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Pamela Colloff

Pamela Colloff holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Brown University, and was raised in New York City. She has been a staff writer at Texas Monthly since 1997. In 2001, her article on school prayer was nominated for a National Magazine Award. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, and has been anthologized in the 2008 and 2007 editions of Best American Crime Reporting and the 2006 edition of Best American Sports Writing. She lives in Austin.

Features

Ring of Fire

On November 18, 1999, at 2:42 a.m., the most passionately observed collegiate tradition in Texas—if not the world—came crashing down. Nearly sixty people were on top of the Texas A&M Bonfire when the million-pound structure collapsed, killing twelve, wounding dozens more, and eventually leading to the suspension of the ninety-year-old ritual. Now, ten years later, on what would have been Bonfire’s centennial, the Aggies celebrate the history, relive the tragedy, and wrestle over what happens next. (November 2009)

Famous Texans on Their Favorite Burgers

(August 2009)

The 50 Greatest Hamburgers In Texas

On our first-ever quest for the state’s best burgers, we covered more than 12,000 miles, ate at more than 250 restaurants, and gained, collectively, more than 40 pounds. Our dauntless determination (and fearless fat intake) was rewarded with a list of 50 transcendent burgers—and you’ll never guess which one ended up on top. Check out our Best Burger section. (August 2009)

Romance on the River

(June 2009)

Flesh and Blood

The most shocking thing about the murder of the Caffey family in East Texas last year was not how gruesome or inexplicable the crime was. It was that it was masterminded by sixteen-year-old Erin Caffey, a pretty girl who worked at the Sonic, sang in her church, and loved her parents. (June 2009)

Sweet 15

For the longest time, quinceañeras were simple, down-home celebrations held in parish halls and backyards. Then along came the stretch Humvees, the carriages and thrones, the choreographed dance routines, the smoke machines, the climbing walls, and the dinners for four hundred bedazzled guests. One thing remains the same, though: It’s all about the girl. (March 2009)

The Regulars

(December 2008)

Out of Sight

For the 140 full-time, residential students lucky enough to be enrolled there, the Texas School for the Blind is “heaven,” “home,” and “the first place I had friends.” (August 2008)

BBQ08

Eighteen hungry reviewers. 14,773 miles driven/flown. 341 joints visited. Countless bites of brisket, sausage, chicken, pork, white bread, potato salad, and slaw—and vats of sauce—ingested. There are only fifty slots on our quinquennial list of the best places to eat barbecue in Texas. Only five of those got high honors. And only one (you’ll never guess which one in a million years) is the best of the best. (June 2008)

The Fire That Time

On April 19, 1993, the world watched as the Branch Davidian compound, outside Waco, burned to the ground after a 51-day standoff. Fifteen years later, witnesses and participants—from federal agents to loyal followers of David Koresh—remember what they saw during the deadliest law enforcement operation in U.S. history. (April 2008)

Badges of Dishonor

Two Border Patrol agents are sent to prison while the dope smuggler they pursued and wounded is granted immunity by federal prosecutors and goes free. A miscarriage of justice? Not so fast. (September 2007)

Faces of Forgiveness

An East Texas prison ministry is trying to heal crime victims and rehabilitate criminals by getting them to talk. (August 2007)

Law of The Land

Nearly two centuries after their forebears protected colonists from Indian raids, the Texas Rangers are alive and well and wrestling with the realities of the twenty-first century. In their own words, the iconic crime fighters explain how their world has changed—and what it takes to battle the latest generation of bad guys. (April 2007)

The Beating of Billy Ray Johnson

The short, slight, mentally disabled black man was found on the side of a road in Linden, huddled in a fetal position. He was bloody and unconscious—the victim of a violent crime. But another tragedy was how residents of the East Texas town reacted. (February 2007)

The Desert of the Dead

While politicians and bureaucrats endlessly debate the best ways to secure our borders, illegal immigrants are dying to get into America—literally. (November 2006)

96 Minutes

At 11:48 a.m. on August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman began firing his rifle from the top of the University of Texas Tower at anyone and everyone in his sights. At 1:24 p.m., he was gunned down himself. The lives of the people who witnessed the sniper’s spree firsthand would never be the same again. (August 2006)

“Beldades” Of the Ball

Every February, on the weekend of Presidents’ Day, the daughters of Laredo’s most prominent families are presented to society in dresses that cost $20,000 or more at a colonial pageant that is the party of the year. (April 2006)

The Protesters

The weekend after Thanksgiving, demonstrators gathered in Crawford and made their feelings about the war quite clear. (March 2006)

A Kiss Before Dying

Forty-five years after Betty Williams was shot to death by the handsome football player she had been secretly seeing, her murder haunts her Odessa high school—literally. (February 2006)

Flipping Out

The letter-sweater-wearing, pom-pom-shaking, pep-rally-leading girl next door has been a beloved Texas icon for generations. So why do so many people today— lawmakers and lawyers, preachers and feminists—think cheerleading is the root, root, root of all evil? (October 2005)

Unholy Act

No one in McAllen saw Irene Garza leave Sacred Heart that night in 1960. The next morning, her car was still parked down the street from the church. She never came home. (April 2005)

Sunk

How the Texans who organized the Swift Boat Vets capsized John Kerry’s presidential campaign. (January 2005)

Cutting Deep

A year after state legislators kicked tens of thousands of children off the taxpayer-funded health insurance rolls, our biggest public-policy problem has reached crisis proportions. And the bleeding shows no signs of letting up. (December 2004)

Reversal of Fortune

Eight years ago, 42 people in the West Texas town of Roby—7 percent of the population—pooled their money, bought lottery tickets, and won $46 million. And that's when their luck ran out. (September 2004)

Letters Home

Seventy-five Texans—sons and daughters, brothers and sisters—have died in Iraq since last March. Here are some of their final words. (July 2004)

Life and Meth

Around the Piney Woods, most people will tell you that they know someone who’s addicted to homemade speed. Drug recovery centers are overwhelmed; court dockets are backed up; jails are filled. There’s no end in sight. (June 2004)

Life During Wartime

Most of the 42,000 soldiers stationed at Fort Hood, one of the largest military installations in the world, are in Iraq or preparing to go. Meanwhile, the loved ones who are left behind wait—and hope they don't hear an unexpected knock at the door. (February 2004)

Jasper

The town's name will forever be synonymous with one of the worst hate crimes in American history. But the story doesn't end there. (December 2003)

Lip Shtick

There are countless theories about why Dallas women are so crazy about makeup, but there's something approaching a consensus about the place to buy it. Which is why, against all odds, I found myself at the NorthPark Center Neiman's. (September 2003)

Crosses to Bear

Every day the new politics of abortion play out at clinics like the one in Bryan-College Station, where emotions run high and Roe v. Wade is almost beside the point. (July 2003)

The Whistle-Blower

What has Sherron Watkins' life been like since she exposed the financial shenanigans of her colleagues at Enron? Well, she may be one of Time's "Persons of the Year," but she's not necessarily one of Houston's. (April 2003)

Queen for a Day

At this year's Miss Texas Teen USA pageant, girls from big cities and small towns stuffed their bras, slicked Vaseline across their teeth, and prayed that their thighs were toned enough. Anything for the crown. (February 2003)

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Once upon a time, the Central Texas town of Crawford was like Mayberry: Everyone knew everyone, no one talked politics, and the air was ripe with the aroma of hogs. Then the leader of the free world bought a little place west of the Middle Bosque River, and nothing was ever the same again. (November 2002)

Mexico City

(October 2002)

“The Trick Is Not to Act Like a Lawyer.”

So says Rusty Hardin, Houston’s defense attorney of the moment—the latest in a long line of courtroom heroes guilty of premeditated flamboyance and charisma in the first degree. (September 2002)

A Bend in the River

In 1996 the body of a cheerleader from a small town in Oklahoma was found on the Texas side of the Red River. She had been raped and shot. The brutal crime destroyed several families and the illusions of an isolated slice of the world. (July 2002)

Does Napoleon Beazley Deserve to Die?

In 1994 the president of Grapeland High's senior class committed a brutal, senseless murder. Now he's on death row, waiting for the courts to decide his fate. (April 2002)

Grand Royal

Director Wes Anderson's new movie, The Royal Tenenbaums, deals with death, despair, and other dark subjects. And—what do you know—it's hysterically funny. (January 2002)

Remember the Christian Alamo

Evangelist Lester Roloff drew a line in the dirt to keep the State of Texas from regulating his Rebekah Home for Girls. Years later, then-govenor George W. Bush handed Roloff's disciples a long-sought victory. But this Alamo had no heroes—only victims. (December 2001)

Bobby Frank Cherry

(September 2001)

Queen of the Rodeo

For teenage girls in the Hill Country town of Llano, life can be short on glamour and excitement—except at the annual rodeo, when one of them gets a rhinestone tiara and a rare, thrilling moment of glory. (August 2001)

The Battle for the Border

In Maverick County illegal immigrants are crossing in record numbers, creating a war zone. Mexicans have been shot and killed, houses robbed, cattle stolen. Some ranchers are fleeing. But others, like Dob Cunningham, have decided to stay and fight. (April 2001)

They Haven't Got a Prayer

In the Gulf Coast town of Santa Fe, high school football games had always kicked off with a prayer, but in June the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the practice violated the separation of church and state. Now the issue—which has turned neighbor against neighbor and provoked some decidedly un-Christian behavior— has grown from a local controversy into a national one. (November 2000)

Literature • John Phillip Santos

Getting personal. (September 2000)

Law • Bill Johnston

Waco white hat. (September 2000)

Suddenly Susan

Susan Dell, the wife of Michael and the owner of a pricey couture salon that bears her name, is the perfect symbol of the new, mega-monied Austin. So what if its thunderstruck natives don't know quite what to make of her? Meet the Capital City's designing woman. (August 2000)

Great Escapes

From a boutique hotel in hip South Austin to a bed-and-breakfast across the Mexican border, from fly fishing on the Llano River to bathing in the Chinati Hot Springs, 33 getaways the guidebooks don’t tell you about, courtesy of our intrepid staff of weekend warriors. (June 2000)

And You Will Know Them By the Trail of Debt

What they lack in cash they make up for in cachet: on the road with the Trail of Dead, Austin's coolest punk rockers of the moment, as they head east in search of fans, fame, and a free place to crash. (May 2000)

The Sins of the Father

For Tom Cherry, the precise place where loyalty to his dad ends and a larger obligation to society begins lies deep in the woods of East Texas, at the intersection of history and conscience, where the truth about a church bombing during the struggle for civil rights in the South may only now be coming to light. (April 2000)

The Outsiders

Amarillo is a city where conformity counts, so the death of a punk at the hands of a football player had more than a little symbolic significance there. So did the jury’s decision to keep the killer from going to jail. (November 1999)

Courage • Steven Gonzales

A soldier’s story (September 1999)

The Blood of the Tigua

Factions of the West Texas tribe are feuding, and while the problem is supposedly one of genealogy–who is and is not a member– you can bet that casino gambling has something to do with it too. (August 1999)

The Son Rises

Coming of age in Odessa and Midland. (June 1999)

Shops

Elegant antebellum furniture in Jefferson, Latin American folk art in Smithville: Where the buys are in two dozen communities. (March 1999)

The Getaway

There’s something romantic about a jailbreak, even when the escapee is a cold-blooded killer on death row. That’s why our feelings about Martin Gurule were more than a little complicated. (February 1999)

Teenage Wasteland

With its optimistically broad streets and oversized cantilevered homes, Plano is the suburban ideal taken to its extreme, and its exaggerated scale often gives rise to exaggerated problems. Heroin addiction is only the latest. (January 1999)

The Conspiracy Theories

JFK was killed by (a) the mob, (b) Castro, (c) the FBI, (d) the CIA, or (e) none of the above? Decide for yourself. (November 1998)

LITERATURE • Naomi Shihab Nye

Poetry in motion. (September 1998)

The New Kids—Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson

The show-biz establishment loves them almost as much as their parents do. (May 1998)

How the West Was Won Over

The verdict is in: Oprah loves Texas—and Texas loves Oprah. The queen of daytime talk swept into the Panhandle, turned the tide of public opinion, and had courtroom watchers asking, Where’s the beef? (March 1998)

A Few Bad Boys

The slashing of a cadet’s throat at the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen is only the latest incident of violence at a venerable institution under not-so-friendly fire. (January 1998)

Not-So-Loving County

So few people, yet so many feuds. (October 1997)

Columns | Miscellany

The Unusual Suspects

The arson of the Governor’s Mansion in June was as mystifying as it was heartbreaking. Could Austin anarchists have been to blame? (December 2008)

Ethan Hawke

Larry McMurtry writes about how if you’re forced to leave Texas before you’re ready, before the state lets you go, you always dream of it. (December 2005)

Pure Country

"I don't believe anything in this world could ever disturb or upset me enough to make me start drinking again." (April 2004)

No Fuss

"It's still easy to walk around New York unrecognized. I'm kind of nerdy and not fashionable, so people don't give me a second look." (April 2004)

Supreme Moment

Thirty years after Roe v. Wade, I'm still that lawyer. (February 2003)

Vanilla Ice

(September 2001)

Randall Dale Adams

Only a man who came within three days of being executed for a crime he didn’t commit could be as passionate an advocate for a death-penalty moratorium as former death row inmate Randall Dale Adams. (September 2001)

Lynch Mob

Like the coffee and pie in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, the Arlington-based fanzine Wrapped in Plastic is damn fine. (June 1999)

The Sighs of Texas

In the heady world of romance novels, our state’s writers—and readers—are passion players. (August 1998)

Never Say Die

Can Miller Quarles live forever? The 83-year-old Houstonian hopes so—and he’ll pay $100,000 to anyone who will help him. (December 1997)

Outlaw Blues

She subdues bail jumpers with a modem and her strong right arm: Meet Janis McCollom, one of Houston’s best bounty hunters. (November 1997)

Jailhouse Flock

What is ex–football star Bill Glass’s plan for reforming hardened prison inmates? God is in the details. (October 1997)

Cop-out

Why is it so hard for cities like Austin to hire a police chief? (October 1997)

Unmasked?

Is the Department of Public Safety racist? Lets look under the hoods. (March 2000)

Reporter

Being a Multimedia Journalist

The CNN contributor and syndicated columnist talks about the future of media. (August 2009)

Our Economy

Dallas Fed chair Richard Fisher on our lame economy. (December 2008)

Jana Faulk

Jana Faulk, long-haul truck driver. (August 2008)

East Austin

Where hip meets history. (August 2008)

Nan Hall Linke

Nan Hall Linke, astrologer. (February 2008)

Laurens Fish III

Funeral director. (October 2007)

Rain of Terror

Rain, rain, go away. (September 2007)

Southtown, San Antonio

The eclectic artiness of San Antonio’s Southtown. (June 2006)

Everything I Could Ever Tell You About Writing a Novel

A few novel ideas. (November 2005)

She’s Here. She’s Queer. She’s Fired.

When the girls’ basketball coach at the only high school in Bloomburg moved in with another woman, it cost her a job and at least a few friends. But the tumult over a lesbian relationship in this tiny East Texas town wasn’t the end of the story. (July 2005)

Get Out the Vo

The demographics of one legislative district in Houston have changed so dramatically that they allowed a novice Democrat to unseat an eleven-term Republican powerhouse. But the real story is what could happen elsewhere in the not-so-distant future. (June 2005)

Eternal Flame

What do you do if your university's administrators extinguish your Bonfire? If you're Aggies, you take the show on the road. (January 2004)

Drawl or Nothin'

Thanks to Dubya and a few fellers from Hollywood, the Texas accent is fixin' to be cool again. (June 2003)

Ethan Hawke

Ethan Hawke on his second career, as a novelist. (August 2002)

Napoleon's Last Stand

Pamela Colloff counts down Napoleon Beazley's final hours. (July 2002)

Relativity

Climbing a new branch of the family tree. (May 2002)

Looking for Bill

Pamela Colloff gets on the road in search of the Beat Generation's Texas connections. (October 2001)

Medal Round

Pamela Colloff tests an Aggie hero's medal. (May 2001)

Over A Barrel

In search of a boom, Midland gushes about tourism. (May 2001)

Capitol Letters

Pamela Colloff flags down Austin's hottest political scribe. (May 2001)

Bio Hazard

The read on James H. Hatfield, a Bush biographer with a past of his own. (December 1999)

Lawless

Hudspeth County’s spiteful standstill. (April 1999)

Go Ask Alice

Fifty years ago LBJ won—some say stole—a U.S. Senate runoff. What happened to the South Texas ballot box that saved his career? (November 1998)

Contrition

Inmates apologize to the families of their victims. (August 1998)

Whodunit?

The mysterious murder of a small-town mayor. (May 1998)

The Wrong Man

George W. Bush pardoned convicted rapist Kevin Byrd after DNA evidence proved he was the wrong man. How did he get sent to prison in the first place? (December 1997)

Web Exclusives

Warning Shot

Texas parents have the choice to opt their children out of school vaccination requirements based on “reasons of conscience.” But what about the other kids around them? (November 2009)

Unhealthy Living

Texas school districts will no longer be required to offer health classes—and that’s just sick. (July 2009)

Road to Perdition

Was the Army as much to blame for the Mahmudiyah killings as its perpetrators? (June 2009)

Gossip Girl

The Grande Dame of Dish is far from retired. (March 2009)

Entrapped

How a high-profile member of Austin′s radical progressive community became an FBI informant. (February 2009)

A Mother’s Words

Bonnie Haldeman, the mother of David Koresh, dies at 64. (February 2009)

Crossing the Line

The facts of this case are quite simple. Two Border Patrol agents shot at an unarmed man as he was running away from them. And then, they covered it up. (January 2009)

Auto Pilot

With the Big Three teetering on the brink, it’s worth noting that the Toyota plant in San Antonio is still motoring. Oh, what a feeling! (December 2008)

High Kicks at Halftime

(September 2006)

True Believers

Senior editor Pamela Colloff talks about "faith-based" terminology, the Rebekah Home for Girls, and corporal punishment. (December 2001)

Saddle Up

Senior editor Pamela Colloff, who trailed five young women as they vied for the title of rodeo queen, talks about small towns and big dreams. (August 2001)

On the Border

After spending a week at the busiest U.S. Border Patrol station in Texas, associate editor Pamela Colloff learned that there is more to an agent's job than helicopters and surveillance cameras. (April 2001)

Pray, Tell

Associate editor Pamela Colloff tells the story behind November's cover story, "They Haven't Got a Prayer." (November 2000)

Best of Austin: Get Out

From dog parks and swimming holes to picnic spots and close encounters with a llama, our favorite outdoor activities keep you busy year-round. (January 1000)

Close Encounters of the Lone Star Kind

(January 1000)