A Loan and Friendless

Everyone knows lending money to a friend can be a dicey proposition. Dicier still is extending a loan to your boss. Today Emerson Holliday lives in a motel on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Until last year, though, he was a high-level government administrator, answering only to Colorado’s secretary of…

Off Limits

The verdict’s in: Judging by the pace of its first day, during which only six prospective jurors were called, the Oklahoma City bombing trial has about 2,057 days to go (which also happens to be the number of credentialed journalists in town). But no matter how long the trial continues,…

A Little Piece of Denver

Grant Ranch, a new subdivision sprouting up on the far edge of southwest Denver, has a very specific group of people in mind as potential homebuyers. “If you work for the City and County of Denver, this will hit you right where you live,” begin advertisements the developer published in…

Inside Information

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…

SLAPP Shot

Anti-abortion protester Ken Scott has until April 29 to convince a U.S. District Court judge why his lawsuit against Boulder abortion doctor Warren Hern shouldn’t be dismissed. And even if Scott manages to do that, he’ll find himself battling the American Civil Liberties Union, which has taken Hern’s side in…

And Not a Drop to Drink

John Yelenick was raising his family on a farm in Henderson when he had his water tested in 1985. He wasn’t looking for nerve gas. But a few years later, after the nearby Rocky Mountain Arsenal made the Environmental Protection Agency’s first Superfund list, Yelenick and the rest of the…

Letters

Nobody’s Purrfect Regarding the March 27 Off Limits: C’mon–leave Natalie alone. Pujo explained the red dress by saying she had just come from an affair (the Denver Film Society’s Academy Awards party) where that dress was appropriate. Meow! Dorsey Hudson Denver Rail Storm In Alan Prendergast’s “It’s the Rail Thing,”…

Blonde Ambition

Sydney Stone, her broken right arm in a sling, pushes away her salmon salad, leans out of her chair on the patio of an upscale restaurant in Cherry Creek, and reaches for the chunk of Spicer Breeden’s skull that she has just dropped on the floor. It’s obvious that the…

Off Limits

Duty is skin deep: Members of grand jury panel No. 97-1 were warned to show up Tuesday at the federal courthouse at 18th and Stout streets in “casual business attire,” according to an information sheet sent out earlier this month. “Denim jeans, shorts, tee-shirts or tank tops are not appropriate,”…

Wanted: Dead or Alive

The three unmarked cars eased to a stop in front of the Frasiers’ Littleton residence around dinnertime on February 27, and five men in plainclothes got out. “They said they were here for my brother, Jamie,” recalls Robert Frasier, who answered the door. “They said they were going to arrest…

It’s a Mud, Mud, Mud, Mud World

Last week Richard Sharkey and Maurice Dominguez got a heater going outdoors and hoped the weather would hold, because there’s no point in working with adobe in the snow or rain: The mud never stops being mud. The elements cause enough damage after an adobe structure is complete, as is…

It’s the Pits

When the producers of the upcoming fantasy film Warriors of Virtue decided to use the Colorado Symphony Orchestra to record the film’s score, many saw it as a great opportunity to jump-start the struggling ensemble. But now some people are singing a sour note, arguing that the CSO was so…

Psychological Warfare

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…

Older Is Bitter

It has been years now since the morning I woke up older than every player in the major leagues. What to do. What else? I poured myself a quadruple Scotch, drank it in my bathrobe and got on the hook to the parish priest. “Spare a minute today, Father? I’d…

Letters

The English Patient Kenny Be, you dunce–don’t you keep up with the news? Your March 13 Worst-Case Scenario, “What the World Now Owes Brad Irwin and Suzanne Terry,” contained at least two mistakes. The big one was depicting British prime minister John Major attending the G-7 Summit this summer. Your…

He Always Plays His Bills

The brass at the Colorado High Schools Activities Association were worried. They professed to love Gabe Lane as much as everybody else did, and in 1996 everybody heard about Gabe, a mildly retarded boy who was ruled ineligible by the CHSAA to play football with his high-school team. His plight…

Buy the Numbers

Kevin Doyle, suspected linchpin in a vast conspiracy involving the secretary of state (possibly), the Denver Broncos (sort of), lobbyist Freda Poundstone (definitely) and a Jesuit priest (at least one), leans back in his office chair and smoothes an explosive shock of frizzled hair back behind his neck. “This,” he…

Making a Federal Case

Years ago, Federal Boulevard was one of the most beautiful streets in Denver. Huge elms towered over the thoroughfare, which was lined with churches, libraries and large homes. Now the City of Denver is spending $2 million to bring back some of that old glory, hoping to undo a mistake…

Familiar Tunes

In the past ten years, the City of Denver has sunk more than $2 million into the old Rossonian Hotel, hoping to lure a jazz supper club into the heart of Five Points. A few weeks ago the city got its club. Only it didn’t open in the Rossonian. It…

Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been…?

Sam Zakhem has this to say about Steve Curtis: “I don’t think he knows the truth when he stumbles over it.” And Steve Curtis has this to say about Sam Zakhem: “He called me last week and said, ‘Either you drop out of the race, or we’re going to the…

Off Limits

Show me the money! Show me the money! No, that’s not Cuba Gooding Jr. you hear screaming, it’s Denver City Councilman Ted Hackworth, now engaged in a dramatic confrontation of his own over the financial condition of Denver International Airport. Specifically, Hackworth is peeved that Mayor Wellington Webb keeps claiming…

The Pen Is Mightier Than the Pen

What’s prison life without Prison Life? Imagine a full-service broker without his Wall Street Journal, a Park Avenue publishing executive without her New Yorker, a latte-guzzling cyberpunk without his Wired or–egads–a capitalist tool without a single copy of Forbes to while away the lonely hours on the corporate jet. It’s…