40 Years of City Weekly—Volume 23: 2006 to 2007 

"I told owner John Saltas he really should be careful what he asks for—he's pestered me for years in his Private Eye column to come work here," Holly Mullen wrote in the April 12, 2007, issue. "His whining finally paid off."

Having left a job at the Tribune and tried her hand at blogging, Mullen at last acquiesced to Saltas's entreaties, taking on the mantle of City Weekly editor with the departure of Ben Fulton.

"Saltas, Publisher Jim Rizzi and I have struck a pact about the purpose and value of alternative newspapers," Mullen continued. "Our job is to dig up the stories the dailies and TV stations either miss or cover only superficially. That, and to infuse topics with context and voice, properties that mainstream journalists too often label as 'bias.'"

Mullen noted that she had worked as a writer for alternative papers in Minneapolis and Dallas, and knew that "their power and charm lies in their unpredictability."

"As I told the staff on my first day," Mullen continued, "'Our worst sin here would be to bore people.'"

Mullen's entrance and Fulton's exit were not the only developments at the paper during City Weekly's 23rd year. Gustavo Arellano's syndicated column "Ask a Mexican" began its run across our pages, as did the writings of Geoff Griffin on sports and Brian Staker on visual arts, among others.

Our ever-shifting pool of personnel aside, the events covered and subjects broached throughout this year made the 2006-2007 period anything but boring. Plans for the Divine Strake explosion tests in Nevada—which would have resulted in a toxic mushroom cloud to pass over Utah—were fortunately canceled.

Salt Lakers—along with County Mayor Peter Corroon—rejected a proposal for taxpayers to foot the bill for Real Salt Lake's soccer stadium, but the proposal went forward anyway. Gay-straight alliance clubs were again hampered by the successful legislative efforts of Sen. Chris Buttars and Rep. Aaron Tilton, while Sen. Darin Peterson and Rep. James Gowans successfully pushed through a bill that removed oversight of EnergySolutions' waste dump from both elected officials and the public.

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With funding and lobbying from people like Overstock.com's Patrick Byrne and groups like Parents for Choice in Education, Utah lawmakers passed a massive voucher program to drain public tax dollars into private schools. A pipe bomb went off at the Salt Lake City Public Library, thankfully injuring no one. More tragic, however, was a mass shooting that took place at Trolley Square, leaving six people dead, including the perpetrator, and four others injured.

Cydney Neil's Rocky Point Haunted House attraction (having run since 1979) closed down; the historic Walker Center building (1912) was saved from demolition; and thousands of Brigham Young University students and alumni protested the invitation of Vice President Dick Cheney to give the commencement address at their school.

Certainly not a boring time, and adding to the Weekly's unpredictability were such notable stories as Shane Johnson's work on the extensive business empire of the polygamous Kingston clan, as well as his breaking story on County District Attorney candidate Lohra Miller's dubious campaign contributions from the employees of developer Dell Loy Hansen.

Ted McDonough reported on gentrification in Sugar House's business district; Louis Godfrey on the 30th anniversary of the death penalty in Utah; Carolyn Campbell on former Sandy councilmember Jenni Jackson's experience as a transgender woman; and Jason Berry on the increasingly severe effects of global warming, as illustrated by Hurricane Katrina.

Remembering Vol. 23: In competition
In the course of his June 15 editorial, John Saltas made mention of $20,000 that had been approved by the Salt Lake City Council for a portrait of Mayor Ross "Rocky" Anderson to hang in the City & County Building.

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"That's a bit rich considering $20,000 was what [City Weekly] got for relocating to Main Street," Saltas rejoined, "and at least in our case, the city has gotten a handsome return on that investment with our now 50 employees spending money like mad up and down Main Street. There's no similar return on a portrait."

Consequently, Saltas announced a contest for readers to send in their own portraits of the mayor to the Weekly offices: first place received $250, second came away with $100, $50 for third place, and gift certificates going to the rest. With a deadline of July 14, Saltas suggested that the contest would save the city money that could be better spent elsewhere.

More than 20 entrants ultimately came before the Weekly's evaluation committee, in forms as traditional as a canvas and as exotic as a hubcap. The winners were revealed in the paper's Aug. 3 issue, with Terrel VanLeeuwen winning first place, James Bible obtaining second and Cecilia Wainright getting third.

Hot on the heels of this contest came another, with the same cash prizes, this time based upon the premise—at Saltas' own insistence—that Saltas was too old and tired to be writing every week. The "Replace John" contest was to run through Aug. 25.

"Said winner will be published in this space as my replacement at least once," Saltas explained on July 27. "Write and submit a 955-word column or editorial on anything you find relevant or topical. Just write better than me, not a difficult task."

Forty-two contestants submitted their work and the results were presented in the Sep. 14 issue, with such runners-up as Ryan Shattuck, Jim Catano, Deeda Seed and Matthew Welker. The winning editorial by John Rasmuson was presented in full.

"Mr. John Saltas is not a patron of prospective pundits," Rasmuson cracked. "Four hundred bucks buys him at least a week off."

As of this writing, City Weekly is still graced with the occasional writings of Rasmuson and Catano, as well as those of Saltas, of course—when his muse is audible to such ancient ears. Some things never change.

Come to think of it, we still have some old portraits of Mayor Anderson lying around the place, too ...

In the blogs
In the face of a long-expected website revamp, Bill Frost was wracking his brain for potential blogs to occupy the domain. While the oh-so-stylishly-titled "CW Blog" made the cut, his humorous "Ocho" list on July 13 included some "rejected" alternatives. They are reproduced in full below:

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8. "Fulton's Fobia Files": Editor Ben Fulton ruminates on new diseases, identity-theft threats and lawsuits gunning for him (updated hourly).

7. "My Big Fat Greek Blog": John Saltas' spotlight on non-Greek City Weekly employees: "So how did you get hired?"

6. "Cut It!": Art Director Susan Kruithof's rant on long-winded writers who have no damned appreciation for aesthetics.

5. "Yeah, Sorry": Music writer Jamie Gadette's apology blog for cool concerts and venues she's championed that are ultimately canceled and/or condemned.

4. "No Comment": By Publisher Jim Rizzi. If he has anything to say, he'll call you.

3. "News Hole": Reporter Ted McDonough on stories he could have written better than Shane Johnson.

2. "No, You're a News Hole": Reporter Shane Johnson on stories he could have written better than Ted McDonough.

1. Anything by Bill Frost. Seriously. Enough is enough.

In custody
"In the spring of 1993, City Weekly accused a man of being a killer," began Ted McDonough in the Feb. 1 issue of 2007. "The paper, then called Private Eye Weekly, fingered the man despite the fact that Salt Lake City Police officials didn't believe a word of the story."

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Forrest Whittle—the man named in Christopher Smart's 1993 article—was later convicted for the murder of 25-year-old Lisa Strong in 1996. Up to that point, Whittle's conviction had been the only time anyone faced legal culpability for the murders of four young women that took place along the Wasatch Front in the 1980s.

In addition to Strong, Tiffany Hambleton, Carla Maxwell and Christine Gallegos had also been shot and/or stabbed, each linked either by the use of a single .38 caliber revolver or the proximity of their murders to the addresses of members of the Varrios (or Various) Chosen Few, a local gang which counted Whittle as a member. These provocative coincidences were not pursued by Salt Lake City's lead homicide investigators, who stubbornly (and erroneously) insisted that the murders were the work of Idaho spree killer Paul Ezra Rhoades.

Salt Lake City Police employees Frank Hatton-Ward, John Ilk and Greg Chase doggedly pursued the cases' gang connections, searching for the likely murder weapon and eventually getting pushed out of the police department for their troubles.

With assistance from local attorney Ross "Rocky" Anderson, the group eventually got a county grand jury to take another look at the murders.

"Whittle's conviction for Strong's murder seemed like it might be the beginning," McDonough related. "Hatton-Ward, Chase and Ilk, along with Anderson, had put together strong circumstantial evidence suggesting the Various Chosen Few should be looked at for the remaining unsolved killings. ... Instead, it would take another seven years and another intervention from Anderson and the former police employees before the break in the Hambleton case."

With the creation of a police cold-case team reporting to Anderson in 2003 as well as pressure from Ilk and the victims' families, Hambleton's body was exhumed for DNA evidence. Male DNA was subsequently detected, leading to the arrest of Dan L. Peterson of Glendale, Arizona on Jan. 12, 2007. Peterson had been investigated early on and was seen with Hambleton at a Salt Lake City residential party just prior to her death. But in a development that some close to the case have attributed to shoddy lab work and poor prosecution, the jury acquitted Peterson in August of 2007.

"Dan Peterson was acquitted after it became clear that his was not the only DNA found on the young woman," Smart recalls. "Two different DNAs is the essence of reasonable doubt."

As of this writing, the murders of Hambleton, Maxwell and Gallegos linger as unsolved, and numerous loose ends within their investigation remain unchecked by official channels.