Pat Bowlen has a problem. The multi-millionaire owner of the Denver Broncos says his team needs more revenue. And the Broncos’ public relations machine is already shifting into gear, preparing a campaign to convince taxpayers they should open their wallets and chip in $180 million to build the men in…
part 1 of 2 Last week in Westword: In March 1995, Heather Smith recognized a mug shot in the newspaper as the man who had stabbed her five times outside her home near Washington Park two years earlier. The man’s name was Thomas Edward Luther. Luther, 37, had been convicted…
part 2 of 2 The distance from Lakewood to Empire is less than fifty miles. But it must have seemed like a thousand to Detective Scott Richardson on February 23, 1995, when he, another detective, Byron Powers and Powers’s attorney headed up I-70 to find Cher Elder’s grave. Thomas Luther…
The great white hope: Just when you thought it was safe to turn on local “news” again, two more polar bear babies arrive, in the nick of time for all those warm-and-fuzzy seasonal stories. (Why not simply name the cubs Nielsen and Ratings and be done with it?) But before…
All right, dyed-in-the-wool college football fans. Here’s the get-a-life test. On the evening of December 30, which game are you going to watch? The Carquest Bowl, featuring North Carolina’s mighty Tarheels? Or the Peach Bowl, starring the tenacious Georgia Bulldogs? Please keep in mind that although intercollegiate football is an…
To most people, having their phone service “cut off” means simply that they didn’t pay their bill. Not to Bruce Kronberg, who lives in a modest house along an isolated stretch of highway northwest of Fort Collins. A little over two weeks ago a worker for the state highway department…
Living Off the Fad of the Land Regarding your December 6 issue: The Globeville family that Robin Chotzinoff wrote about in “Globeville Warming” is living a modern version of nineteenth-century village life like that described in a George Eliot novel. It is refreshing to read about people not caught up…
In 1984, then Colorado Republican Party Chairman Bo Callaway set up a charitable corporation ostensibly to fund speech contests for Colorado high school students. The board of the tax-exempt, and therefore supposedly nonpartisan, entity was made up of state GOP heavyweights: Callaway, party vice-chair Mindy Meiklejohn, party secretary Carol Beam,…
Carrying the fear of gangs to new heights in Colorado, the Greeley Mall kicked out a 44-year-old Denver woman earlier this month for wearing a blue bandanna on her head. At the time of her ouster, during a busy Sunday shopping excursion, Theresa Seamster, a supply technician at Denver’s VA…
When the patriarchs of two of Colorado’s most powerful families joined forces over two years ago, it wasn’t for another megamillion-dollar business deal, or a shared sinecure on a corporate board, or even one of those glittering charity events. It was disease that brought Chuck Stevinson and Bill Coors together…
part 2 of 3 When the call went out at a little after 4 a.m.–female brutally raped and assaulted in Silverthorne by white male driving green or dark-colored pickup truck–police officers from across Summit County began to converge on the scene. Among them was deputy Joe Morales, who was asked…
part 3 of 3 In March 1993, Heather Smith was 27 years old and working at her father’s company. She had many girlfriends and welcomed admiring looks from men attracted to her face and a body that had once made her a nationally ranked swimmer. Her friends thought Heather led…
part 1 of 2 The train pulls away from the Broadway Marketplace station with a meek oomph of acceleration, headed for downtown. It ascends above Alameda Avenue, whips through the railyards, leans into West Colfax–no rumbling, no lurching, no clacking, just that oh-so-slight push at the start, like a cat…
Photos by Heather Weiser part 1 of 3 The little girl forced herself to remain still as death. Otherwise he, the thing that waited in the dark of her bedroom, would pounce. She lay in the exact middle of the mattress, beyond reach of any hands coming from under the…
part 2 of 2 Jon Caldara lives on Arapahoe Avenue in Boulder. Every fifteen minutes or so, an RTD bus rumbles by his house. Caldara has never seen more than five people on the bus. “Usually, there’s two,” he says. “We’re talking about a bus that pollutes like a dozen…
Duty and the beast: Establishing a herd of buffalo out by Denver International Airport remains a top priority for the city (see story this page). But the animals themselves might have a beef with that. Buffalo are sensitive to noise, says Southwestern food expert Sam Arnold, and loud sounds can…
Like a lot of people living up here in Bronco Village, I used to be able to fit everything I knew about hockey on the top of an ice cube. One that had been sitting out in the July sun for a while. Listen, I’d long been trying to understand…
Making a Clean Breast of It Regarding Patricia Calhoun’s “The Body Politic,” in the December 6 issue: It is typical for Ms. Calhoun to complain when another company is responsible enough to police itself for obscenities while ignoring the smut in her own paper. If only Westword were content to…
As the train pulls into Denver’s Union Station, its massive, red locomotives are veiled in billows of smoke. Appropriately, the vaporous clouds increase rather than decrease as the engines chug to a halt and the passengers disembark. Welcome to Marlboro Country. And welcome to the “Marlboro Unlimited,” a custom-built, luxury…
Daylight inventory of the holiday items decorating the Denver City and County Building: Three miles of lights, unlit. Several hundred yards of faux-pine garland strung through green chain-link anti-vandal fencing. Six red faux-velvet bows, two lopsided. One neon angel, blowing horn. Two large, slightly listing nutcracker men supporting arch. One…
The Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Community Services Center of Colorado (GLCC) embraces all kinds. But when the GLCC hired a straight consulting firm to help run the 1996 Gay Pride festival, some people thought it was taking diversity too far. “It’s like a Jewish organization running the Black Arts Festival,”…
Denver officials are struggling to find the money to build a sixth runway at Denver International Airport. But one longtime political ally of Mayor Wellington Webb has had no problem landing her own DIA revenue stream. Wilma Taylor, a veteran political activist and Webb campaign worker, will soon be appointed…
