We remember Missy Kupferberg fondly as a staunch advocate for the seriously mentally ill here in the Phoenix area. Missy was a sweetheart did not suffer fools gladly, and she was more than willing to provide us with serious examples of wrongdoing by the powers-that-be in what passed then (and…

We’ve been getting a bunch of emails from folks inquiring about the status of the Deborah Milke murder case. When we last wrote about the infamous case involving the mom convicted of orchestrating the murder of her 4-year-old son (she supposedly sent him “off to see Santa Claus”), we noted…

Readers of this paper are likely to recall the Doug Grant murder case.   emember, the onetime Phoenix Suns nutritionist who was convicted of manslaughter in the 2001 drowning death of his beautiful wife Faylene. (That’s the happy couple on the day of their second wedding, mere weeks before her tragic…

In September, 2007, former Phoenix police Officer Mark Wilcox and his wife sued the department and Sergeant Kathy Johnson. Among other things, the couple claimed that his own department, especially Sergeant Johnson, had violated his civil rights and defamed him  in the aftermath of an October 2004 incident involving a juvenile suspect.  After…

Tre Fields, a co-captain of the Carl Hayden Community High School Falcons football team, slipped into that place between consciousness and dreaming. A thought rolled into Tre’s mind and stuck. “We are going to win this game.” The 17-year-old senior lineman was resting in bed at his home near 35th…

Twenty years ago this December, a case involving a missing 4-year-old boy named Christopher Milke captivated and horrified Valley residents. Christopher’s 25-year-old mother, Debbie Milke, first told Phoenix police that the boy had gone “to see Santa” at the Metrocenter mall with a friend and roommate of hers named Jim…

We’ve tracked the bleatings of Trent Franks, a Republican congressman who represents the northwest part of Arizona (including Kingman and Lake Havasu), for years, ever since Hall of Fame crackpot guv Ev Mecham appointed the guy to head the Governor’s Office for Children back in 1987.   Franks, the pasty-faced dude…

Norman Davis, the presiding juvenile judge for the Maricopa County Superior Court, tells New Times that he has asked county officials to investigate serious allegations published in this paper’s current edition about Dr. Joseph Franzetti.   The allegations about the local psychiatrist (he’s the guy in the photo) were published…

All this subtext, all this intrigue. And all this political jibber-jabber.   We’ll leave the moving parts to able colleagues Ray Stern and Sarah Fenske. But we were struck yesterday by a soundbite from the mouth of Paul Charlton, the usually circumspect and conservative former United States Attorney for Arizona, who…

Barbara Mundell, Maricopa County’s presiding judge, recently fired two of her court commissioners, Wes Peterson and David Anderson. Unlike Superior Court judges, commissioners, who have similar responsibilities, are appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the presiding judge — and can be fired with or without a good reason. In…

[jump] Suzi claims that other investigators have been trained on how to keep up with her Web site, and she feels comfortable in trying something utterly new with her life. She can’t wait to get to her new job at Mesa Community College as an Environmental Coordinator, which sounds suspiciously…

Our most recent cover story on local philanthropist/real-estate player/art collector and, now, accused arsonist Michael Marin elicited a bunch of E-mails and calls, many of them rabid (see example of typical commenter in photo below). Readers seemed to be incensed by Mr. Marin’s alleged audacity in claiming that he had escaped his…

We bumped into this wild 48-page Arizona Court of Appeals ruling, which was issued earlier this month.   It concerns a complicated and somewhat troubling set of back-and-forth lawsuits involving a former correctional officer and a criminal inspector. The inspector, whose name is Darrell Smith, investigated then-Officer Derrick Allen for alleged wrongdoing…

Shortly before Phoenix Fire Department investigators arrested Michael Marin for allegedly torching his plush Biltmore Estates mansion, he spoke about the fire he says almost stole his life. “Here’s the unvarnished version from the horse’s mouth,” Marin told New Times in the living room of his other home, a more…

When we read the following blurb from our friend, esteemed (now retired) ASU law professor Gary Lowenthal, about the book Jingle Jangle, we knew we had follow-up and read it.  So we did and, as advertised, it was a solid, often troubling read about an infamous Phoenix murder case in which Phoenix police…

We have met many a character during our long tenure here at New Times, but none more memorable or valuable to our community than Mike Teodori, the longtime chief of pediatric heart surgery at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. ​We spent months with the good doctor, the smiling dude in the photo, reporting…

Get this straight: Israel is in a constant state of turmoil, political infighting and worn-on-the-skeeve angst–and we’re not even talking about the tensions (or worse) between the Jews and the Arabs. ​Israel is beautiful in many ways, but it does gets downright goofy over there, as I witnessed during my recent adventure…

We’ve never laid eyes on Shelby Scharbach, and we’ve only spoken to her by phone a time or two. ​But we were happy to learn a few minutes ago that Maricopa County has promoted its finance director to a new position as Chief Financial Officer, effective immediately. Honestly, we have…