November 26
1901 Ogden Standard Examiner
State News page 8 DAMAGES
Nov 25 John Humphrey charged with a sheep stealing was acquitted by the jury.
The case against John F Maxwell charged with a “Crime Against Nature” was
dismissed. Both these defendants threaten suit against the prosecuting witnesses
for slander
Jane Alexander & Gena Rowland |
1988 During the night
Charles Van Dam who brought an accusation of sexual misconduct of Gordon Hinckley had an AIDS related stroke and lost his verbal communication
skills. Taken to Holy Cross Emergency
room he was attended to by Dr. Kristen Reis. He would die within 3 weeks
Saturday,
November 26, 1988 FILLMORE JP PLACES GAG ORDER ON SLAYING OF A CEDAR CITY MAN By Joyce Cutler and Brent Israelsen, Staff
Writers Authorities are being extremely secretive about the beating death of a
Cedar City man whose body was found Wednesday in a desolate area beside I-15
near Kanosh, Millard County. Michael Anthony Archuleta, 26, was arrested Friday
afternoon, and Lance Conway Wood, 20, was arrested Friday morning at the Iron
County Jail, the sheriff's office said in a prepared statement. Both men are in
the Millard County Jail on capital homicide, aggravated assault, aggravated
kidnapping and car theft charges. Though Fillmore Justice of the Peace Ron Hare ordered the entire criminal
case sealed, the Millard County sheriff's office was allowed to release the
names of the men charged in the slaying of Gordon
Ray Church. Hare said he signed a gag order Friday afternoon prohibiting
prosecutors and law enforcement officers from discussing the case. He said he
has also ordered the criminal information sealed. The justice of the peace,
however, would not say why he issued the secretive orders in a case that is
usually open to the public. "I can't comment on that. I would be
violating my own gag order." Deputy sheriffs, acting on an
anonymous tip, early Wednesday found the body of Church, 28, Cedar City, about
a half-mile from Exit 138 on I-15. Evidence at the scene and information from
the source indicate the killing was at least partially sex-related, said
Millard County Sheriff Ed Phillips.
A tire iron and a car jack found at the scene near the body were believed used
in the killing, officials said. An autopsy on Church, a theater arts major at
Southern Utah State College, determined he died of massive head injuries. The
two men, one of whom was described by Sheriff's Capt. Robert Dekker as possibly a transient from Utah County, were
charged in the bludgeoning death, which officials said occurred between Monday
and early Tuesday. Wood was arrested in Iron County Jail where he was being
held for a parole violation. The hometowns of the defendants were not released.
Millard County officials were criticized for their handling of the August 1985 Sharon Sant murder case, in which an
SUSC coed was hacked to death. Charges against one of the men charged in the ax
murder were dropped in exchange for his testimony. It was later determined he
helped dismember the woman's body. His cohort was convicted of second-degree
murder.
Neil Hoyt |
Russ Lane |
Paul Phillips & Ron Romanovsky |
- Tuesday I saw David Sharpton out and about at the Romanovski
and Phillips concert. The creme `le creme of the Gay activists were there
and I introduced Jeff Workman to David and all the old and new activists
in the community. After the concert we went to Cafe Rude and there were
standing room only. The place was packed. When I was about to leave David
angrily hollered at me, "Ben
David Sharpton
1993 A Nevada man has been bound over for trial in
the slaying of
Douglas C. Koehler, who was found shot to death last August near ParkWest ski
resort. At a Tuesday hearing, 3rd Circuit Judge Michael Burton ordered David
Nelson Thacker, 26, of Unionville, Nev., to appear before 3rdDistrict Judge
Homer Wilkinson on Dec. 13 to be arraigned on a charge of murder. During the first part of a preliminary
hearing last month, Clint Crane testified that he and Thacker met Koehler at a
bar on Aug. 22. The trio drank, played pool together and sniffed cocaine, Crane
said. After the bar closed, they drove
to a condominium in Park City. Later, Thacker kicked Koehler out of the
apartment and told Crane that Koehler had tried to kiss him. Some time later, Crane said, Thacker grabbed
Crane's .22-caliber revolver and they both drove toward ParkWest, where Koehler
was staying. They spotted Koehler just 50 feet from his condominium and pulled
up next to him. Thacker called Koehler over to the truck, pulled out a gun and
shot him, Crane testified. (11/26/93
Page: D8 SLTribune)
Douglas Koehler |
1995- Sunday - Brian Bevan Zelenka died of AIDS age 34 He loved
gardening and landscaping, giving special care and attention to his orchids. He
was a funny, sensitive, and caring man, with an enthusiasm for life that he
enjoyed sharing with others.
1995 Page: E1``Angels in America: Part I, Millennium Approaches,''
making
its Utah premiere Wednesday at Salt Lake Acting Company. byline: By
Nancy Melich THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Tony Kushner’s ``Angels in America'' is
opening this week in Salt Lake City.
``Angels in America,'' the two-part, seven-hour epic about love,
politics in the '80s, AIDS, Mormons, Jews and gay liberation, is the most
heralded American play in decades --some say the century. `Angels in America: A
Gay Fantasia on National Themes'' is for mature audiences. Part I, ``Millennium
Approaches,'' is 3 1/2 hours long with two intermissions. Part II, ``Perestroika,'' which opens March
6, is of similar length.
2012 Gay activist using Utah as a political
laboratory Jim Dabakis chairs the Utah Democratic Party
in Salt Lake City, Utah. Aside from politics, he has a passion for collecting
Russian art. By Jason Horowitz — The pork chop
in front of Jim Dabakis grew cold as he talked. And talked. And talked. “I have
a passion to say stuff,” he explained. There
is, in his defense, a lot of stuff to say. Dabakis is a former Mormon who is
gay and wealthy and also happens to be the chairman of the state Democratic
Party in this reddest of red states. He believes that even meager gains among
significant Mormon populations in swing mountain states such as Nevada and Colorado
could have national ramifications in close elections. Utah is his laboratory. Since becoming chairman in summer 2011,
Dabakis has doubled his party’s budget and begun building bridges into Mormon
congregations across the state. He credited some of those new Mormon Democrats
with reelecting Jim Matheson to the House over the Republican
future-star-who-fizzled Mia Love. He launched the group LDS Dems, a national
chapter that Mormon Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) inaugurated at
the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. The state Senate candidate in Saturday’s
special election discussed his modest upbringing as a gangly Greek son of a
depressed Massachusetts shut-in, his conversion at 11 to Mormonism and his
coming out as gay to one of the top apostles in the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. After a description of his ill-fated missionary gambits at
San Francisco Bay Area sporting events, the 58-year-old art dealer explained
his decision decades ago to leave Brigham Young University and his adoptive
faith for a life as a radio talk-show host, television personality, gay
activist, gadfly, collector of Russian art and political player who made a
temporary home and lasting fortune in St. Petersburg. But what Dabakis really wants to talk about
are his efforts to make the Democratic Party — and himself — viable in a state
where liberals are a peculiar people, where more than 70 percent of voters are
Mormon, and where the state legislature, governorship and both U.S. Senate
seats are Republican sinecures. “There is a pragmatic issue here,” Dabakis
said, describing the traditional Democratic strategy of anti-Mormonism as
wrongheaded. “As long as that continues, we’ll be the party that has no power,”
he said.
Many Republicans dismiss Dabakis as a
talk-show loudmouth. But others admire his approach. “He doesn’t like me, but I
kind of like him,” said Orrin G. Hatch, Utah’s senior Republican U.S. senator,
who is also Mormon. “He has a tough job, but he has handled it better, in my
opinion, than any Democratic chairman in my 36 years.” A key to Dabakis’s recruitment of plausible
candidates is his relationship with powerbrokers in a church that many
gay-rights activists have written off. In 2009, the Mormon Church aggressively and
successfully supported Proposition 8, which called for banning gay marriage in
California. The blowback was intense. “Prop. 8 was a catastrophe for them,” he
said. The church may have come to the same conclusion. Dabakis describes
receiving an unexpected call from the church to “get together” even though the
church had rebuffed such entreaties from him for more than a decade. The talks bore fruit. In November 2011,
church spokesman Michael Otterson spoke in favor of an anti-discrimination
ordinance in Salt Lake’s city council. The church also took no visible part in
opposing the legalization of same-sex marriage in Maine, Maryland and
Washington. “I believe them when they say they simply have not gotten involved
since Prop. 8,” Dabakis said. Otterson said the relationship with Dabakis
and discussions on gay issues reflected that although the faith has its
doctrinal standards, “we can still have mutual respect. We can still be
inclusive.” Although Dabakis is no longer a Mormon, he
says the church played a pivotal and positive role in his life. He and his
three sisters grew up in Springfield, Mass., where his father worked as a machinist
and his mother, afflicted with mental illness, rarely left her room. Some
Mormon kids from a nearby church took notice of the 11-year-old’s lanky
5-foot-11 frame and invited him to play on the church team, which allowed one
non-Mormon player on the floor at a time. All was well until a better
non-Mormon player entered the picture and ate up Dabakis’s court time. “So the coach came to me and he said, ‘Well,
Jimmy, there’s a way you can play,’ ” said Dabakis, who went home and asked his
mother if he could be baptized to play on the team. “ ‘You know you’re Greek Orthodox,’ ” Dabakis
recalled her saying before giving her consent. “ ‘Be home by 5, and don’t tell
your father.’ ” His father eventually found out but
appreciated the strong foundation the church provided his son. In 1971, he
enrolled in BYU and stopped in at church headquarters in Temple Square to share
his concerns about his sexual orientation. “Does this have to do with boys or girls?”
Dabakis recounted the receptionist asking. “Boys,” he answered, and he was led
to the office of Mark Petersen, one of the church’s 12 apostles, who told him
to study and do a mission and that things would work out. Dabakis asked whether
he had to tell his teachers or bishops. “No, it’s between us,” Peterson encouragingly
responded. “And if they have any problem with it, have them call me.” Dabakis was sent on a mission to the San
Francisco Bay Area. In an early sign of the panache he has brought to his
professional and political career, Dabakis replaced the traditional door
knocking with public relations stunts. Not all of them went well. At a Golden State Warriors basketball game,
Dabakis arranged for a halftime raffle to win a manual instructing families how
to spend time together and live more righteously. Directly beforehand, an
appliance store held a raffle for a washing machine and refrigerator. The
winner of the manual, who ran down the stands in “The Price Is Right” style,
thought she, too, had won a major appliance. “What is this s---?” she said upon receiving
the manual. “Cut the mike! Cut the mike!” Dabakis urged. Back at BYU, Dabakis increasingly felt out of
place and left the school to pursue his dream of becoming a radio talk-show
host in Salt Lake City, where he soon became a well-known personality. After
several of his friends died from AIDS-related illnesses in the early 1980s, he
started speaking out and gave the epidemic a face by bringing people with HIV
onto the show. He and his partner, Stephen Justeson, began
traveling through the Eastern Bloc and Russia, where Dabakis had been
organizing tours for years. (“I didn’t know anything about Russia,” he
acknowledged.) The couple collected art by then-relatively unknown painters
such as Arkady Plastov and the Tkachev Brothers and moved to St. Petersburg in
1991. For three years, Dabakis taught business at the local university and invested
in the newly opened markets. (“We ended up being one of the biggest sellers of
urea.”) In 1994, he returned to Salt Lake City a rich man, invested in his old
radio stations and sold them for a bundle after deregulation. That reputation as a successful businessman
has burnished his credibility with the business-friendly church. But his
credentials with liberals are also impeccable. He served as a founder and first
chairman of the Pride Center and Equality Utah. He didn’t exactly deny the
whispers in Washington that he turned down the top job at the gay lobbying
powerhouse the Human Rights Campaign. “They got the right man,” he demurred. These seemingly separate strains came
together in the post-Proposition 8 glasnost and have formed the Mormon-outreach
agenda that has been central to Dabakis’s campaigns for party chairman and now
state senator. “As I’ve met with the church, I’ve said
‘Look, I don’t come with a clenched fist,’ ” Dabakis said, finally cutting into
the pork chop. “ ‘A lot of the good in my life came from the training and the
embrace and the wonder that you guys picked up this kid off the streets in
Massachusetts.’ ”
Laura Santurri |
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