The tabloids could not have made up this story. In the almost three years since JonBenét Ramsey’s lifeless body was found in the basement of her family’s Boulder home on the day after Christmas 1996, Jon Morris was sent away for life for the murder of kindergartner Ashley Gray, whose…
As told to Patricia Calhoun, by Patricia Calhoun If you think it’s embarrassing to be caught in a checkout line with nothing but a lime and four supermarket tabloids — and indeed it is, even if the tabs are all for work! Really! — imagine being caught testifying on behalf…
Back in January 1997, the worst crime imaginable in Boulder, Colorado, was not the murder of a six-year-old girl, but the publication in a national tabloid of several pilfered autopsy pictures of that little girl. And so the good citizens of Boulder called on local supermarkets to cease and desist…
The circus is back in town, transforming Boulder into a bigtop stuffed with big-time media stars. They’ll be in the center ring, fighting for interviews and airtime, until Boulder’s grand jury finally disbands on October 20, thirteen months after it began investigating the murder of JonBenét Ramsey. The grand jurors…
Sam Riddle was right. About one thing, at least. Back in June, the shoot-from-the-lip Riddle complained that his $250-an-hour consulting contract with then-secretary of state Victoria Buckley would not have been subject to the same scrutiny if he’d made the deal with a white man. And in fact, while Riddle’s…
Saturday night in a packed, smoky ballroom large enough to park a 747. The music is loud, the crowd even louder. She shouts that she’s 21; he tells her he’s a doctor. They’re both lying. She’s a minor who barely needed to wave her fake ID in order to enter…
It is not easy typing while you are wearing a charm bracelet bearing the Ten Commandments — in condensed form, of course, since the King James version doesn’t fit on half-inch discs. But Thou Shalt Not Mind a Little Discomfort When the Flea-Market Find Is So Fabulous. On the other,…
Like it or not, sports have brought Denver its greatest fame. And its greatest infamy. No matter how often city cheerleaders jump up and down to praise Denver — its scenery, its 4,000 days of sunshine each year, its swell new airport (with newly swelled fares), its astounding arts attendance…
Bubby Brister wasn’t the only one who got sacked Monday. The editor of the paper that on Tuesday gave its most prominent play not to the quarterback sneak but to a yawn of a VA hospital story also lost his job. About time the Post answered its own wake-up call…
One hot August morning, a day even drier and dustier than it had been that June more than 123 years before, I said goodbye to Alan Dumas and added some more dust to the Little Bighorn Battlefield, where George Armstrong Custer had made his last stand. I’d been to this…
Ted Carpenter is a sore winner. “I find it depressing that the Denver Art Museum did what they did and the press either protected them or stood aside,” he says. Underlying that blanket statement is a peculiar saga that says a lot about the way museums and collectors did business…
Last Friday night was not Sam Riddle’s finest hour–on or off the clock. But his arrest for disobeying a lawful order and mouthing off at a pair of Denver police officers–followed by a sobering night in the slammer–was just the capper on what had been a truly lousy week for…
Sam Riddle is Colorado’s man of the hour. The $250 hour. Next Monday, members of the Legislative Audit Committee (who, as lawmakers, collect considerably less for their labors than Riddle does for consulting) will dissect the state auditor’s report on Riddle’s deal, a personal-services contract with Secretary of State Victoria…
Leaphorn swiveled his chair to face the map that dominated his wall behind his desk. It was a magnified version of the “Indian Country” map produced by the Automobile Club of Southern California. Smaller versions were used throughout the Four Corners territory for its details and its accuracy. Leaphorn had…
It’s a long way from Centennial Airport to Altoona, Pennsylvania. The miles would pass quickly if you could hop a plane and fly there, of course–but Centennial doesn’t have any commercial flights. Not to Altoona, and not to anywhere else. These days, the airport doesn’t even have FAA funding. But…
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. This story is not about money. How could it be, when Adelaide de Menil and her husband, Ted Carpenter, have so much that it’s falling from the sky–or, technically, the beams of their eighteenth-century Long Island farmhouse,…
High school is hell. In the wake of the Columbine shootings, memories of high school’s peculiar institutional hells keep surfacing across the country, across class lines: memories of cutthroat cliques, of ruthless climbers, of clawing for credentials. And that’s just the adults. This Saturday, the Kiowa High School class of…
The kill is the easiest part of the job. People kill one another every day. It takes no great effort to pull a trigger or plunge a knife. It is being able to do so in a manner that will not link yourself or your employer to the crime that…
1. Thou shalt be careful in the big city. Early Saturday morning, the mall shuttle fills quickly as it passes through LoDo and heads toward Broadway. There are grandmotherly women who’ve bused down from Boulder, bleary-eyed hipsters clutching their Starbucks cups and anti-gun leaflets, families with babies in backpacks. “Let’s…
A week after the massacre at Columbine High School, everybody has an agenda. Some are noble, some are not. Some seek the truth, others spin it. But everybody has one. Within minutes of the tragedy, travelers searching the Web for information on the Trenchcoat Mafia were stunned to find their…
Alan Dumas had a big heart. Coincidentally, that’s what killed him Saturday. But not before he gave Denver two decades of wonderful memories, energizing the town with his ebullience, his wit, his imagination, his generous spirit and, above all, his stories. Some of the best never made it to print…
Colorado has always been quick to forgive–and forget. In the midst of the current economic boom, with houses selling within a day for more than their asking price and the daily papers offering cash signing bonuses for new delivery people, it’s hard to remember just what a bust Colorado was…
