News

The heart of the matter: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, state lawmakers are working overtime to make Colorado safe for heterosexual love. Last week, a somewhat emasculated version of state representative Mark Paschall’s “covenant marriage” bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee. As originally conceived, Paschall’s proposal would have created…

Littleton police detective Bryann Lynch unlocks the storage building, slides open its metal garage door and surveys, once again, the ninety-odd wedding dresses that hang there, their trumpet beads winking in the dim light. A few trains have drifted to the concrete floor. A bag of what Lynch calls “those…

Nothing Personal I never appreciated Westword as much as I did when I read Patricia Calhoun’s “Personal Foul,” in the February 4 issue. You had to read all that “penis” talk, uncensored, to realize how idiotic that Tyrone Braxton case was. This is the sort of case that gives lawsuits…

Hey, Faggot: I’m a forty-year-old well-endowed straight male into cockfights. Considering my size–I’m almost eleven inches long and six and a quarter inches around–it is foolish for men to challenge me, but they do. I was in two fights recently. One guy was nine and a half by five and…

Last summer, a miracle appeared in the dead waters of the Alamosa River. A micro-invertebrate. A caddis fly larvae. “It’s a start,” says Victor Ketellepper, EPA project manager at the Superfund site upstream. A great deal of anger, mistrust and sadness still flows along the banks of the Alamosa, creating…

Brian Rimar, a scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency, thought his assignment seemed simple enough: Monitor a herd of sheep through the southern Colorado grazing season, then dissect and analyze their livers for possible copper poisoning. What Rimar didn’t know was that the project would take his own career to…

Peter Fonda told him to call back at 4 p.m., January 16. “I’ll be here,” he promised Nile Southern, who has been waiting for years to hear those words, that hint of promise. “We’ll talk then.” It’s now 3:58 p.m. on January 16, and Southern paces around the basement office…

Several pieces of proposed legislation making their way through the Colorado General Assembly raise the question: If Secretary of State Vikki Buckley had nothing left to do, could she do it well? Early last week, three bills designed to take away a huge chunk of her responsibilities were awaiting action…

Stupor bowl: Not so very long ago–three weeks, in fact, right before the Broncos were to face off against the New York Jets in the playoffs–Mayor Wellington Webb again refused to make any wacky wagers on the outcome of the game. While other politicians were betting Rocky Mountain oysters against…

As Erin Ault rode RTD’s route 15 bus on the evening of November 29, 1998, he heard what sounded like a muffled popgun. Seconds later, other passengers on the bus began to scream at RTD driver Daniel Boyer, pleading with him not to stop. Ahead, close to a bus stop…

Now that the Super Bowl’s out of the way, local television newscasts can focus on the Really Big Game: Sweeps, that all-or-nothing effort to lure members of the elusive Nielsen family into watching their stations so they can up their ratings. The February sweeps period doesn’t officially begin until Thursday,…

Todd Manns thinks he’s found a way to prove once and for all whether Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin. Using his company’s firearms-training simulator, Manns is working on a virtual re-creation of the view from Oswald’s sixth-floor perch in the Texas School Book Depository, from which he shot…

Momy Drearest Regarding Eric Dexheimer’s “Honor Thy Mother,” in the January 28 issue: What is a putz? Ciaran Redmond. If it weren’t for the humor of his stupidity, his story would be as pathetic as most losers’ stories are. John Rael via the Internet And Justice for Some I am…

After his girlfriend left and he had a nervous breakdown, quit his teaching job and stopped taking his medication, John the Depressed Guy lived in “the hatchback hotel.” For six months he slept in the back of his 1985 Honda Accord, making a home in RV lots, city parks, roadsides,…

On Tuesday, City Hall still bore the scars of Monday’s Super Bowl rally. Outside, street sweepers blew away leftover parade litter; on the doors, notes from Mayor Wellington Webb promised a victory celebration for city workers; inside, miscreants wearing blue and orange swapped high fives as they waited to pay…

It’s a cool, sharp spring morning, early April, 11:45, a time when most people are swallowing the last gulp of their second cup of coffee or feeling the pangs of lunch hunger. Ciaran Redmond has just finished robbing his third bank of the day, and he isn’t finished yet–can’t be,…

Editor’s note: These excerpts from Senator Wayne Allard’s impeachment diary were considered “too controversial” for the Denver Rocky Mountain News, which is publishing the senator’s musings on the historic proceeding. The material was provided to us by a well-known smut peddler, who vouched for its authenticity on a stack of…

In the last few years, the Denver Housing Authority has been home to controversies involving its executive director, Sal Carpio, including his well-publicized drinking problem and a sexual-harassment suit. Now another sexual-harassment complaint has the agency scrambling to cover its tracks. In September 1996, seeking to confirm reports from employees…

Kathy Caddell’s mother spent the last ten months of her life at a high-end nursing home that charged more than $4,000 a month. That sum helped pay for wall-to-wall carpeting, plush sofas and art in the common areas–but Caddell says it didn’t buy her mother basic human dignity. “They treated…

I confess! What a bunch of blabbers this town keeps turning out. Senator and animal doc Wayne Allard has been telling all–and we mean all, right down to his wife’s lame movie choices (At First Sight, according to Sunday’s installment)–to the Denver Rocky Mountain News’s Mike Romano (although some lost…