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Journalists aren’t that good at math. That’s why they choose to spend their careers writing instead of crunching numbers. But math is as important to journalism as crisp prose. Without it, there wouldn’t be a newspaper business, and as every good reporter knows, adding and subtracting numbers — especially numbers…

Editor’s note: Shortly after last week’s announcement that no indictment will be filed in the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, a small foreign faction left a yellow legal pad on the back stairs at Westword. Our experts say that the handwriting exhibits several points of comparison with that of Boulder District…

Stood upNearly three weeks before 28-year-old Desmond Howard Derrick scaled the Pioneers Monument statue near Civic Center Park on October 14, claiming to be armed with dynamite and forcing the evacuation of nearby buildings and the closure of Colfax, Lincoln and Broadway streets during rush hour, he’d invited “all Westword…

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12 6:20 a.m.: Flop — copies of the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News hit the driveway. The Post gives little indication that the investigation into the 1996 murder of six-year-old Boulderite JonBenét Ramsey is on the cusp of a climax. Even though a grand jury appointed…

July 28, 1999, Jefferson County Detention Center: William Lee Neal walks in with a grin on his face and his hand extended. “I’m Cody Neal,” he says, shaking hands like a used-car salesman, warm and ingratiating. “Cody’s a nickname…My friends call me Cody.” He glances through the glass partition to…

The good news is that a toxic plume is creeping out from underneath the former Lowry Air Force Base slowly, at only about a foot per year. The bad news is that the federal, state and city agencies in charge of cleaning it up are moving even more slowly. Eleven…

Dr. Karl Shipman’s stumble off a ladder in September 1997 set off a perilous chain of events that led to — but did not end with — his sudden death at age 64. The hardy, athletic internist and former chief of medicine at Presbyterian Hospital had simply broken his wrist…

The Beat goes on:Over the past several years, the estate of writer Jack Kerouac, whose experiences — both real and, uh, imaginary — in Denver during the late Forties are documented in landmark Beat works such as On the Road, has been the subject of a peevish lawsuit, with Kerouac…

Russell Enloe’s father, the electrician, was baffled by the fluorescent-light decision. “He came in and saw us ripping them down,” Russell remembers, “and he said, ‘Don’t do it! They’re so cheap to run!'” A few hours later, the landlord came by to point out that the storefront at 46 Broadway…

Denverites love their oldies. According to the most recent Arbitron ratings (representing, in the jargon of the industry, “Summer, Phase 2”), four purveyors of flashbacks — KOOL 105, Jammin’ Oldies 92.5 and a pair of classic rockers, the Fox and the Hawk — are in the top ten music-driven stations…

At the end of August, a twenty-year-old University of Colorado student was kidnapped by six Asian gang members as she walked home in the gray pre-dawn light. They pulled her off the street and into their van with such unexpected force that her feet left her shoes, then drove her…

Kate Lacroix is a strong and outspoken young woman, a performer by training. Yet the assault she suffered almost a year ago shook her to the core. It was the kind of attack some people have difficulty even classifying as rape: She was taken in her sleep by a roommate…

Amy Pollman’s life changed one night in January 1995, when a psychiatric patient at Porter Hospital who was known to be suicidal smothered herself with a plastic bag that had escaped the notice of hospital employees. Pollman was at home when the call came. It was the first suicide at…

Many Colorado nurses fear that if they speak out about improving working conditions, they will be retaliated against by their employers. They feel powerless to change a health-care system they see as flawed. To eliminate their fear so that they can confidently be involved in staffings and other issues in…

Juana Barrera was the first one to arrive. She pedaled up to the fountain pond in Civic Center Park last Friday, propped her mountain bike against the stairs and sat down to read and wait for the others — if there were any others. Finally, about twenty minutes later, Shawn…

On snowy days, it takes a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get to Bob Allen’s log house off the steep and winding Spruce Canyon Drive. But the same powder that’s such a pain in the winter is welcome come spring when the snowmelt seeps through the soil and enters fractures in the…

Let them eat tulips: The Central Platte Valley has suddenly become the destination for Denver’s society crowd. The dusty railyards that used to provide a swell home to hobos, drunks and river rats are becoming just a memory, and civic boosters can’t stop yammering about it. The city’s patrons and…

The houses are still there, sitting in the middle of the Auraria campus as though nothing had ever happened. They stand side by side, one short block of them, red brick and green trim, Victorian and cottage, reminders of a time — and a community — long gone. Josie Acosta…

It’s four o’clock on a late September afternoon, and Sam Hammer, the flying traffic cowboy for Country 104.3 and 950 AM/The Fan, would already be in the air if it weren’t for one little problem: He can’t find his plane. So he picks up the handset of the mobile radio…

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 young man in the tailored gray suit stands behind the defense table and waggles his finger at Judge R. Brooke Jackson. He’s pretty full of himself, and he occasionally looks back at the gallery to see if his audience is equally impressed with his courtroom presence and vocabulary. Except…