It’s tough to end an interview with this question: “Oh, by the way, were you ever a neo-Nazi?” It’s tough, but it’s tougher to suffer through what can happen if you don’t ask that question. We learned that the hard way a few months ago, when we ran a light-hearted…
On Monday night, John Mark Karr faced the camera, wearing only slightly less eye makeup than JonBenét in full pageant regalia, and told Larry King that he was a “very private person.” What a difference a decade makes. Back in early January 1997, a week after the lifeless body of…
It was an ugly Sunday morning at the Las Vegas airport, with lines stretching for hours and a flood of overbookings after Saturday’s torrential downpour had washed away flights. The fellow at the far bar on the D concourse was holding his head and his wallet, having just shelled out…
Up in Arvada, there’s an intense interest in who will win the Nobel Peace Prize each year. That’s because PeaceJam, the international organization dedicated to linking Nobel Peace Prize winners with kids to teach them how to improve their communities, their countries, the world, is based in that ‘burb. In…
Two weeks later than originally promised, Beauprez for Governor finally unsealed its Cold Case files critical of Bill Ritter’s performance as Denver District Attorney. But in the days between the initial announcement and the actual delivery of those files, their contents took a hard turn to the right. At first,…
The electronic signs placed along Highway 285 outside of Platte Canyon High School flash the warning “No Stopping.” But even as your car keeps moving past the place where Emily Keyes was shot last Wednesday, your mind stops, fixated on the horrors of that day. Last Friday, Ellen Keyes, Emily’s…
Her name was Sonja DeVries. She was the only child of Carolyn and Van DeVries, the light of their lives. And on July 18, 2004, that light was extinguished by a drunk driver, sentencing her parents to a life of almost unbearable darkness. The driver, Ramon Romero, is serving the…
Love and marriage, love and marriage, do they really go together like a horse and carriage? Colorado congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave was a featured attraction at this past weekend’s Values Voter summit in Washington, D.C., part of a panel discussing “The Preservation of Traditional Marriage.” And when the sponsor of the…
Did he or didn’t he? When U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo stopped by the South Carolina State Museum on a swing through that state earlier this month, he delivered his standard immigration speech from a podium draped with the Confederate flag. And then, as he exited the room, some members of…
Archbishop Desmond Tutu rocked the house when he came out on stage Sunday morning. The thousands of kids gathered in Magness Arena cheered as he danced, waved the scarf that the Dalai Lama had presented him with the afternoon before, talked about how the story of Jackie Robinson inspired him…
The 1900 block of Market Street has been quiet this summer. Not quiet, in the sense that business has been bad — in fact, business along this stretch of LoDo is better than it’s been in years, with people packing the bars and restaurants and rooftop patios. No, quiet in…
On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the founders of PeaceJam met with the Secret Service and finalized arrangements for the ten Nobel Peace Prize winners coming to town this week to announce their global Call to Action and, in rare spare moments, wondered what they’d have to do to become…
Tom Tancredo makes news wherever he goes — particularly when he’s not precisely sure where he’s going to wind up. On his swing through South Carolina this past weekend, Colorado’s controversial congressman found himself standing behind a podium draped with the Confederate battle flag, addressing the League of the South…
“This PeaceJam is amazing,” my friend said. “I was just hearing about them on Colorado Public Radio.” She’d been hearing about them from me for months — since last November, when I interviewed founders Dawn Engle and Ivan Suvanjieff, and wrote about how PeaceJam would mark its tenth anniversary by…
“I’m a conservative Republican,” Michael Brown says. “What am I doing here?” Still, on the list of tight spots where Brown, former head of FEMA, has found himself in the last year, the Westword office should rank low. For starters, there was that emergency-response photo op on September 2, 2005,…
Disaster is Lori Peek’s specialty. When Hurricane Katrina struck, she was fresh from the University of Colorado, where she’d earned her Ph.D. with a thesis on 9/11, and just beginning her first semester as an assistant sociology professor at Colorado State University. Still, she somehow found a week last October…
A year ago, Michael Brown was at the center of the storm. Today, the former FEMA head is back in Boulder, where he’s set up a disaster-consulting business. So far, he hasn’t been asked to consult on the disaster in his own back yard — but over the past two…
Apparently the Boulder County Jail didn’t get PETA’s memo. On Tuesday, People for the Ethical Treatment of animals sent a note to the jailer in Los Angeles, urging that John Mark Karr be served a cruelty-free diet, one free of animals, because “unlike the humans in the prison system, all…
Just when you thought the JonBenet Ramsey murder case had everything — a pint-sized beauty queen, a bogus Santa Claus, a ransom note right out of Matlock and, finally, a suspect with a yen for confessing and wearing eyeliner — another player enters the picture. PETA. Yes, People for the…
Boulder has never been particularly kind to Republicans, but Bob Beauprez owes District Attorney Mary Lacy a box of chocolates. Because without John Mark Karr, Beauprez’s running mate might still be stumbling through the headlines. Last Wednesday morning, the media was all over first-term Mesa County commissioner Janet Rowland, whose…
Just when the University of Colorado was starting to resurrect its reputation, journalism professor Michael Tracey, long a sideshow in the JonBenet Ramsey circus, hits (or is that creates?) the news with his creepy e-mail exchange with John Mark Karr — in which Tracey (pictured) looks about as much like…
The People’s Republic of Boulder isn’t known for supporting Republican causes, but gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez should send a big bouquet to the DA’s office there. Because yesterday’s announcement that the Boulder DA finally has a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder may have been the only thing that could…
