January 2012
Features
It was a year of avaricious Astros fans, brainless bank robbers, competence-free comptrollers, discourteous doctors, enraged exes, frisky Frisco-ites, greedy gram-toting grandmothers, hotheaded hand surgeons, ill-informed idiots, jammed-full Jaguars, knife-krazy Kimbroughs, lambasted Lufkinites, mean-spirited magazine articles, nervy narcotics users, obtuse O’Neals, profane pilots, quazy Quaids, romantically rejected receivers, surveilling Scientologists, tumescent team mascots, unprivate urinators, value-subtracted vouchers, wind-challenged windows, x-foliated x-hibitionists, yobbish YouTubers, and zealous Zanes.
Before cameras were allowed in courtrooms, artist Gary Myrick and his assortment of colored pencils provided Texas television audiences with a vivid look at the state’s high-profile legal proceedings against figures like T. Cullen Davis, Henry Lee Lucas, and Charles Harrelson.
On October 3, 2006, a four-year-old boy named Andrew Burd died in a Corpus Christi hospital. The cause of death was determined to be salt poisoning, an extremely unusual occurrence. Even more shocking was what happened next: his foster mother, Hannah Overton, was found guilty of killing him. But could she really have done what the prosecutors say?
Against all odds, Phil Collins has turned himself into a world-class Alamo buff who will happily talk your ear off about Santa Anna and Davy Crockett. Can you feel it coming in the Bexar tonight?
Columns
Sure, Texas’s criminal justice system is tough. But as Fort Worth inmate Richard LaFuente could tell you, the federal criminal system is even tougher.
Watching the Super Bowl on the sly, meeting the Hill Country neighbors, sharing a bed with man and dog, and smoking grapevine.
Conducting the country’s first successful heart transplant and the world’s first artificial heart transplant made Denton Cooley a household name—and turned one of his closest colleagues against him.
East Texas deer breeder Billy Powell flouted the laws against importing live whitetails, emailing photos of his illegally obtained animals to prospective customers. Then Texas Parks and Wildlife came calling.
Reporter
The oil-fueled boomtown may be running out of water, but there’s still plenty of shopping and culture to be found.
The lyricist and lead singer for the Hold Steady on recording his first solo album in Austin, working with producer Mike McCarthy, and writing a song a day.
Cyberpunk pioneer Bruce Sterling speculates that the worst is yet to come.
Chris Kyle was shot to death Saturday at a gun range near Glen Rose. In an interview from last year, he opened up about why he wanted to be a Navy SEAL.
