Reporter of the year

P.O. Box 548, 132 Fairfield St. West, Twin Falls, ID 83303-0548 (208) 733-0931

Jan. 22, 2017 Dear Judges:

I proudly nominate Times-News reporter Alex Riggins for the Idaho Press Club Reporter of the Year award.

As the entry clips show, Riggins is a highly versatile crime reporter, consistently combining deep reporting with sprightly writing in breaking news, in-depth journalism and beat reporting.

His knack for developing sources led to one of our paper’s most well-read projects of the year, taking readers behind the scenes into a police investigation of a string of pharmacy robberies. He goes well beyond a police blotter, striving to report not just what happened but why – and how it affects the community, as you’ll see in his clip on the aftermath of a devastating fire. In his breaking news clip about the arrest of two suspects in a drive-by shooting, Riggins’ reporting included months of interviews and records searches that provided readers with background and context not found in a typical breaking news report.

But that’s standard for Riggins, whose reporting this year has been unparalleled in Idaho. I hope you’ll deem him worthy of this honor.

Sincerely,

Matt Christensen Times-News Editor

Jerome tops Filer

The cutest Whos in Declo

Comes back in second half to win SPORTS, PAGE B6

Kids learn the meaning of Christmas from Dr. Seuss’s Grinch NEWS, PAGE A3 SUNNY 27 • 12 FORECAST, B8

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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2016

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magicvalley.com

POLICE: SLAYING SOLVED

Idaho AG mum on Dietrich case Outrage builds over prosecution of locker room incident NATHAN BROWN

nbrown@magicvalley.com

tor Grant Loebs told the TimesNews. They’ll also be charged with intimidating a witness.

Chavez, who was a suspect since the first days of the investigation, was arrested after an hour-long stand-off with a police SWAT team at a home on Locust Street North in Twin Falls.

The SWAT team surround the home about 3 p.m. and blocked Locust Street at Filer Avenue and Heyburn Avenue.

DIETRICH — The Idaho Attorney General’s Office is declining to comment as outrage builds over the agency’s prosecution of a former football player who attacked a black, mentally disabled teammate in a locker room.

The Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence issued a statement on Facebook over the weekend calling on Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden to “make a public statement and take immediate action against Idaho Deputy Attorney General Casey Hemmer’s outrageous and unacceptable behavior and statements.”

Hemmer and the AG’s office prosecuted the case due to a conflict of interest with the Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The coalition’s statement refers to remarks Hemmer made in court Friday, when former Dietrich High School football player John R.K Howard, now 19, of Keller, Tex., pleaded guilty to a felony count of injuring a child, a lesser charge than he originally faced.

Attorney general’s spokesman Scott Graf declined to answer questions Tuesday, pointing to District Judge Randy Stoker’s gag order barring the lawyers involved from speaking to the media at least until sentencing is imposed.

Shaun King, a civil rights activist who writes for the New York Daily News, wrote a

Please see ARRESTS, Page A6

Please see DIETRICH, Page A3

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS

Law enforcement conduct an operation at a home in the 300 block of Locust Street North Tuesday at Twin Falls.

Police make arrests in drive-by shooting murder of 15-year-old that shocked city ALEX RIGGINS

ariggins@magicvalley.com

TWIN FALLS — Police arrested two suspects Tuesday in the drive-by murder of Vason Widaman, a 15-year-old shot dead while riding his bicycle May 7 near Canyon Ridge High School.

The arrests mark a significant victory for the Twin Falls Police Department, particularly because one of the men arrested Tuesday was identified as a suspect just days after the slaying and has

Alvarez

Chavez

been in and out of police custody in the seven months since Widaman was gunned down.

It remains unclear what new evidence finally led police to be-

lieve they had enough to formally connect the men to the killing, a brazen daylight drive-by that rocked the city.

The men arrested were Jose G. Alvarez, 20, and Gerardo Raul Chavez, 19, both of Buhl. Nobond arrest warrants were issued for the duo Monday afternoon.

Both will be formally charged Wednesday in Twin Falls County Magistrate Court on felony counts of first-degree murder or aiding and abetting first-degree murder, County Prosecu-

Making elk good neighbors F&G tackles crop depredation by fencing stack yards

For the Times-News

mmatthews@magicvalley.com

PICABO — Elk grazing in a mountain meadow is one thing, but hundreds of elk looting and plundering stack yards full of hay meant for ranch cattle is quite another.

Driven by the continuing spread of urban development and heavy mountain snowfall PHOTO COURTESY OF IDAHO DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND GAME last winter, a massive herd of elk has pushed onto Blaine County Idaho Fish and Game’s landowner-sportsman coordinator John Guthrie inspects fencing that will protect haystacks from marauding elk this Please see ELK, Page A2 winter at Loving Springs Ranch near Gannett.

 If you do one thing: “Swinging Through the Holidays” performance will feature students

from Sun Valley Summer Symphony School of Music and the Wood River High School Choral Department at 4 p.m. at River Run Day Lodge in Sun Valley. Free.

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Volume 112, Issue 55

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Interlink Volunteer Caregivers KAREN BOSSICK

MYCHEL MATTHEWS

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

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MARKETS OPINION OBITUARIES

What do they do? IVC is a fill-in-the-gap organization that steps in when there are no other resources available to a person.

It provides volunteer assistance to the elderly, chronically ill and disabled to enable them to live independently in their own homes, giving them “the gift of home” as long as possible. It also provides respite care for their home-bound caregivers. It often provides a safety net for those who do not meet the criteria for other community agencies.

What’s changing? IVC has witnessed an increasing number of vulnerable people requiring its services this past year. In

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About this series Today we present part 3 in our series about nonprofits making a difference in the Magic Valley. Check out previous installments at Magicvalley.com. the past, the organization would have a slow period around the holidays when family members were in town visiting and could help their elderly or disabled loved ones. But that is not the case, anymore.

With baby boomers retiring at an alarming rate and many moving into the Magic Valley due to Please see INTERLINK, Page A8

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A6 | Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Arrests From A1

As rain turned to hail and then to snow, the heavily-armed officers repeatedly called for Chavez to exit the home with his hands up. Finally, just before 4 p.m., Chavez came out and “gave himself up peacefully,” Twin Falls Police Lt. Terry Thueson said.

Alvarez was arrested about two hours before Chavez while driving near U.S. 30 and Pole Line Road just east of Buhl.

“We had surveillance taking place, verifying it was Mr. Alvarez,” Thueson said. “It was 2:01 p.m. when the (county sheriff’s office SWAT team) took him into custody. They were engaged in surveillance until they saw him moving and were able to conduct a traffic stop.”

The arrests came 228 days after Widaman’s death. As they days stretched on, the police department continued to reassure the community that it was pursuing the case, even after it appeared to have gone cold in the months following the shooting.

“We knew going into this investigation that to solve this particular crime, it would take perseverance, much like running a marathon,” Police Chief Craig Kingsbury said. “I am proud of the men and women of the Twin Falls Police Department who have worked to keep this investigation in the forefront. I realize these arrests are just the first step in seeking justice for the Widaman family and this community.”

Widaman was shot on a Saturday afternoon in a newer subdivision of upper-middle class homes just blocks from his high school. Hundreds of people were at the school that day attending an event. But despite so many people in the area, there were few direct witnesses.

The Monday after the shooting, police asked for the public’s help finding a dark sedan, but they released few other details about the investigation or any potential suspects.

Early in the investigation, Kingsbury said the shooting “appeared to have been a disagreement between the victim and the assailants.”

A police statement released the day after Widaman’s death also said several leads “indicate that the shooting was an isolated incident and there is no threat to the public.”

“But I also would be irresponsible to say that it doesn’t concern me that we have a murderer out there — that we don’t know who he is, or she,” the chief said at the time. “We don’t know.

So we are working very hard to bring closure both for the Widaman family as well as this community and to bring whoever is responsible to justice.”

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Law enforcement conduct an operation at a home in the 300 block of Locust Street North Tuesday at Twin Falls.

Chavez arrested days after killing‌ The prosecutor declined to release details about what new evidence finally broke open the case, but court records and continued reporting by the Times-News over the past seven months show Chavez was on the radar as a suspect very early in the investigation.

The net started to tighten around Chavez May 9, just two days after Widaman’s death.

That’s when police wrote a warrant for his arrest for violating his probation on a drunken driving charge.

Police could have written the warrant as early as March 10, the first day he skipped a drug and alcohol test shortly after he was sentenced to supervised probation. Instead, they wrote the warrant two days after the drive-by killing at a time they promised the public they were “using every available officer and resource to apprehend the suspect or suspects involved in the homicide.”

Asked about the possible connection in May, city spokesman Joshua Palmer wouldn’t confirm a connection, saying only that police “are looking into numerous leads.” Loebs wouldn’t confirm the connection at the time, either, saying police “talk to a lot of people … (and) it’s important not to assume everyone being talked to is a suspect.”

But Chavez’s arrest warrant for a misdemeanor probation violation was highly unusual. Not only did it come just two days after Widaman’s killing, but it was served it at 12:30 a.m., and prosecutors sought a huge $25,000 bond.

Chavez was arraigned May 10 on the probation violation, and before the hearing, a deputy prosecutor inadvertently dropped another clue, asking a probation officer within earshot of a reporter if the officer “knows why we’re so worried about (Chavez).”

At that arraignment, a

judge set bond at $10,000, and Chavez, 18 at the time, posted bond and was released that same day. He made several court appearances over the following months for probation violations in the drunken driving case, at one point even agreeing to wear an ankle monitor, which allowed police for a time to track his every movement.

Court documents show that while on probation, Chavez used alcohol, marijuana, opiates, cocaine and ecstasy. During one court appearance, Magistrate Judge Roger Harris ordered Chavez to go straight to the courthouse restroom with a probation officer to take a drug test, which he failed.

It’s unknown when Chavez stopped using the ankle monitor, but his last known contact with police before Tuesday’s arrest came Nov. 6 when he was arrested once again on a probation violation in the drunken driving case; prosecutors charged him the next day with additional misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest and providing false information to an officer. But Chavez was able to again post bond in both cases and get out of jail.

It’s unknown how police started looking at Chavez as a suspect so soon after the murder, but it’s likely they made the connection the same way the Times-News first discovered the connection — the name “Gerardo” was mentioned by a Widaman acquaintance as someone who might have been feuding with Widaman.

Court records show police also had contact with Alvarez since Widaman’s killing. On June 27, he was arrested on drug possession charges while sitting in his car in the parking lot that serves the Twin Falls County jail, courthouse, sheriff’s office and prosecutor’s office.

Police officers walking through the parking lot spotted Alvarez and arrested him on a warrant seeking a DNA sample — a clue that police might have also suspected Alvarez in the killing several months ago. The officers also reported finding drugs and drug paraphernalia in his car, including marijuana butter, LSD and a digital scale containing marijuana residue, though the drug charges have since been dismissed.

Times-News

Another clue of how police might have zeroed in on Chavez and Alvarez is the grainy surveillance photos police released two days after the shooting. The photos, which police said showed a car wanted in the shooting, appeared to show a dark sedan, likely a Dodge from its shape.

According to police doc-

uments, both Chavez and Alvarez drive late-model Dodge sedans — Chavez a 2013 Dodge Avenger and Alvarez a 2014 Dodge Charger.

Chavez and Alvarez will both be arraigned Wednesday, and prosecutors will ask that they be held without bond, typical in first-degree murder cases.

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Reference Code 043.

www.dlevans.com M 1

THE BIG STORY Sunday, November 20, 2016 | magicvalley.com | SECTION C

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

Carol Garcia-Guzman, right, talks Nov. 1 about the aftermath of the 2013 Jerome fire that destroyed their former apartment building while Maximo Toledo and Gabriel Enriquez-Ramos listen. ‘It wasn’t a fancy place to live. It’s what we could afford,’ Garcia-Guzman says.

J

EROME’S INFERNO TENANTS DISPLACED BY APARTMENT FIRE TELL OF LOSS AND REBUILDING

ALEX RIGGINS

ariggins@magicvalley.com‌‌

J

More online

TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO

Twenty-one joined a lawsuit against building owner Sylvia Moore and manager Eladio Duarte, though six dropped out because they were fearful, intimidated or just too busy working and rebuilding their lives.

They rarely speak up or step out of line or draw attention to themselves — even when they feel wronged, even when they feel that Moore and Duarte were slum landlords who violated building codes and zoning laws and acted unethically.

Moore and Duarte would likely challenge those claims — they did just that in court over the past two years — but both declined to comment for this story. Both cited the lawsuit as reason for not speaking to the Times-News, though a judge dismissed the suit and the window to appeal came and went.

But now, with the lawsuit over and little legal recourse left, the displaced former residents of the burned building are speaking out. They’re telling of loss and devastation. And they’re telling of faith, rebuilding and hope.

In the face of rising nationalism, and in the face of President-elect Donald Trump — who campaigned by characterizing people like them as rapists and criminals stealing jobs from the white working class — the people displaced

by Jerome’s historic fire are standing up for themselves and telling their stories.

Times-News photographers were on the scene to docuEROME — An emergency disment Jerome’s big 2013 fire, and a Magicvalley.com galpatcher took the first 911 call at lery presents highlights from that coverage.

4:33 p.m. on April 30, 2013. The caller could see smoke through the windows of the first-floor business at 126 W. Main St. but didn’t know if anyone was inside. Twenty-seven seconds into the call, the caller said no flames were visible.

Based on the smoke, though, it looked really bad.

Nobody in those early moments knew just how bad it would be.

Likely ignited by an unattended glue gun — inspectors never could absolutely confirm the cause — that 2013 fire was the most destructive in Jerome since the early 1920s. But the effects didn’t end when firefighters finally extinguished it three days later. Nor did they end a few months later, when the city retracted a $96,701 bill it sent to the owner of the building that burned.

The effects are still felt, 3 1/2 years later, by the 41 people who lost their apartments and all their possessions — and by the city enduring a huge crater on Main Street.

The 911 dispatcher acted quickly that fateful afternoon.

Within a minute, the crew from Jerome Fire Department’s station 51 was en route. Firefighters entered with a fire hose on the red brick building’s north side, but they couldn’t get the ‘You’re just a slum landlord’‌ ABOVE: Firefighters from around the Magic Valley inferno under control because of its Peruvian immigrant Maximo Torespond April 30, 2013, to a spreading structure fire in intensity and size. ledo, sponsored by a sister already livthe 100 block of West Main Street in Jerome. TOP RIGHT: Smoke billowed from the commering in the U.S., waited 10 years for his A teddy bear lies in ashes and debris outside Jerome’s immigration papers to come through cial and apartment building, reducing destroyed apartment building in April 2013. visibility to zero at Jerome’s principal in 2009. One of the only tenants at intersection. Main Street and Lincoln home when the fire started, Toledo Avenue were shut down. Eight Magic The fire left a charred, hollowed and collived with his wife, Carmen, and their Valley firefighting agencies converged to battle lapsing building in the middle of Jerome’s four children in a small, two-bedroom apartthe blaze. small downtown. The scene would later be- ment with no windows or ventilation.

Fire crews attempted to ventilate the build- come an overgrown crater and vacant lot covThe Toledos did not have a smoke detecing, but a smoke explosion blew window glass ered in trash and graffiti. tor in their apartment, nor did any of the more than 100 feet, forcing them to adopt If you’ve heard little about the people the other similarly small, cramped apartments, more defensive tactics. At 1 a.m. May 1, after fire displaced, it’s understandable — most are according to the tenants’ lawsuit. The buildmore than eight hours, the fire was declared Mexican and Peruvian immigrants. Many are ing did not have fire-suppression sprinklers. contained. But it wasn’t true yet. here legally, others not. Almost all work long And like the Toledos’ apartment, many of the Crews found another fire on the second hours on dairies and farms and speak little living quarters were windowless, offered no floor about 3:30 p.m. that day, 23 hours after English. Some are here with their husbands, ventilation and presented other dangerous the blaze began. The crew commander finally wives and children, while others send much of conditions. declared the fire all the way out at 2:51 p.m. May their earnings back to families in their native 3, nearly three full days from the first 911 report. countries.

Please see INFERNO, Page C2

“We lived there because we needed to. It wasn’t a fancy place to live. It’s what we could afford.”

Carol Garcia-Guzman, 43, a tenant who lost everything she had in the fire.

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C2 | Sunday, November 20, 2016

THE BIG STORY

Times-News

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS

TOP: In downtown Jerome’s vacant crater, Carol Garcia-Guzman talks Oct. 28 about living in the building that burned. MIDDLE: Maximo Toledo, photographed Oct. 28 in Jerome, led his family to safety in the 2013 fire, then tried to save a laptop computer. But smoke stung his eyes. ‘I ran out crying, crying, right back out the door,’ he says. ‘So all of my stuff burned.’ BOTTOM: Percy Quinto-Cochachi talks Nov. 1 about the aftermath of the fire that destroyed his former apartment — along with his watches, digital cameras, clothing and $1,800.

Inferno From C1

“We lived there because we needed to,” said Carol Garcia-Guzman, 43, a tenant who lost everything she had in the fire.

“It wasn’t a fancy place to live. It’s what we could afford.”

When the drain in the Toledos’ shower clogged, water backed up in Garcia-Guzman’s bathtub, she said. But the Toledos and Garcia-Guzman’s family were some of the lucky ones with their own bathrooms; some tenants shared a common toilet and a shower situated behind a washer and dryer.

Moore and Duarte, according to the former tenants, constantly built new apartments and found ways to squeeze in more renters, despite conditions in the existing apartments. Garcia-Guzman and Rubi Madrigal, a young mother of two boys, said Duarte was building a 100-square-foot studio for Madrigal’s brother at the time of the fire. Moore planned to charge $500 a month for the tiny living space, supplied with power from Garcia-Guzman’s meter.

Meanwhile, Madrigal’s small, windowless apartment presented a slew of its own problems, she said, some dangerous and others simply annoying. In one room, sparks flew from the outlet whenever Madrigal tried to plug something in.

Duarte’s solution, she said, was to run an extension cord from a functioning outlet into the room with the sparking outlet.

And without ventilation, Madrigal was subject to the smells of her closest neighbors, six Peruvian dairy workers who lived in a windowless two-bedroom apartment. The smell of their cooking food at night permeated her apartment, making the pregnant Madrigal so nauseous she would vomit.

“There were no smoke alarms; my room was completely dark because there were no windows,” Madrigal said in Spanish.

“The Peruvians always had their lights on because they had no windows, just like me.”

After the fire, Moore acted as though she were a victim just like the tenants, Garcia-Guzman said. In a 2013 TimesNews interview, Moore said: “My heart was in that building … It was my retirement plan.”

Reporter Alex Riggins, thinking that most of the Latino population in the Magic Valley is from Mexico, was happy to learn during this reporting that so many Peruvians live in Jerome. His favorite Peruvian recipe has benefitted greatly.

That didn’t sit well with displaced renters who lost everything but the clothes they wore and lived on the charity of the Red Cross and community donations.

“It took her over three weeks to finally give back our deposits,” Garcia-Guzman said. “Some didn’t get back the full deposit because she said her power bill was over what she was supposed to pay. So I told her, ‘You’re just a slum landlord who is only looking out for yourself.’”

‘Boom! There’s the smoke’‌

While their two youngest children played in another room on April 30, 2013, Maximo and Carmen Toledo sat in the living room watching Real Madrid play Borussia Dortmund in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, a tournament featuring the best soccer teams from across Europe.

“We were just relaxed — tranquilo,” Maximo said in Spanish during an Oct. 14 interview at the home he rents in Jerome.

“My daughter came out of the room, and she said, ‘Papa, there’s smoke!’”

Maximo ran to the kitchen, the most likely place for smoke, but all was calm there. He began searching the rest of the apartment, then his daughter told him there was even more smoke. He opened the front door, which led into a hallway.

“And boom! There’s the smoke,” Maximo remembered. “It had already been in another room, in another apartment.”

LEFT: This panoramic shows Jerome’s Main Street in May 2013.

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS FILE ILLUSTATION‌

Please see INFERNO, Page C3

M 1

THE BIG STORY

Times-News

Sunday, November 20, 2016 | C3

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS‌

Maximo Toledo and his wife, Carmen, tease each other Oct. 28 in Jerome.

“My personal opinion is, we need the one champion to come down and invest so the community can see it. Success breeds success. You see it on South Lincoln; everybody wants to go out there because that’s the happening spot in town. …

We’re searching for our champion. It’s not the goal of the community to let (downtown) erode and die.”

Mike Williams, Jerome City Administrator

Gabriel Enriquez-Ramos on Nov. 1 shows a list of items he lost in the 2013 fire in Jerome.

Inferno From C2

M 1

TOP: Jerome City Administrator Mike Williams on Nov. 7 visits the site of downtown Jerome’s big 2013 fire. ‘It doesn’t look good for the town,’ he says. ‘We’d rather not look at it.’ BOTTOM: Smoke damage can still be seen Oct. 28 in downtown Jerome.

Maximo yelled for his family to get out — “Que vayan saliendo, vayan saliendo!” — and led them outside to clean air. He went back in, hoping to save a laptop computer.

“I didn’t make it far with all the smoke,” he remembered. It stung Maximo’s eyes. “I ran out crying, crying, right back out the door.

And then I didn’t go back in. So all of my stuff burned, everything.

Everything.”

For living in a small apartment, the Toledos had a lot: two refrigerators stocked with food, a bigscreen television, three smaller televisions, a stereo, the laptop, video game consoles, jewelry and everything else that stockpiles after years of living in one place.

Others told stories of similar loss, with their personal twists.

Garcia-Guzman and her husband lost everything, including a collection of 300 dolls she was saving for her granddaughter. The Peruvian dairy workers next to Madrigal had recently purchased, slaughtered and frozen a lamb, planning to eat it little by little.

“Every time they would come home, they would prepare a piece,” Maximo said with a laugh. “The whole lamb burned up all at once!

We always remember that.”

The lamb that went to waste, cooked all at once, is a favorite story of the Peruvians who lived in the building, something they can all laugh at now.

One of them, Percy Quinto-Cochachi, also lost watches, digital cameras, clothing and $1,800 from a paycheck he’d cashed.

Gabriel Enriquez-Ramos still has a handwritten list of the things he lost in the blaze, including $1,200 cash, a laptop, a new saxophone and a 30-inch TV. Madrigal, who had a toddler and newborn at the time, lost a big-screen TV, $2,000 she’d saved for her son’s birth expenses, a stereo, two cribs, baby clothes and a room full of diapers she’d bought

Carol Garcia-Guzman dries her eyes Nov. 1 as she talks about the 2013 fire’s aftermath.

More online In a Magicvalley.com gallery,

see more of Drew Nash’s photographs of people dealing with the aftermath of Jerome’s 2013 apartment fire.

Also, watch four Times-News videos of firefighters battling the April 2013 blaze in downtown Jerome. throughout her pregnancy.

But most devastating for many of the tenants, especially Maximo Toledo and the six Peruvian dairymen, was the loss of personal documents: passports, children’s birth certificates, residency and immigration papers.

The Toledos had spent 10 years trying to come stateside, while Quinto-Cochachi and Enriquez-Ramos came on precious work visas. In minutes, their most important documents burned.

Maximo had prepared for something like this and made copies which he kept in a secure place away from his apartment. Yet even with that security measure, it took him three years and almost $5,000 to get his family’s documents in order.

That included a trip to Boise, where immigration officials interrogated them despite their legal residency status, and several ill-fated trips to the Peruvian consulate in Utah.

Please see INFERNO, Page C4

THE BIG STORY

C4 | Sunday, November 20, 2016

Times-News

DREW NASH PHOTOS, TIMES-NEWS‌

Offices for the College of Southern Idaho, Southern Idaho Economic Development Organization and Jerome Chamber of Commerce all stand near a vacate lot where a 2013 fire destroyed a Jerome building.

Inferno From C3

The paperwork hassle kept Maximo from travelling back to Peru to visit family until 2016, more than three years after the fire.

“There were no smoke alarms; my room was completely dark because there were no windows. The Peruvians always had their lights on because they had no windows, just like me.”

Rubi Madrigal

‘Not the goal … to let it erode and die’‌ There is an alternate universe in which the market and apartments that burned that April day still stand. The red bricks have not been charred and crumbled, then knocked down by a demolition team. The facade still features a mural with lakes, snow-capped mountains and evergreen pines.

People still come and go from the market, which advertises in white letters over green paint “frutas y verduras” — fruits and vegetables.

This alternate world is on Google Maps’ street view, which for downtown Jerome was last updated in August 2012. It shows Main Street on a clear, sunny day, the classic-looking building still erect.

Reality is a stark contrast: a large crater where that handsome red brick once stood. The lot east of that building is also vacant; the restaurant once there, damaged by smoke, was also demolished.

The vacant lots are overgrown with weeds, while the crumbling foundation of the old apartment building is covered with graffiti.

A chain-link fence lined with a green tarp runs along Main Street where the market entrance once was, only partially obscuring the burned lot from passers-by. The backsides of both lots are exposed, the whole ugly thing a reminder of the historic blaze and its unpleasant aftermath.

“It doesn’t look good for the town,” Jerome City Administrator Mike Williams said Nov. 7, standing on the former restaurant lot.

“We’d rather not look at it.”

When it displaced 41 people, the fire also scarred Jerome. The fortunes of these rundown lots are knit closely to the fortunes of the city’s downtown.

“Downtown Jerome has been in a state of decline for 30 years,” Williams said. “There hasn’t been a whole lot of investment down here.”

There’s not much the city can do about the vacant lots on Main Street, Williams said. Moore still owns hers, while the one next to it belongs to a family in California.

Both feature “for sale” signs that have seen better days.

Elsewhere, Jerome is hopping.

“The last couple years, there’s been a lot of real positive things happening,” Williams said.

“There’s business growth and development, the new high school that went in looks awesome, we’ve had a lot of new people move here.”

Downtown’s ugly crater is the exception.

“That is one thing still that the community really does want to feel better about,” Williams said.

“But that hasn’t happened at the speed we’d like it to.”

The city hoped potential devel-

Rubi Madrigal talks Nov. 3 about her life since the 2013 fire in which she lost her children’s baby things — cribs, toys, clothes, diapers. opment projects would solve the problem quickly, but none panned out.

“Temporary beautification or site improvement is potentially where we go next,” the city administrator said.

Williams wasn’t working in City Hall at the time of the blaze — he was appointed a year later following Polly Hulsey’s resignation. Hulsey cited personal reasons for her resignation, but both she and Fire Chief Jack Krill stepped down in the months that followed a controversy when the city sent a $96,701 bill to Moore, then retracted the bill and apologized for the mistake.

The bright, energetic Williams, a Jerome native in his mid-30s, is optimistic about the future of downtown. But he’s also realistic.

He knows new businesses coming to Jerome want South Lincoln Avenue locations near Interstate 84. He knows the city’s two-yearold downtown urban renewal area doesn’t yet have sufficient funds to buy the properties if it wants to. He knows the cross streets in downtown lead to major highways and interstates, bringing heavy vehicle traffic that doesn’t promote pedestrian use. And he knows all about that 30-year history of decline.

Yet he also knows one large employer ready to invest in downtown could change everything.

“My personal opinion is, we need the one champion to come down and invest so the community can see it,” Williams said. “Success breeds success. You see it on South Lincoln; everybody wants to go out there because that’s the happening spot in town. … We’re searching for our champion. It’s not the goal of the community to let (downtown) erode and die.”

Williams said he feels for those who lost their apartments and belongings in the blaze, but the empty lots now can be an opportunity to build something better, to start fresh.

“Downtown is the symbolic center of the city,” Williams said.

“People want to feel better about downtown. It’s part of our strategic plan to do something.”

‘It’s not about taking her money’‌ Anyone looking to rebuild a better downtown Jerome — that “one champion” — could look to the example of the burned building’s former tenants.

While they’ve all struggled, they’ve also rebuilt their lives, in many cases with better conditions. The Toledos rent a nice home not far from Jerome High School that they share with Enriquez-Ramos and another Peruvian dairyman who lived in the old building.

Madrigal rents a small home that she keeps impressively clean, roomier than it looks from the outside. Her two sons live there with her every other week.

Garcia-Guzman lives just a few blocks from downtown — near the ruins of her former home and its bad memories, but also near the Jerome County Judicial Annex, where the tenants waged their legal battle against Moore and Duarte. Garcia-Guzman was the driving force behind the civil lawsuit that sought to hold the owner and manager accountable for the poor living conditions that she believes contributed to the fire’s rapid spread and destructiveness.

While about half of the displaced tenants joined the lawsuit, none looked to get rich off

the tragedy, Garcia-Guzman said.

Even if they did, it wasn’t a getrich-quick scheme. 5th District Magistrate Judge Eric Wildman dismissed the case in September, about 17 months after it was filed.

“It’s not about taking (Moore’s) money,” said Garcia-Guzman, a leader, advocate and translator for others who lived in the building.

“It’s about her having buildings that weren’t safe, breaking all these codes and getting away with it,” Garcia-Guzman said, adding that Carmen Toledo, Maximo’s wife, was in a wheelchair at the time. “It would have been so sad if she didn’t make it out because Sylvia didn’t care about safety.”

The lawsuit, which hinged on the lack of smoke detectors in the apartments, originally sought about $250,000 from Moore. The 21 plaintiffs each sought damages between $10,000 and $35,000 after filling out forms regarding the costs of their losses. When the suit was dismissed in September, their pro bono lawyer said he could no longer continue with the case, and the tenants didn’t have money to hire another lawyer for an appeal.

Long before there was a lawsuit, the ordeal became personal to Garcia-Guzman, originally from El Paso, Texas. A U.S. citizen by birth, bilingual and well educated, she felt responsible for fighting for the rights of the other tenants.

While at the Red Cross shelter set up at the Jerome fairgrounds, Garcia-Guzman and others continuously called Moore, she said, but the landlord didn’t pick up the phone. About a week after the fire, Garcia-Guzman went back to the burned-out building to do a TV interview. Within five minutes of being on the property, she said, she received a call from Moore saying she couldn’t be there.

“I said, ‘You know what, Sylvia? I tried calling you for a week and you never picked up,’” Garcia-Guzman remembered during an Oct. 5 interview at the Jerome Public Library. “‘And now you call me to tell me not to cross a fence?

There are signs in English and Spanish, and I’m fluent in both of them.’ I said, ‘You’re telling me this right now? Really?’”

Moore started to cry and said she was a victim, too, Garcia-Guzman remembered.

“At that moment, she pissed me off,” Garcia-Guzman said. “I said, ‘You know what, Sylvia? You have a house, you have a bed, you have a kitchen with dishes and food; we have nothing. You didn’t care about us. We called you all week long, and you never picked up.’”

According to Garcia-Guzman, Moore said her attorney told her not to pick up her phone or speak to anybody.

“I said, ‘Sylvia, we weren’t just anybody, we were the people living in your building that lost everything,’” Garcia-Guzman remembered. “I wore the same clothes for three days because I had no clothes. I told her, ‘You’re really pissing me off. You can take your tears and go somewhere else.

I have no sympathy for you. You couldn’t even show up to the fairgrounds and ask if we needed water or a blanket, or something?

Sylvia, I have no sympathy for you.’ And I hung up on her.”

Time has not eased Garcia-Guzman’s feeling of responsibility for the other tenants. At the library, tears streaked her face as she talked about the lawsuit’s dismissal. Those here illegally, and even those here legally on work visas, were afraid of repercussions from joining the lawsuit, she said.

“I felt like I let them down,” Garcia-Guzman said. “Since the very beginning, when we were at the fairgrounds, they all came to me, they all told me they needed help. I would be the one to help them … I felt like it’s my duty to help them. My apartment was the biggest one, I had more things than anyone else.”

On Nov. 1, Garcia-Guzman met several of the former tenants at Maximo Toledo’s home. After everyone finished large bowls of a Peruvian noodle soup, Garcia-Guzman broke the news: The deadline to appeal the lawsuit had passed. Their chances of winning any damages were done.

“I have to ask forgiveness from you all that I couldn’t do more,” Garcia-Guzman said in Spanish to the group around the table, raising her glasses to wipe away tears.

“Unfortunately, they sided with them … Sylvia and Duarte beat us … And there wasn’t much else we could do.”

Quinto-Cochachi told Garcia-Guzman that was nonsense, that she had no reason to ask forgiveness. The important thing, he said, was that everything lost was material, and he thanked God that nobody died in the fire.

“Thank you, thank you for driving this case, for wanting to help us, more than anything,” Quinto-Cochachi told Garcia-Guzman. “You fought for all of us.”

M 1

• Sunday, March 13, 2016

Enterprise Editor Virginia Hutchins [ 208-735-3242 • vhutchins@magicvalley.com ] • B1

THE BIG STORY

STEPHEN REISS, TIMES-NEWS

Not only pharmacies and law enforcement officers were affected by the 2014 string of robberies by prescription drug addicts. Jennifer Skinner, photographed March 3 in her Twin Falls apartment, is raising 1-year-old daughter Zahkya Palmer without her fiance, as he serves a sentence of 10 years to life in prison.

YEAR OF THE

PHARMACY

ROBBERY

CRIME WAVE ROCKS TWIN FALLS AS PRESCRIPTION DRUG ADDICTS HIT 7 TIMES IN 6 MONTHS

ALEX RIGGINS

About this Project

ariggins@magicvalley.com

TWIN FALLS • The man in the yellow hooded sweat shirt appeared calm as he walked into the Walgreens on Blue Lakes Boulevard, strode past two shoppers and, without stopping, pulled a yellow surgical mask over his mouth and nose.

It was 7:25 p.m. on a Monday, Sept. 29, 2014, and he walked directly to the pharmacy counter where technician Jenny Whitmore was helping Frankie Fiscus, there with his wife, son and grandson to inquire about a flu shot.

The man in the baseball hat, sunglasses and yellow hoodie ignored the Fiscus family and handed Whitmore a note demanding OxyContin, oxymorphone and hydromorphone. If he didn’t get it in 30 seconds, the note said, he would hurt everyone.

Whitmore passed the note to pharmacist Rick Johns. Less than two minutes after entering the store, the man in the yellow hoodie walked out with a bag containing his demand note, 10 10-mg OxyContin pills and 500 4-mg hydromorphone pills. He left the way he came in and didn’t touch anything in the store.

In 2014, a new kind of addiction-driven crime hit Twin Falls — a development that surprised police, alarmed the community and frightened pharmacists. And the Sept.

29 robbery was the peak of the wave. A trio of prescription painkiller addicts knew their plan and how to execute it without leaving clues or getting caught. They’d done it before. Get in, get the drugs, get out.

This robbery was so quick and efficient that Fiscus and his family had no idea what happened until it was over.

Fiscus and his son later told police they remembered a man in a yellow sweat shirt but never saw his face. Deborah Morris and Caroline Parcels — working near Walgreens’ front register that night — didn’t know the pharmacy was robbed until police arrived on scene.

Officer Clint Doerr, a 16-year veteran of

NATHAN BROWN, TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO

Twin Falls police stand watch at the entrance to the Walgreens on Blue Lakes Boulevard North after a Sept. 29, 2014, robbery.

“I worked here for 18 years and never even heard about a pharmacy robbery until 2014.”

Staff Sgt. Chuck Garner

COURTESY PHOTO

A surveillance camera captured this image of the man who robbed the Walgreens pharmacy on Twin Falls’ Blue Lakes Boulevard on Sept. 29, 2014. the Twin Falls Police Department, had just finished an interview at the county jail when he heard about the robbery on his radio.

By coincidence, Doerr had just spoken

to an inmate who requested leniency on his own charges in exchange for information about recent, and possibly imminent, pharmacy robberies.

To reconstruct the addiction-driven crime wave that hit Twin Falls pharmacies in 2014, crime reporter Alex Riggins spent two months on an intensive investigation.

Riggins combed through court records and police reports and conducted extensive interviews with police, prosecutors, victims and witnesses.

Working through the Idaho Department of Riggins Correction’s public information officer, he arranged interviews with two of the convicted pharmacy robbers imprisoned in Boise. One robber put Riggins in touch with his fiancee, too.

Today, the Times-News presents the first half of Riggins’ project. On Magicvalley.com, this special story is enhanced with multimedia.

To learn how investigators cracked these cases and how the string of robberies changed Twin Falls, come back to the Times-News and Magicvalley. com on March 20 for the conclusion of this two-part project.

The inmate gave Doerr a name: Bradley Cole Holcomb.

The inmate told Doerr that Holcomb — arrested in June for robbing the Walgreens pharmacy on Blue Lakes — had spent his time in jail reading police reports to learn from his mistakes and trying to recruit others to help.

“It wasn’t more than a few minutes after I get done interviewing him that we get the robbery call at Walgreens,” Doerr recalled last month. “My first thought was Bradley Holcomb, he’s a prime suspect.”

Please see CRIME, B2

B2 • Sunday, March 13, 2016

“It controls your life. You get high in the morning and have to hide it from everybody … you can’t focus on anything except trying to set something up where you can get high later.”

Chandler Lee Palmer

Holcomb

Palmer

Escobedo

Trout

Crime

was I able to be happy without being high?’ I couldn’t achieve happiness.”

Continued from B1

So that evening Doerr checked in on Holcomb at the house where he lived with his mother, Donna McMillan, on Washington Street North. When Doerr arrived, McMillan called her son, who said he was walking home from church.

A few minutes later Holcomb called his mom and told her he was at the end of the street. McMillan and Doerr went outside.

Sure enough, they saw Holcomb approaching the house.

“As he’s getting closer, all the sudden I get a call of an attempted robbery taking place at Kmart,” Doerr said. “We have another robbery going on right now at Kmart at the same time I’m watching Bradley.”

The June Walgreens robbery and the one just committed by the man in the yellow hoodie were too similar, Doerr thought. Holcomb even fit the physical description of the robber in the yellow hoodie: dark complexion, between 5 feet 6 inches and 6 feet tall.

But the Kmart robbery threw Doerr for a loop.

If Holcomb hadn’t robbed Kmart — and he clearly hadn’t, because Doerr was looking at him as the call came in — he probably hadn’t robbed Walgreens that evening either.

“So Bradley was on my radar,” Doerr said. “But now either there’s more people involved, or something else is going on.”

In the months that followed, police and prosecutors would describe the rapid-fire crimes as expertly planned and deliberately executed. The robbers would call them spontaneous acts of desperation to feed their addictions.

Year of the Pharmacy Robbery‌ Magic Valley endured at least 11 pharmacy robberies or attempted robberies in 2014.

On March 10, a 38-year-old man and his 17-year-old son went into Kmart and made off with drugs and cash before they were arrested four months later. On March 23, a man passed a note to Shopko pharmacy employees saying he would shoot unless they gave him several prescription painkillers. On April 21, two men tried to rob the Ridley’s Market in Kimberly; they demanded cash and drugs but suddenly fled without either.

Then between June 25 and Nov. 30, six Twin Falls pharmacies were robbed, pharmacists and customers thwarted a seventh attempt, and a Burley Walgreens was hit.

“I worked here for 18 years and never even heard about a pharmacy robbery until 2014,” said Staff Sgt. Chuck Garner, who has overseen Twin Falls’ police detectives since October 2014. “For our area it was kind of a new thing.”

Local pharmacists had heard of robberies elsewhere in the country. For more than 20 years, they had a calling tree in place to alert the others if one were robbed. But the victim gets no warning call. And for pharmacy employees in 2014, a calling tree offered little assurance against a robber threatening violence.

“There were a lot of very tentative thoughts and ideas about going to work, about what would happen,” said Troy Jackman, president of the Magic Valley Pharmacists Association.

By the end of the year, four people were arrested and charged with committing seven of the final eight robberies.

Holcomb and Brody McEwen Trout pleaded guilty to committing several each, while Angelic Monique Escobedo admitted to being their accomplice. Holcomb’s brother, Chandler Lee Palmer, also confessed to one of the robberies.

None had violent histories. But all four were desperate.

Opioid Addiction‌

To understand 2014’s sudden surge in pharmacy robberies, it’s vital to understand opioid addiction.

Opioids account for the greatest proportion of the prescription drug abuse problem and act on the same brain systems affected by heroin and morphine, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported in a May 2014 address to the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.

“Several factors are likely to have contributed to the severity of the current prescription drug abuse problem,” Dr. Nora D. Volkow told the Senate caucus. “They include drastic increases in the number of

Recovery and Relapse‌

COURTESY OF JENNIFER SKINNER‌

Bradley Holcomb and Jennifer Skinner during happier times in 2012.

prescriptions written and dispensed, greater started smoking pot when I was, like, 14,” social acceptability for using medications for Palmer said by phone last month, incardifferent purposes and aggressive marketing cerated in the same Boise prison but with by pharmaceutical companies.” more visitation, calling and activity priviAnd nowhere has been hit as hard by opi- leges than his brother. “First time I smoked oid addiction as the U.S. pot was with this old guy. And something “The number of prescriptions for opioids he said always stuck in my mind. He said, like hydrocodone and oxycodone have esca- ‘If I get caught, what are they going to do, lated from around 76 million in 1991 to nearly ground me?’”

207 million in 2013,” Volkow said. The U.S. is The 14-year-old adopted the same deviltheir biggest consumer globally, account- may-care attitude. Soon he was dabbling ing for almost 100 percent of the world total with much harder drugs.

“When I was 16 I tried oxy, heroin, mushfor hydrocodone products, like Vicodin, and 81 percent for oxycodone products, rooms, Molly and acid.” like Percocet.

The drug abuse worsened when Palmer With the massive increase in prescrip- began dealing. He started out selling weed tions for painkillers came a massive increase but was soon dealing cocaine and more powin their abuse. erful narcotics.

“By 2002, death certificates listed opioid One day, a friend suggested he try oxycopoisoning as a cause of death more com- done, a potent painkiller. monly than heroin or cocaine,” Volkow told “The first time I shot up OxyContin, it was awesome,” the senators.

Palmer said. “It Even those who are prescribed the turns a light switch painkillers can on, it makes you become addicted, feel alive. You but the most likely could have all the route to addiction problems in the is through use not world, but then medically pre you get high and everything’s all scribed. In 2012, right. It’s not that more than 5 percent of the U.S. populayou don’t care, but tion 12 and older everything just used opioid pain feels perfect.” relievers nonmediThat sense of well-being and cally. pleasure, Volkow “They are most Bradley Cole Holcomb d a n ge ro u s a n d told the senators, is addictive when taken via methods that produced because opioid medications affect increase their euphoric effects,” Volkow said, brain regions involved in reward. “such as crushing pills and then snorting or Soon though, Palmer couldn’t function injecting the powder, or combining the pills without prescriptions painkillers. with alcohol or other drugs.”

“It controls your life. You get high in the Holcomb and his older brother injected. A morning and have to hide it from everybody faster high. … you can’t focus on anything except trying to set something up where you can get high ‘I Wasn’t a Delinquent’‌ later. In the back of your mind you’re just Palmer, now 23, is just 15 months older thinking, ‘You better get this or it’s going to than Holcomb, 22. be bad later.’ You get the heebie-jeebies. Life “Me and Chandler were pretty in sync,” revolves around it.”

Holcomb said last month, calling from a Palmer needed more and more to achieve Boise prison during the one hour each day the high. that he’s allowed out of his cell to shower “If you do it every day,” he said, “it’s not and send emails. “We grew up really close to that intense anymore.” each other. Everywhere he went, I went. We For those who abuse opioids, tolerance went together.” creates a vicious cycle.

In their early teens, the brothers moved “With opiates, you can’t function without from Kimberly to Twin Falls. They attended them,” Palmer said. “But if you don’t do it, Canyon Ridge High School, and doing drugs you’re strung out, and that’s the worst feeling seemed like a normal thing most of their you can imagine. There’s not a more desperate feeling in the world.” classmates were also trying.

“I wasn’t a delinquent, I wasn’t going Holcomb told a story of addiction and out being crazy,” Holcomb said of his teen withdrawal much like his older brother’s. years, though he said he stole a car when “I think it was exactly the stereotype addiction,” Holcomb said. “It was so bad he was 14.

“I started drinking in eighth grade and where if I couldn’t get them, it was like, ‘How

“At first I just took a few pills here and there, but once I started shooting up, it was over.”

Holcomb and Palmer tried to recover from their opioid addictions in their late teens and early 20s, getting clean for months at a time.

But the drugs always pulled them back.

While he was still a juvenile, Holcomb was sent to a yearlong recovery program in Boise.

When he got out, he stayed in Boise and was joined by his girlfriend, Jennifer Skinner.

“That program was good, helped me deal with a lot of issues, with family issues,” Holcomb said. “It set me on a good path for my adult life. I felt like things were squared away and taken care of.”

Holcomb and Skinner were happy, and being in Boise kept Holcomb far away from the people and places that influenced his decisions in the Magic Valley.

“I had a job, made good money, had a car and house,” Holcomb said. “It was just me and her in the Treasure Valley. I was working at the Winco distribution center. I could have set us up really well.”

But when Skinner got pregnant, Holcomb got scared. He felt anxious and inadequate.

Could he be a good father? Could he provide for Skinner and the baby? Could he do it in the Treasure Valley without either of their families for support?

“Jen didn’t want to come back to Twin,” Holcomb said. “She didn’t want to come back. She foresaw something like this.”

Despite Skinner’s protest, the expectant parents moved back in August 2013.

Meanwhile, Palmer’s addiction was spiraling out of control. On New Year’s Day 2014, he stole a wedding ring, TV and laptop from his mom. Weeks later, McMillan took Palmer to the police department and told officers she wanted to press charges against her son.

Palmer admitted to stealing from McMillan but told police he couldn’t give the items back — he had already pawned them for drug money.

He pleaded guilty to a felony count of grand theft and was sentenced to two to four years in prison, but his sentence was suspended and he was sent instead to a rider, the therapeutic and educational program overseen by the Idaho Department of Correction.

The program was helping Palmer get clean even as his younger brother fell victim to the temptations Skinner had foreseen.

“Once we moved back to Twin I started using again,” Holcomb said. “I knew I was vulnerable. At first I just took a few pills here and there, but once I started shooting up, it was over.”

“He was doing so good in Boise,” Skinner said on a recent Saturday, watching her daughter climb on Arctic Circle’s indoor playground. “But Twin’s a black hole for him.”

The couple separated, but Holcomb still showed up for every one of Skinner’s pregnancy checkups. They reconciled just before their daughter’s birth and went to Boise for a week before the baby was due. There, they made plans to return to live in the city that had held such promise.

March 21, 2014, three days after returning from Boise, Skinner gave birth to Zahkya Juanita Sarai Palmer. She moved back in with Holcomb and his mother in the house on Washington Street North. But Skinner suspected Holcomb was using again. When she confronted him, he admitted he was.

“I moved out because I didn’t want my daughter around that,” Skinner said. “That was in June.”

“When she left,” Holcomb said, “it just turned me and my attitude into, ‘They’re better off without me.’”

He was using every day and growing more desperate. He got a job through a temp agency, but without drugs, he couldn’t go to work. And he had no money for drugs.

“I hadn’t gone to work for, like, three days because I was so sick,” Holcomb said. “Withdrawals off opiates — man, anything is better than going through that.”

Robbing a drug dealer seemed to Holcomb like a good way to get shot dead.

That’s when Holcomb remembered reading about the two March pharmacy robberies, and an idea sprouted.

“I saw it going one of two ways,” Holcomb said. “Either I get away with it and I’m able to get ‘better,’ because I seriously thought I was going to die (from withdrawals). Or I go to jail and get help. I was at my rock bottom.”

Please see CRIME, B3

Sunday, March 13, 2016 • B3

Crime Continued from B2

First Robbery:Walgreens on Blue Lakes‌ The temperature was 70 degrees and rising at 9:13 a.m. June 25 when Holcomb walked into Walgreens with the hood of his gray and black sweat shirt over his head. He also wore long, dark pants, a dark baseball hat and black sunglasses.

He walked to the pharmacy and handed pharmacist technician Rachele West a note. Though he claims he isn’t violent and wouldn’t have hurt anyone, the note he used was threatening: Robbery Oxycotin Oxymorphome hydromorphome ALL now! or this syringe full of Hep C blood will be inside you West handed the note to pharmacist Naomi Knight, who filled a paper bag with drugs. Knight couldn’t find any oxymorphone pills but still gave Holcomb a massive haul: 1,734 oxycodone and hydromorphone pills worth almost $8,700. Their street value for illegal use: $48,000.

Officer Dan Heil was first to arrive and pulled his gun as he entered the store, but he soon holstered his weapon when employees told him the robber had been gone for about a minute.

A witness told police a man ran across Blue Lakes and got into a silver four-door car parked behind Absolutely Flowers. An employee at the McDonald’s across the street confirmed it was a silver four-door Cadillac, possibly a DeVille, and said it sped west on Heyburn Avenue.

Back at Walgreens, officers began interviewing witnesses and victims. The two pharmacist employees believed the note had a threat that they would be shot if they didn’t comply. Knight told officers “she felt the robber would follow through with his threat to harm her because she could see a bulge in the hooded sweat shirt he was wearing,” an officer wrote.

Tears still well in Skinner’s eyes when she thinks about that day.

“My mom actually called me and said, ‘You know, there’s been a robbery, and it was a Cadillac,’” said Skinner, a soft-spoken young woman with a tattoo of Holcomb’s name on her stomach. “So I called Bradley, and he was just like, ‘No, I’m just here hanging out.’ And I said, ‘You didn’t happen to rob a pharmacy, did you?’ Because the news says it’s a male in his 20s with a Cadillac, and that kind of had me worried.”

Holcomb still denied it, but he was short with Skinner on the phone.

At 4:45 p.m., Detective Rick VanVooren received a call from a man who said he lived on Quincy Street and had a roommate named Bradley Holcomb who was acting suspiciously.

At the time, police knew Holcomb from his teen run-ins with the law, but his name didn’t jump out to anyone as a robbery suspect.

The roommate told VanVooren that Holcomb hadn’t gone to work that morning like he was supposed to. Strangest of all, when he came home about 9:20 a.m., he backed his Cadillac into the backyard instead of pulling straight in like normal. Then he got out and covered the back of the car with a blanket.

A short time after Holcomb got home, the roommate learned about the Walgreens robbery. He was worried because he knew Holcomb was a prescription pill user and was concerned for his safety.

VanVooren asked the roommate to come into the police station so they could talk more, and at the station the man showed the detective text messages from Holcomb about stripping the car to make it look like an old project car. VanVooren asked for and received the roommate’s permission to search the home on Quincy Street.

Officers entered the house using a key they’d been given. Once inside, they announced themselves, and Holcomb came out of the bathroom with his hands up.

Inside the bathroom, officers found a drug kit that included a spoon, hypodermic needles and syringes.

Holcomb agreed to speak with VanVooren but after several tough questions told the detective he’d like to speak with a lawyer.

With a warrant signed by a judge, police returned to the house and found in the attic a bag of pills matching the description of the drugs stolen earlier that day. In Holcomb’s bedroom, they found black sunglasses and a Chicago Bulls hat that matched the robber’s description.

Inside the Cadillac out back, VanVooren found a pad of notepaper. The top sheet was ripped off and matched the size of the note the pharmacy employees described.

A week later, inside a darkened room and using a flashlight to illuminate the next page, VanVooren and a local evidence technician would be able to read part of the imprint. And in late July, a forensic scientist in Washington would use an electrostatic detection apparatus to decipher the rest of the impressions on the pages below.

Holcomb was arrested and charged with four felony counts and a misdemeanor.

Holcomb’s attorney, Lynn Dunlap, told Judge Thomas Kershaw his client was employed and had a newborn daughter and other family in the area. For that reason, bond shouldn’t be set too high.

But Kershaw, citing the seriousness of the charges and Holcomb’s criminal record as a juvenile, set bond at $500,000.

County Lockup‌

On Aug. 28, after Holcomb had spent two months in county jail, his attorney successfully argued the bond should be reduced. The

COURTESY OF TWIN FALLS POLICE DEPARTMENT‌

Bradley Holcomb got rid of the note he used during the robbery at Walgreens on June 25, 2014. But officers found the notebook he used, and a forensic scientist in Washington used an electrostatic detection apparatus to read the latent writing impressions on the pages below.

This is a copy of the image lifted from those pages.

county jail.

These two people would help Holcomb implement his “way to deal with the stress.”

Second robbery: Walgreens on Washington Street‌

STEPHEN REISS, TIMES-NEWS‌

Twin Falls Police Detective Rick VanVooren, photographed Jan. 28 inside the police department, worked on the 2014 string of pharmacy robberies. next day, Holcomb posted bond and agreed to follow the court’s compliance program.

The inmate who spoke to Doerr alleges it was during those two months in the county jail that Holcomb was learning from his mistakes, recruiting help and plotting more robberies.

“That’s an asinine statement,” Holcomb said in his phone call from prison. “It was never a goal of mine to rob more pharmacies. I stopped using in jail and was sober for two months.”

Though Holcomb didn’t have access to drugs in the jail, he didn’t feel like he was healing from his addiction, either. Because he was booked on a violent crime, he wasn’t able to enroll in the jail’s drug and alcohol classes.

When he bonded out in late August, things looked even bleaker than before.

“When I got out, I encountered a lot of stress,” Holcomb said. “My mom had hired this attorney that we had to pay. All my money was going to my mom to help pay for the attorney or to pay for court compliance.

And I couldn’t get a job because my face was all over the newspaper.”

Holcomb knew just where to turn to make his problems go away.

“I knew of a very negative way, but a very

efficient way, to deal with the stress,” Holcomb said.

Around late August or early September, Holcomb started hanging out with Angelic Monique Escobedo, an old friend from high school. Around the same time, Escobedo started dating Brody McEwen Trout.

Escobedo’s court records paint a picture of an abusive upbringing with much of her teen years spent in juvenile detention. In 2008 she twice attempted suicide by taking “a bunch of pills,” she told a mental health evaluator.

During a court-ordered examination in 2015, Escobedo told a social worker she had been previously diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, general anxiety disorder, insomnia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The social worker also diagnosed her with panic attacks and paranoia episodes. Escobedo admitted to using alcohol, methamphetamine, bath salts, marijuana, Molly and opiates.

Court records also document Trout’s history of drug use. He was charged with drug possession for the first time as an adult in 2009. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in a rider. In 2010, Trout was charged with misdemeanor drug possession and in 2011 sentenced to 90 days in

On Sept. 17, Holcomb and Escobedo went into Washington Street’s Walgreens, walked straight toward the pharmacy, then turned away suddenly, walking back toward the entrance, where they both grabbed drinks from a cooler near the check stands.

At 8:09 p.m., Trout walked in wearing a white hoodie with dollar bill graphics, a white baseball hat, white basketball shorts, black socks and white shoes. He also had on sunglasses and possibly a pair of dark gloves.

When Trout entered, Holcomb motioned to alert Escobedo and they left the store.

Trout approached pharmacist Jeremy Hunter but walked away when he saw the pharmacist on the phone. Once Hunter hung up, Trout returned to the counter and handed him a note demanding hydromorphone, oxycodone and oxymorphone.

If the pharmacist didn’t give him what he wanted, the note threatened, the robber would kill him.

Hunter dumped several bottles of pills into a plastic Walgreens grocery sack and gave the bag to Trout, who turned to leave. Before he walked more than a few steps, he stopped.

“Where’s the note?” Trout asked Hunter.

“It’s in the bag,” Hunter told him.

“Sorry for ruining your evening,” Trout told Hunter. “But you’ll receive good karma for this.”

Trout left the store with more than $1,000 worth of hydromorphone and oxycodone and ran across Washington Street into the Los Lagos neighborhood.

Officers dispatched to the robbery at 8:14 p.m. set up a perimeter and questioned neighbors. At least two people told officers they saw someone get into a white car that sped away, but nobody saw anything clearly.

For almost two months, the robbery went unsolved.

Third robbery:Walgreens on Blue Lakes‌ Less than two weeks after the Sept. 17 robbery, Trout on Sept. 29 pulled his lightcolored four-door sedan into the parking lot of Twin Falls’ other Walgreens, the one on Blue Lakes Boulevard that Holcomb robbed of nearly $9,000 worth of pills back in June.

Trout got out of his car at 7:06 p.m. and walked around near the store’s front doors for several minutes, at one point pulling out a cellphone from his pocket and looking at it intensely. Then he got into the driver’s seat of his car, waited a few more minutes, backed out of his parking spot and drove away.

It was only then, after Trout scouted the store, that the man in the yellow hoodie walked up the south side of Walgreens, Please see CRIME, B4

B4 • Sunday, March 13, 2016

Crime Continued from B3

walked confidently through the door and made off with 510 painkillers without anyone but the pharmacist and the pharmacist technician knowing what happened.

Prosecutors and police are convinced the man in the yellow hoodie was Holcomb, but as part of a plea deal, charges against him for this robbery were dismissed.

Because Holcomb is appealing his conviction in other robberies, he still denied his involvement in this one, although his voice got quieter and lower when he did so.

Every phone conversation a prisoner has is recorded, so by denying his involvement he avoided incriminating himself.

For whomever robbed Walgreens that night — Trout and Escobedo both said it was Holcomb — the night was done. Holcomb was soon walking down the street and chatting casually with Officer Doerr at his mother’s house.

But for Trout and Escobedo, there was more to do.

Fourth robbery: Kmart‌

Less than an hour later, Trout walked into Kmart wearing a gray and black hoodie, black shorts, black leggings and white shoes.

He walked to the pharmacy with his hands in his pockets and looked casual as he waited for pharmacist John Baker. While he waited, a Kmart employee asked if she could help him, but Trout told her he was just waiting to pick up something from the pharmacy.

She later told police she believed the robber spoke with a Russian accent.

By the time Trout finally got Baker’s attention, Trout was wearing a yellow surgical mask. He pulled a note from his right jacket pocket and handed it to Baker, who knew without Trout saying a word that it was a robbery.

Baker later told police he was extremely nervous, but despite his unease he opened a drawer to begin collecting pills and pushed the transmit button on a walkie-talkie to get the attention of a loss-prevention employee.

Trout walked along the pharmacy counter and away from another customer who arrived. He walked casually, taking his hands out of his pockets only to grab the bag of pills when Baker handed it over. He left no fingerprints.

Once again, Trout made off with a large haul: 200 hydromorphone pills, 400 oxycodone and 11 OxyContin.

A witness parked at Lighthouse Christian Academy just south of Kmart told police he saw a man running and getting into the passenger side of a black sedan with white trim.

Trout later told police he fled in a green Jeep with Escobedo at the wheel.

Back at Kmart, officers interviewing witnesses got a strange tip from Kmart employee Angela Hills.

A woman had approached Hills shortly after the robbery and asked if the pharmacy was just robbed.

“I think I know who it might be,” the woman told Hills. “It might be my boyfriend’s brother.”

The woman refused to answer any more questions, but Hills was able to identify her because she was there paying off layaway items. Her name, Hills told Officer Morgan Waite, was Natasha Hoskins.

Waite went to Hoskins’ residence that night to question her. Hoskins told Waite that her boyfriend’s half-brother, whom she knew only as Brad, was previously arrested for robbing a pharmacy. She wondered if he might be the person who robbed Kmart.

“That is my oldest brother’s girlfriend,” Holcomb said in his prison phone call last month. He and that older half-brother were never close because the half-brother lived with their dad while Holcomb lived with his mom.

“It was weird that she implicated me, like she was guiding the police or something,” Holcomb said. “It’s just weird. Very odd. I don’t really know her.”

But if it was weird to Holcomb, it wasn’t weird to Waite, who started learning what he could about someone named Brad previously arrested for robbing a pharmacy. That’s when, for the second time that day, Bradley Cole Holcomb became a prime suspect in an officer’s mind.

But Waite soon learned what Doerr already knew: Holcomb couldn’t have robbed Kmart, because he speaking with Doerr at the time.

Three pharmacies had been robbed within 12 days, and the prime suspect — the man named by two separate people — had a perfect alibi for at least one of the robberies. If investigators weren’t at square one, they were close to it.

Detectives Meet, Pharmacist Packs Heat‌ Detectives huddled on Sept. 30, the day after the successful double robberies. There had been pharmacy robberies earlier in the year, but never two in one day.

The police were serious before, but now the pressure was really on.

“We all shared our information,” VanVooren said. “Names, information we had regarding those cases, and we started developing it from there.”

At least one pharmacist and his employees, meanwhile, took matters into their own hands. Kent Jensen, owner of KJ’s Pharmacy, started carrying a gun during his shifts.

“It’s a good ol’ Second Amendment thing,” Jensen told the Times-News that Oct. 1.

Jensen’s employees were trained to give robbers whatever they demand and not escalate the situation. Guns “are to deter and only if we felt that we were in danger of our lives or customers’ lives,” Jensen said. “Then we have the option.”

Pharmacist David Nelson, owner of SavMor Drugs, didn’t go so far as carrying a gun but did step up security with a metal

COURTESY OF TWIN FALLS POLICE DEPARTMENT‌

Police caught a break in the investigation when Brody Trout left this note during an attempted robbery at Shopko on Nov. 6, 2014. During an interview later that day, Trout admitted to officers he used a note written in green ink.

COURTESY PHOTOS‌

LEFT: A surveillance camera captured this image of the Sept. 17, 2014, robber at the Walgreens on Twin Falls’ Pole Line Road and Washington Street. RIGHT: A surveillance camera captured this image during a Sept. 29, 2014, robbery at the Kmart pharmacy in Twin Falls. gate, a burglar alarm and a 24-hour surveillance system.

“I think our main defensive mechanism these days is to stay as vigilant as we can,” Nelson told the Times-News that October.

But the robberies were weighing on him and other pharmacists.

“The subject is on our minds,” he said.

“Every night when I close, I think about it.”

Copycat Robbery: Sav-Mor Drugs‌

VanVooren said. “Either the guy — or the people — have now upped their ante to now they’re being more aggressive, more violent, displaying the handgun. Or, we have somebody completely different that sees a different way of doing it.”

Fifth Robbery Attempt: Shopko‌

Bodenhofer’s robbery of Sav-Mor was so unlike the previous robberies that police were all but certain the other robber or robNelson was still being vigilant more than bers were still out there. That was confirmed three weeks later when Billy Bodenhofer Nov. 6. walked into Sav-Mor Drugs on a SaturAbout 1:30 p.m. that day, Trout walked into Shopko wearing large sunglasses, a day afternoon.

Tall and slender, dressed in a blue Old baseball hat and a dark-colored hoodie with Navy sweat shirt and olive pants, Bodenhofer the hood pulled over the hat. looked nervous and fumbled with something Trout approached pharmacist technician in his hands as he walked into the pharmacy Helen Tristan and handed her a note in green about 2:40 p.m. Oct. 25. Nelson noticed his ink that said “Robbery” at the top and “give nerves and kept as close an eye on him as the note back” at the bottom. In between was he could. a list of drugs he wanted.

“Hurry,” Trout told Tristan.

Bodenhofer spoke with pharmacist technician Ryan Quale, a student from Idaho She handed the note to pharmacist Diane State University, H owe l l , t h e n asking him if the secretly dialed Coke machine 911 and left an worked. He open line. A 911 changed a doloperator verilar, bought a fied the call came Coke from the from Shopko but machine and could hear only then asked Quale someone speakfor the pharmaing in the backcist. When Nelground, and only son approached, indistinctly.

Bodenhofer While Howell pulled down a collected the pills, mask and asked Tristan pretended for 100 morto help another customer, phone sulfate pills in one bottle.

Lacy Garrison.

At some point, he “When I pulled out a gun. wa l k e d i n , I didn’t see him,” About this same time, NelGarrison said in a Detective Rick VanVooren son’s wife arrived recent interview. at the pharmacy with a plate of Rice Krisp- “He was just standing there nonchalantly. I ies treats for Quale, the student pharmacist. didn’t notice him, he wasn’t making a scene.”

Bodenhofer motioned for her to stand by Instead of helping Garrison, Tristan Nelson and Quale, then made the two men handed her a note that said “call the police.” unplug the phone.

“I asked her, ‘Why?’” Garrison recalled.

Bodenhofer told the pharmacist he was “And she whispered, ‘We’re being robbed.’” stealing the drugs for a friend who was sick.

Garrison pulled out her cellphone and He also told the Nelsons and Quale that dialed 911. if they did what he said, he wouldn’t hurt “He was at the drop-off counter; I was them. He forced all three into a bathroom, at the pick-up counter,” Garrison said. “I walked further away while I was making apologizing at least three times.

Count to 50, come out, and I’ll be gone, the call, and he turned around and saw me.

Bodenhofer told them.

When he realized what I was doing, he fled.”

Police investigating the robbery later Trout left the note and fled without any learned that both Kurt’s Pharmacy and pills. Tristan followed him outside, where a Kmart pharmacy employees called police woman in the parking lot pointed to a green about a suspicious man in their stores earlier SUV heading toward the Perrine Bridge. that day, and the description matched the The woman later told police she saw three Sav-Mor robber. people in the SUV, including a woman in the Using a vehicle description from the sus- front passenger seat who opened a back door picious incident at Kurt’s Pharmacy, detec- for Trout. tives tracked down a man who said he bought Holcomb, Trout and Escobedo were now a van for Billy and Melanie Bodenhofer. Three desperate. They were strung out, and Shopko days after the robbery, Billy was arrested. was a bust. According to Escobedo and Trout, “I personally had two takes on it,” Holcomb suggested they rob a Walgreens.

“Either the guy — or the people — have now upped their ante to now they’re being more aggressive, more violent, displaying the handgun. Or, we have somebody completely different that sees a different way of doing it.”

Trout and Holcomb exchanged clothes, and 20 minutes later they pulled up to Walgreens on Washington Street and Pole Line Road.

Sixth robbery:Walgreens on Washington‌ Holcomb walked into Walgreens dressed in the same hoodie Trout had just worn at Shopko and walked straight to the pharmacy counter, where he handed pharmacist Michael Watson a note.

Just like the Sept. 29 robbery by the man in the yellow hoodie at the Walgreens across town, this robbery was quick and efficient and paid off handsomely. Holcomb walked out of the store with 718 methadone pills, telling employees to stay quiet until he left.

As media outlets broke the news of the latest robberies, the pharmacy calling tree shared the robber descriptions.

Within 20 minutes of the second crime, Officer David Weigt spotted a green Jeep Cherokee near Blue Lakes Boulevard and North College Road and pulled in behind it.

The Jeep started driving erratically as Weigt began tailing it. The driver made a sudden turn, seeming to escape. When Weight caught up, the Jeep switched lanes, made another sudden turn and accelerated. By the time Weigt made the same turn in pursuit, the Jeep was driving almost 40 mph in a 25 mph zone.

This was his chance. Weigt activated his emergency lights and stopped the Jeep in front of a house on Monroe Street.

But as Weigt cautiously approached the Jeep, Holcomb, Trout and Escobedo were across town, at Escobedo’s house on Sunburst Street, dividing the pills Holcomb had just stolen from Walgreens. The pills divvied up, Holcomb left to dispose of the pill bottles and the clothing they’d worn during the robberies.

The driver of the Jeep, it turned out, was simply in a hurry to get home.

At the police station, detectives VanVooren, Jonathan Wilson and Ben Mittelstadt concluded that afternoon’s pharmacy crimes were clearly related. But they still had no suspects.

For some officers at the station, this would turn into the longest shift of their lives.

Reporter Alex Riggins, once the victim of a robbery at knife point while in college, is fascinated by tales of armed robberies, bank heists, diamond thefts and other thievery. They’ve been his favorite topics to read about for years and have quickly become his favorite topics to write about.