Aspen Sojourner on Dateline NBC!
The entire Aspen Sojourner staff tuned into Dateline NBC last night. In part, it was for the subject matter. The investigative news program devoted an hour to the murder of Arizona businessman Gary Triano. As anyone who’s read the Aspen papers knows, Aspenite—and Triano’s former wife—Pamela Phillips has had an arrest warrant issued for her alleged involvement in the crime. But the bigger reason we were sofa-bound from 9 to 10 p.m. was that Aspen Sojourner editor in chief Jay Cowan made a 30 second appearance on the program.
This past winter, a Dateline producer was in Aspen doing research on Phillips. He reached out to us because Phillips had appeared in our magazine twice. The first time, in the Midsummer 2006 edition of Mountain Homestyle, we didn’t write about Phillips, but we photographed the deck of her house for a story. That photo—with a relaxed, smiling, warrant-free Phillips sipping a cocktail with friends on her deck—appeared in last night’s Dateline. “Phillips caught the eye of Aspen Sojourner magazine…” the narrator intoned as the camera zoomed in and out on the page. The truth is, we had no idea who she was at the time. We just needed a sweet deck for a photo shoot, and hers was suggested to us by the architect who designed it.
Phillips did catch our eye shortly after she caught those of the Feds. A search of her home was front-page news. FBI agents took computers and other evidence that might implicate her in Triano's murder. Not too long thereafter, she skipped town.
She eventually made it into the Aspen Sojourner again, though not for an unintended cooincidence like before. Jay Cowan included her in the second installment of our now three-part (soon to be four) Scandal Aspen series. Phillips was in the “Black Widows” section—so named for women who’ve offed (or tried to off) their husbands.
Last night, the editors used less than a minute (see it at the 47-second mark here) of a much longer interview they did with Jay. Sitting in the Aspen Sojourner offices, he talks about Phillip's tenure in town and speculated as to how her recent arrival to wealth might have whetted her appetite for more. (You can see outakes that were not included in the program, including one of Jay talking about the car-bomb murder of Steven Grabow, here.)
The program ended with footage of Phillips living the good life in Switzerland, where she’s attempting to avoid extradition. Just another strange Aspen tale as yet unfinished….
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