15 Aug 15th-Aug 21st, 2024 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | I n the photo, Allister Adel faces a bathroom mirror, wrapped in a white towel with another twisted atop her head. Beads of water dot her shoulders. Just under her collarbone is a purplish- black bruise. Her left hand aims her cell phone camera; her right showcases another bruise. Taped to the lower right corner of the mirror, there’s a photo of Adel and her husband, David DeNitto, with their arms around their two young boys. The bathroom selfie is one of several photos, recordings and texts that Adel emailed to a close friend in 2019 and 2020. Most were sent in the months leading up to Adel’s October 2019 appointment to be Maricopa County Attorney. One email was sent months after she was sworn in. Labeled by Adel with names such as “more evidence collection” and “more pics for safekeeping,” the emails document red marks, bruises to her arms and allegedly abusive behavior by DeNitto. Two emails contain recordings of Adel and her husband arguing. In one video, sent in March 2019, Adel seems to accuse her husband of throwing something at her. “That’s why I have a wound now,” she says. The sound of an unseen boy crying fills the room. “Mom, just stop fighting,” he pleads. The woman who received the emails shared them with Phoenix New Times on the condition of anonymity and that some of their contents — including the pictures Adel took of her bruises — not be published. Adel sent them to her, the woman said, as part of Adel’s contingency plan. “Adel said she gave them to me in case something happened,” the friend told New Times. Something did happen, several people close to Adel believe. In April 2022, a little more than a month after resigning as county attorney under a cloud of scandal, Adel died of what a family spokesperson called “health complica- tions.” She was 45. Not long after, on Christmas Eve 2023, her widower snapped in a fit of anger, gunning down his girl- friend and her mother with an AR-15-style rifle before turning the gun on himself. That tragedy forced Adel’s friends and co-workers to reassess the aggressive behavior they sometimes witnessed from DeNitto and the bruises that Adel would explain away as a result of roughhousing with her boys or as a side effect of the medication she was taking. Over the past several months, multiple former employees of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office — including a member of Adel’s security team — have told New Times that they suspected DeNitto was mistreating Adel, though they said they lacked enough information to act at the time. Others expressed regret for not ques- tioning her more about warning signs that now loom large in hindsight. Adel came in as a Republican reformer, appointed as county attorney in 2019 to turn the page from her predecessor’s hard- line conservative policies. Less than three years later, she resigned, driven from office by a series of controversies and a rebellious staff who felt her high-profile health battles, with alcohol addiction and an eating disorder, were getting in the way of her job. If Adel suffered domestic abuse, it was a secret she kept hidden from most who knew her. Looking back, friends and colleagues wondered about a mysterious 2020 fall that days later landed Adel in the hospital with a brain bleed the same night she won election to a full term as county attorney. They reexamined other signs of alleged abuse she’d been able to explain away. The county’s ultimate advocate for victims may have been a victim herself. As much scrutiny as Adel faced in office, far more was happening behind the scenes. Only a select few caught a glimpse of her struggle. One of those was the friend to whom Adel documented evidence of her alleged abuse. “I would always ask her, ‘Are the boys safe? Are you safe?’” that friend told New Times. “Yes,” Adel would reply. But was she? Below the surface When Adel was sworn in as Maricopa County Attorney on Oct. 3, 2019, DeNitto was there to cheer her on. A photo taken shortly afterward shows them arm-in-arm and all smiles. They appeared to be a driven, successful power couple. Adel and DeNitto met while attending the University of Arizona in the late 1990s. She was a native of Dallas, where she attended the prestigious all-girls prep school that counts Swanee Hunt and Lisa Loeb among its alumnae. DeNitto was a Phoenix native and Brophy Preparatory Academy graduate. They married in 2002. Two years later, Adel graduated at the top of her class at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, joining the county attorney’s office as a fledgling prosecutor later that same year. Adel was “very driven, very charis- matic,” recalled Vince Goddard, who worked with Adel in the agency’s vehicular crimes bureau and later served as one of her division chiefs. In 2009, Adel gained notoriety for successfully prosecuting the drunk driver who killed Phoenix police officer Shane Figueroa in a car crash. “She did this video of Shane’s life for the sentencing that I told Allister she should send to every Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter,” said Goddard, who recently took a position as an assistant attorney general with the Texas Attorney General’s Office. “It was thrilling. I’ve never seen anything that good.” In 2011, Adel moved on to positions with the state transportation and child services departments before serving as the executive director of the Maricopa County Bar Association starting in 2016. Then County Attorney Bill Montgomery was appointed to the Arizona Supreme Court in 2019, and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors tapped Adel — over current County Attorney Rachel Mitchell and Mitchell’s GOP primary opponent, Gina Godbehere — to lead the office. By then, DeNitto had established himself as a prosperous wealth-manage- ment consultant for Wells Fargo. The couple were Phoenix Country Club members and owned a five-bedroom home in the affluent Rancho Solano >> p 16 BRUISES, FIGHTS AND A FALL The rumored domestic violence ordeal of Allister Adel. BY STEPHEN LEMONS Allister Adel served as Maricopa County Attorney from 2019 to 2022. (Photo courtesy Allister Adel’s reelection campaign; illustration by Emma Randall)
