Off Limits

In a class by itselfIn the next two months, juniors and seniors in a civics class at Alta Vista High School in Mountain View, California, will get a chance to do something that Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter probably never will: interpret the evidence in the JonBenét Ramsey case and…

Silent Night

It’s consuming him, the murder of his daughter. He knows this, feels himself becoming overwhelmed, but he can’t stop. “I think about it before I go to bed. I think about it when I wake up in the middle of the night. I think about it when I get up…

Wake-up Call

Steve Grund may be the news director at Channel 2, but a big part of his approach is pure show business. And why not? News is an important profit center for stations, and those profits go up, up, up when more people tune in, just as they do with entertainment…

Thank God for Bob!

Look behind us,” says Eric Nellis. “It’s the highway patrol.” Damn straight — zooming up behind the sedan Nellis is driving along a lonely stretch of Wyoming road on this crisp but clear November morning is a squad car with its light rack percolating. Nellis, a clean-cut 22-year-old with a…

Communication Breakdown

It’s early in July 1997, and Jack has just turned three. He doesn’t talk. He doesn’t respond to directions. He can’t sit still for fifteen minutes. He shuns everyone around him, including his parents. On the rare occasion that his dad is able to make eye contact with him, Jack…

Fight Club

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…

Getting the Message

At a hearing last week, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission invited anyone who wanted to comment on US West’s pending merger with Qwest to come forward and speak. Only a handful of people showed up at the meeting overseen by PUC chairman Ray Gifford, but those who did had a…

Playtime Is Over

The ongoing saga over a proposed northwest Denver elementary school has taken an ironic turn. Parents who spent months trying to convince the Denver Board of Education to offer a dual-language/Montessori program at the new school found out last week that their wishes had been granted when the board voted…

Off Limits

Deck the hallsTime’s Denver bureau had real reason to celebrate at its annual Christmas party Monday night. The big-scoop Columbine issue, with its summary of the Eric Harris/Dylan Klebold videos, was just hitting the stands (a week early, to counter the Rocky Mountain News’s three-part series that started Sunday); several…

Stalking Stuff

The man speaks slooow and LOUD, as if to a person who doesn’t know her hearing aids have failed. “It’s just stuff I have,” he says. “And now I’m getting rid of it. We’re moving.” “But how do you happen to have three glass jewelry display cases?” I ask. “At…

Live From Denver — Almost

Brian Christopher, known to his loyal listeners as B.C., mans the 7 p.m.-to-midnight slot weekdays on the Fox, and he does so with an extremely local slant, talking knowledgeably about Denver happenings and interacting directly with Colorado callers who make the classic-rock requests that dominate the program. But there are…

Boy Wonder

The little blond boy looked out the window of the United Airlines jet as it left Denver. Raoul Wuthrich had just turned eleven in the Jefferson County juvenile detention center, where he’d been placed for sexually assaulting his five-year-old sister, but now he was free to go. “Bye-bye Denver, I…

Mall in the Family

Dick Schwarz has had enough. His family has been selling books, antiques and art in Boulder County since his parents opened a shop in an old stage house in Lyons back in the late Fifties. But his Stage House Two, on Pearl Street just west of Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall,…

Scenes From a Mall

1963: Crossroads Mall opens at 30th and Arapahoe streets in Boulder; JC Penney and Montgomery Ward stores promptly move there from downtown, which soon falls into decline. Rents become depressed; many downtown stores are boarded up; streets are deserted in the evening. By the early Seventies, “Tumbleweeds could go down…

Throw the Bums Out

Like most attractive public spaces, the Pearl Street Mall has been the site of an ongoing battle between merchants and transients. Sometimes it seems that unusually belligerent or obstreperous street people have made themselves at home on the mall. But Boulder also has more than its fair share of merchants…

Let Us Entertain You

Since its opening, entertainers have been a crucial part of the mall. Policy regarding what they may do, where they may do it and what, if anything, they should pay the city for the privilege has varied over the years. One longstanding controversy involved Evan Ravitz, a slack-rope walker who…

With God As Their Witness

We’re on the record on October 19, 1999, at 9:30 a.m. I’m Kelli Chan,” the tape begins. “I’m a member of the Enforcement Division of the Central Regional Office of the Securities and Exchange Commission. I am an officer of the Commission for purposes of this proceeding. This is an…

Off Limits

Stunt doubleRemember the movie Dumb and Dumber, with Jeff Daniels? How about 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, with Hulk Hogan, or Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, the Andy Garcia flick that was just about DOA when it hit movie theaters? Those are just a few…

A Good Day to Die

Max Levin died on August 25, 1892, one month before Rose Hill Cemetery began keeping records. Although the details of what killed Max have faded from memory, it’s easy to imagine what happened immediately after he died. The chevra kaddisha, the sacred society of Jewish men who consider preparation of…

The Man Who Wasn’t There

Bill Johnson had a hard act to follow. A former staffer with Southern California’s Orange County Register, Johnson was hired as a columnist for the Rocky Mountain News in August 1996, mere months after his predecessor, the widely revered Greg Lopez, was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Since then, by…

What We Have Here…Is a Failure to Rehabilitate

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…

Race for the Cure

Within the boundaries of Denver City Council District 8, high-rises loom above downtown. City Park spreads out around the zoo and the natural history museum. Nightspots draw nouveau-cool crowds to 17th Avenue. Neighborhood kids walk to East and Manual high schools, while vagrants wander near the Ballpark Neighborhood — Denver’s…