
When Randall Adams was sentenced to death ten years ago, the Dallas community thought a cop killing had been put to rest. But it hasn’t.
Gary Cartwright received his B.A. in journalism from Texas Christian University. He has had a distinguished career as a newspaper reporter and as a freelance writer, contributing stories to such national publications as Harper’s, Life, and Esquire. He was a senior editor at Texas Monthly for 25 years until his retirement in 2010 at age 76. Cartwright was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 1986 in the category of reporting excellence. He has been the recipient of a Dobie-Paisano fellowship and has won the Texas Institute of Letters Stanley Walker Award for Journalism and the Carr P. Collins Award for nonfiction. He won the 1989 Press Club of Dallas Katie Award for Best Magazine News Story. He also won the 2005 Headliner Club of Austin award for best magazine story. Cartwright has written several books, including Blood Will Tell, Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter, Dirty Dealing, and Galveston: A History of the Island, published in 1991. He has co-written three movie scripts, J. W. Coop (Columbia, 1972); A Pair of Aces (CBS-TV, 1990), which he also co-produced; and Pancho, Billy and Esmerelda, which he co-produced for his own production company in 1994. In addition, he co-produced Another Pair of Aces for CBS. Blood Will Tell was filmed by CBS-TV as a four-hour miniseries in 1994. In 1998 his book, HeartWiseGuy, was published.
Jan 21, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
When Randall Adams was sentenced to death ten years ago, the Dallas community thought a cop killing had been put to rest. But it hasn’t.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
A blundered raid and a botched finale don’t change an essential fact about the Mount Carmel standoff: David Koresh is to blame.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
The first black man to hold boxing’s heavyweight title is finally getting the respect he deserves. Now all he’s owed is a presidential pardon.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
The world’s first hamburger was served in Athens, Texas, no matter what Mr. Cutlets says.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
Once, the State of Texas was going to put Kenneth McDuff to death as payment for his crimes. Instead, it set him free to murder again.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
The long, slow, quiet, thoughtful, weird, brilliant, often-interrupted, never-compromised career of John Graves, who died July 30, 2013.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
If you’re a half shell fanatic like me, you’ll be just as alarmed as I was to hear that oystermen in Galveston Bay—the source of some of the country’s most delicious mollusks —are still struggling to make it after Hurricane Ike.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
More than two decades after he arrived in Austin, Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson still reigns as the king of swing.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
The very spot where William Barrett Travis wrote his famous “victory or death” letter is a Ripley’s Haunted Adventures. And other ways gross commercialization has desecrated the Alamo’s sacred battleground site.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
The genteel matriarchs of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas are at war—with each other. And this time it's a no-quarter struggle for the group's heart and soul.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
Die-hard fans of America’s Team are debating that very question as we speak—and also wondering if the kid from Wisconsin with the buxom distraction can take them to the Super Bowl any faster than, say, Gary Hogeboom did.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
Bolstered by his favorite phrase, my son Mark faced life with grace, dignity, and good humor. I knew he’d face death the same way.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
The case against Fran’s Day Care in Austin raised the specter of Satanic conspiracy—just like hundreds of similar controversial child abuse cases across the country.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
When Fast Eddie Garcia was shot to death, San Antonio mourned the loss of not only a man but also a behind-the-scenes power broker at the center of the city’s good ol’ amigo network.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
More than anyone, former assistant to the U.S. attorney Bill Johnston was responsible for exposing the FBI’s lies about the final assault on the Branch Davidian compound. Why, then, did his own government go after him?
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
It took me half my life to figure out that most of what I thought I knew about J. Frank Dobie was wrong.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
The case for legalizing marijuana (and no, I haven’t been smoking something).
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
How about those Cowboys? Ever since the team's egotistical owner, Jerry Jones, fired coach Jimmy Johnson in a fit of pique, the 'Boys have never been on a slippery slope to perdition. But it's die-hard fans like me who are in hell.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
If you’re heading to New Orleans and you’ve got five days to spare, don’t fly or drive. Take a trip fit for a king—aboard the Delta Queen .
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
Ringside as two dogs—father and son—fight to the death.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
Blackie Sherrod probably hates the word "retired," but that's what he is nowand newspaper readers across Texas are the poorer for it.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
Sure, sure, the newspaper business is dying, and this is bad for freedom, accountability, and democracy itself. But worst of all is what’s happened to sportswriting.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
The Texas State Cemetery, home to the final resting places of the celebrated and the notorious, is a walk through time, revealing all that is great, courageous, tragic, pompous, and absurd about Texas.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
How I learned what to do with the one that didn’t get away.
Jan 20, 2013 — By Gary Cartwright
Decades after his family controlled Galveston’s liquor and gambling, 89-year-old Vic Maceo is clinging to his gangster past—and to his pistol.
Jan 1, 2011 — By Gary Cartwright
For longtime TCU fans, the Rose Bowl was a reminder of being snubbed in the school’s heyday. With the victory over Wisconsin, the Horned Frogs have shaken off the ghosts of the past—and taken their rightful place on the national stage.
Oct 31, 2009 — By Gary Cartwright
Bud Shrake’s letters to friends back in Texas during his years in New York show the late novelist in all his ribald, freewheeling glory. And never more alive.
Sep 30, 2009 — By Gary Cartwright
The tragic case of Lloyd and Kim Yarbrough raises an old question: Why doesn’t the decision to die belong to the person who is dying?
Mar 31, 2009 — By Gary Cartwright
Happy Texas Independence Day! Read five stories about our state's history, including this piece about the battlegrounds of Texas, which tell an incredible story of struggle, sorrow, triumph, and terror.
Mar 1, 2009 — By Gary Cartwright
Nobody told me an eyebrow plucking would hurt this much!
May 31, 2008 — By Gary Cartwright
Forty years ago, Pete Dominguez and his Mexican restaurants were the toast of Dallas. Now he’s alone, broke, and nearly forgotten.
Mar 31, 2008 — By Gary Cartwright
Roger Clemens may be worthy of the Congressional testimony Hall of Shame, but should we really be so freaked out about his supposed steroid use?
Sep 30, 2007 — By Gary Cartwright
What the double-breasted buffoons in today’s broadcast booths can learn from a legend of the game.
Aug 31, 2007 — By Gary Cartwright
How the owner of the first shopping center in Austin is destroying it—one banned candy bar at a time.
May 31, 2007 — By Gary Cartwright
A liberal newspaperman in George W. Bush’s backyard.
Mar 1, 2007 — By Gary Cartwright
It’s the best thing Jerry Jones could do for the Cowboys.
Feb 1, 2007 — By Gary Cartwright
You didn’t think the fight over Austin’s Las Manitas was about a restaurant, did you?
Dec 1, 2006 — By Gary Cartwright
José Cisneros, the legendary illustrator of the Spanish Southwest, is 96, almost blind, and nearly deaf. And, of course, he has no plans to put down his pen.
Nov 1, 2006 — By Gary Cartwright
That old mad dog Carlton Carl takes Martindale. Literally.
Aug 31, 2006 — By Gary Cartwright
Saying good-bye to my dear Phyllis was the hardest thing I’ve ever done—and losing her so suddenly didn’t make it any easier. But I know I’ll see her again someday.
Apr 30, 2006 — By Gary Cartwright
Having suffered through the ineptitudes of the Texas Rangers for nearly three and a half decades, having sat as solemn witness to their stumbling pretenses to be major league material, I assume that the hiring of a 28-year-old to run the team is yet another mistake. Jon Daniels, prove me wrong.
Apr 1, 2006 — By Gary Cartwright
Coronary artery disease is an old and much-hated enemy of mine. The beast attacked me without warning in 1988 as I strolled with my Airedales along Austin’s Shoal Creek hike-and-bike trail. Last November—sacre bleu!—it got me again.
Feb 1, 2006 — By Gary Cartwright
Why I love—and why so many of you hate—the People’s Republic of Austin.
Feb 1, 2006 — By Gary Cartwright and Bud Shrake
The reviews of the Vince Young show are in—and, of course, they’re all raves. Gary Cartwright and Bud Shrake argue that the Texas quarterback is the best ever but wonder if his throwing motion is an obstacle to NFL greatness. Plus: Mack vs. “Delbert.”
Dec 1, 2005 — By Gary Cartwright
A few of the streets near what used to be downtown have familiar names, but Arlington has mutated into a disconnected clump of shopping malls, cul-de-sacs, and gated communities, faceless, soulless neighborhoods that give urban sprawl a bad name.
Nov 1, 2005 — By Gary Cartwright
Three Austin boys + the hatred and intolerance of their Boys State experience = a lesson in today’s democracy.
Aug 31, 2005 — By Gary Cartwright
Why buying a beach house in Galveston may not be the best long-term investment.
Apr 30, 2005 — By Gary Cartwright and danjenkins
Duking it out, after more than fifty years of friendship, over Ann Coulter, Terri Schiavo, the appeal of golf, and, inevitably, the decline of the Cowboys.
Apr 30, 2005 — By Gary Cartwright
Once upon a time I thought it was cool to question God’s existence. Not anymore.
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