Just Desserts
Sandy Jenkins was a quiet accountant at the Collin Street Bakery who felt overlooked and dreamed of living the good life. He found it (for a while) by embezzling nearly $17 million from the famed fruitcake maker.
Katy Vine joined the editorial department of Texas Monthly in 1997 and became a staff writer in 2002. As a general assignment reporter, she has written dozens of features on a range of topics, including rocket scientist Franklin Chang Díaz, hip-hop legend Bun B, barbecue pitmasters, cult leader Warren Jeffs, refugees in Amarillo, the moon landing, a three-person family circus, chess prodigies, a woman who kidnapped the Kilgore Rangerettes director and her daughter, an accountant who embezzled $17 million from a fruitcake company, and a con man who crashed cars, yachts, and planes for insurance money. Her stories have been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and Best Food Writing. Her feature story about a West Texas sting operation was the inspiration for the 2012 television series The Client List.
Sandy Jenkins was a quiet accountant at the Collin Street Bakery who felt overlooked and dreamed of living the good life. He found it (for a while) by embezzling nearly $17 million from the famed fruitcake maker.
By Katy Vine
What pushed an East Texas mother to kidnap at gunpoint the director of the famed college drill team and her nineteen-year-old daughter?
By Katy Vine
Over a decade, Theodore Robert Wright III destroyed cars, yachts, and planes. That was only the half of it.
By Katy Vine
John Mueller was the heir to one of the great Texas barbecue dynasties. Aaron Franklin was an unknown kid from College Station who worked his counter. John had it all and then threw it all away. Aaron came out of nowhere to create the state’s most coveted brisket. Then John
By Katy Vine
Brandon and Denise were not like other people. They were smarter, more introverted. They adored computers, playing games online at three in the morning with people in Finland. When they and other hard-core techies moved to Walden, a Houston apartment complex with the fastest residential Internet connection in the world,
By Katy Vine
The child custody battle between the State of Texas and a fundamentalist Mormon sect prompted many people to wonder how 437 kids could have been ripped away from their parents. When the criminal trials of a dozen sect members got under way this month, the question became, Was it really
By Katy Vine
When Warren Jeffs fired his attorneys and decided to represent himself in his sexual assault trial, many predicted, accurately, that he would fail miserably. Few realized just what a wild show he would put on.
By Katy Vine
How a mild-mannered database analyst from Dallas became the undisputed king of extreme competitive deep-frying in Texas—which is to say, the world.
By Katy Vine
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history as the first humans to set foot on the surface of the moon. Forty years later, the researchers, astronauts, engineers, scientists, and NASA officials who made the voyage possible remember the day the Eagle landed.
By Katy Vine
Meet the 22-year-old hooker who, with her fellow “massage therapists,” scandalized Odessa
By Katy Vine
Nearly everything my teenage son wanted to do during our beach vacation required a waiver.
By Katy Vine
Drive up State Park Road 100 long enough and the beach comes to meet you.
By Katy Vine
Call them the astronauts of the underground. The state’s cavers are a literal subculture, daring to go where no one has gone before.
By Katy Vine
Where to immerse yourself in the subculture.
By Katy Vine
Whatever you do, don’t forget the special snacks.
By Katy Vine
"Bookseller" was one of the Pulitzer winner's core identities, and at Booked Up, it showed.
By Katy Vine
Before sunrise, journalists and eager onlookers gathered at the gates of the Capitol grounds, awaiting the start of the attorney general's historic impeachment trial.
By Katy Vine
San Antonio photographer Al Rendón brings fifty years of rock and street photography to the Witte Museum.
By Katy Vine
Stanley McMahan says assembling watches is “what God put me on Earth to do.”
As told to Katy Vine
. . . When it comes to producing renewable energy, winning golf tournaments, banning books, and closing rural hospitals. Why is Texas so darn great . . . and so darn awful?
Can medical science truly explain the mystical, mysterious experience triggered by a simple malfunction in my inner ear?
By Katy Vine
In Fort Worth, true crime–obsessed citizen detectives have banded together to dig up new evidence for their pet cases.
By Katy Vine
With cloud-shaped pipes and rose-infused pre-rolls, these female small-business owners are catering to femme stoners.
By Katy Vine
Friedrich Ernst’s missive portrayed Texas as a paradise. His wife and daughter begged to differ.
By Katy Vine
Come to this East Texas city for the hot-air balloons. Stay for the gluten-free beers, natural wines, and impressive array of cuisines.
By Katy Vine
Cat Cardenas’s 2021 essay made a poignant case about the mistakes Selena never got to make—and how they would have deepened our love for her.
By Katy Vine
A longtime reporter makes some big decisions about what to listen to when you’re heading to Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, or the Big Bend region.
By Katy Vine
The writer of an oddball 2016 crime story recalls emailing with an accountant who skimmed $17 million from Corsicana’s Collin Street Bakery.
By Katy Vine
In reporting how Candy Montgomery came to murder her lover’s wife, the authors recall trying to capture a “time and place in Texas history.”
By Katy Vine and Sierra Juarez
For many legendary musicians, there was no finer guitar than one made by San Antonio’s Guadalupe Acosta and his sons. Their descendants are restoring their legacy.
By Katy Vine
At Blanco’s annual gathering, ethnicities, genres, and styles mix and clash, but are united by a common instrument.
By Katy Vine
Pamela Colloff reflects on her 2010 story about the shoddy police work and prosecutorial misconduct that put an innocent man on death row.
By Katy Vine
Austin attorney Jamie Balagia, a.k.a. “the Dude,” thought that he’d finally hit the big time. Then everything fell apart.
By Katy Vine
Celebrities, influencers, and high-end shoppers are among the throngs that descend upon the tiny town’s biannual antiques fair, which has flourished—even during a pandemic.
By Katy Vine
The actor and writer’s one-man off-Broadway show, ‘Everything’s Fine,’ is about a series of bizarre events involving one of his junior high teachers.
By Katy Vine
He’s made critics gush with his art-house dramas and howl with his stoner comedies. But for the director of ‘Halloween Ends,’ it’s all about experimentation.
By Katy Vine
Mary Beth Rogers, who served as Ann Richards’s campaign manager and chief of staff, reflects on Texas politics in ‘Hope and Hard Truth.’
By Katy Vine
In the new Netflix series ‘Mo,’ created by Houston comedian Mo Amer, Bun B is a priest and Paul Wall is a security guard. But it’s not all laughs.
By Katy Vine
Kimberly Garza’s coastal debut, ‘The Last Karankawas,’ draws on her childhood memories of one of the city’s lesser-known ethnic enclaves.
By Katy Vine
After a lifetime away from his hometown of Waco, the legendary director and playwright returns to the Houston Grand Opera with ‘Turandot.’
By Katy Vine
If a husband and wife can quarantine together, they can get manicures together.
By Katy Vine
At the charming Hotel Ritual in small-town Jacksonville, you can tap into any frequency you wish.
By Katy Vine
The Alamo City legend broke up Girl in a Coma and decamped to L.A. She’s back with a new solo album, a recording studio, and some hard-earned wisdom.
By Katy Vine
He was the magazine’s first big hire and—over the next few decades—delivered some of its most memorable stories.
By Katy Vine
What pushed an East Texas mother to kidnap at gunpoint the director of the famed college drill team and her nineteen-year-old daughter?
By Katy Vine
Moriba Jah, a self-proclaimed “space environmentalist,” has joined a new effort to map the millions of bits of discarded debris orbiting the Earth.
By Katy Vine
On Kalahari’s thirty waterslides and lazy river, my kids and I took our first plunge into some kind of normalcy since the pandemic started.
By Katy Vine
University of Texas at San Antonio professor Marco Cervantes mixes history, activism, and hip-hop on his latest album.
By Katy Vine
UT’s Caitlin Casey will use the Webb Telescope to peer nearly 14 billion years back in time.
By Katy Vine
For almost eighty years, the name “Fletcher’s” has drawn state fair visitors. After a dramatic feud—and a pandemic—the family’s banner will fly again.
By Katy Vine
One lucky night of dancing with the masters unlocked a new appreciation of the craft.
By Katy Vine
As clinics across the state offer ketamine therapy for depression, a bill would fund further studies on MDMA use and psilocybin for PTSD treatment of vets.
By Katy Vine
Former Texas Monthly editor in chief Greg Curtis’s new book explores the years he spent rediscovering Paris after the death of his wife.
By Katy Vine
The mother-son team are behind some of the city's most colorful murals.
By Katy Vine
When the power went out and the water stopped running, Trae tha Truth and DJ Mr. Rogers were there to pick up the slack.
By Katy Vine
The New York–born singer-songwriter got to Texas as soon as he could—and spent the next five decades changing the lives of seemingly everyone he met.
The filmmaker discusses the winding path, from Texas to Singapore to Japan and back, that led to Amazon commissioning his first feature.
By Katy Vine
Mason, one of the most sought-after young composers in the country, has a new work set to premiere in November.
By Katy Vine
For nearly a quarter century, this bohemian venue and ”social sculpture” has been a gathering place for poets, performance artists, and even a rooster or two.
By Katy Vine
Over a decade, Theodore Robert Wright III destroyed cars, yachts, and planes. That was only the half of it.
By Katy Vine