayed former Denver cop Michael Newell as a hero two weeks ago for his efforts to protect women from the obsessed and often dangerous men who stalk them. Specifically, the CBS crew concentrated on the story of Newell’s “rescue” of an Aurora woman named…
A year ago, Boulder police chief Tom Koby faced the cameras and promised that “our guy won’t walk.” Since then, of course, the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation has limped along. Thus far, the only arrests remotely related to the case have been that of a friend of the Ramseys who…
The decisions of a Denver Probate Court judge that deprived 83-year-old Letty Milstein of her rights and her money were slapped down late last week by the Colorado Court of Appeals. The case of Letty Milstein, mother of Denver socialite Judi Wolf, was sent back to the probate court by…
Sage Douglas Remington marches to a different drummer. A Southern Ute drummer these days–but that’s just one of the beats that’s driven him over the years. Remington, 48, came to activism early in life. “My father worked very hard and taught me the value of hard work and to also…
When the Jefferson County district attorney’s office went after a dozen bookies from a Golden boiler-room sports-betting operation last year, the defendants contended they weren’t doing anything different from those who operate supposedly legal offshore sports-betting lines advertised on Denver radio and in newspapers. Deputy District Attorney Dennis Hall, who…
Earl Elder loaded a small artificial Christmas tree into his car and drove west into the mountains. Six miles past Idaho Springs, he exited the interstate onto Highway 40, which passes through the town of Empire before it runs up and over Berthoud Pass. But Earl didn’t intend to go…
Letty Milstein didn’t believe she needed a guardian to look out for her best interests. All the feisty, opinionated 82-year-old widow really wanted in the spring of 1996 was to spend her remaining years in the home she’d occupied with her husband, Jules, for more than three decades, in the…
In some guardianship cases, the court can be overly intrusive, interfering in natural relationships while guardians rake in the money. And as a recent case in Arapahoe County demonstrates, not all problems lie within the Denver system. Ginny Rogliano and her sister, Joan, were appointed their mother’s guardians in 1995…
Salvino Martinez is singing. But not to the Denver cops. At least not directly, though they’ve shown interest in the first album by the gang member and erstwhile rapper because of a murder investigation he alludes to in his songs. The only CMG Westside Bloods talking to the police, Martinez…
All winds have swept through a state-sponsored and federally funded series of forums on global warming and its alleged effect on climate change. Complaints that the first two of six scheduled forums at various Colorado cities were either biased in favor of the manmade global-warming theory or sabotaged by industry…
The sun was just beginning to dip behind Pikes Peak when Detective Mark Finley turned off the highway between Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs and onto a narrow back road. Gravel crunched beneath the wheels of his car as he steered through the seedy collection of single-wides that made up…
In this desert, no living thing moves. Rocks and saguaro cactus bake on the barren hills. The sun is so bright that it hurts to look at it–even on a television screen. A voice, British and full of Shakespearean portent, rolls over the scene. “It has all the hallmarks of…
“Yes! Yes!” Robert Zubrin smacks a fist into his open hand as he hunches over a graph showing several spikes. He points to the tallest. “Methane,” he shouts gleefully. Zubrin trots back across the lab to a plumber’s twisted nightmare of convoluted tubes, condensers and gauges wired to a board…
The door of Lonnie Lynn’s house stands open. “Make yourself at home,” he says. “If you’ve been here thirty seconds, you are home.” A couple of crumpled Budweiser cans adorn a chair on the front porch. Summer evenings will find Lonnie there with his young son, Malone, on his lap,…
Sal Martinez wants the homeboys to know that he isn’t talkin’ to 5-0. Never has. Never will. His talkin’ to 5-0–a gang-slang reference to the television police drama Hawaii 5-0–was just a vicious rumor put out on the streets by his enemies. The same enemies who tried to silence him…
We can sit out here,” Becky Estrada says from her front porch. She shrugs and shakes a cigarette out of its pack, pausing a moment to stare down the street as though looking for someone. Then she lights up. “The house is a mess.” Small wonder. An endless parade of…
Letty Milstein may get her day in court after all–the Colorado Supreme Court. The mother of flamboyant Denver socialite Judi Wolf, Letty has been caught in the middle of a year-long battle over her freedom since her daughter petitioned the Denver Probate Court to appoint a temporary guardian in April…
Proponents of the Animas-La Plata Water Project (ALP) in southwestern Colorado have agreed “in concept” to a reduced version of the project that knocks non-Indian water users out of the picture, according to confidential documents obtained by Westword. The Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes, whose tribal councils have…
This month Letty Milstein gained a permanent guardian–and lost her independence permanently. Refusing 83-year-old Letty the right to appear at her own hearing last week, as well as the right to hire an attorney to represent her interests at that hearing, Denver Probate Court Judge C. Jean Stewart ruled on…
