Witness for the Prosecution
The shocking testimony of Vanessa Bulls against Matt Baker.
Before joining the Texas Monthly staff, in 1989, executive editor Skip Hollandsworth worked as a reporter and columnist in Dallas and as a television producer and documentary filmmaker. During his tenure with the magazine, he has received several journalism awards, including a National Headliners Award, the national John Hancock Award for Excellence in Business and Financial Journalism, the City and Regional Magazine gold award for feature writing, and the Texas Institute of Letters O. Henry Award for magazine writing.
He has been a finalist four times for a National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2010 he won the National Magazine Award in feature writing for “Still Life,” his story about a young man who, after suffering a crippling football injury in high school, spent the next 33 years in his bedroom, unable to move. The 2011 movie Bernie, which Hollandsworth co-wrote with Richard Linklater, is based on his January 1998 story, “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas.”
His true crime history, The Midnight Assassin, about a series of murders that took place in Austin in 1885, is being published in April 2016 by Henry Holt and Co.
Articles by Skip Hollandsworth
Feature
The Valley of The Shadow Of Death
Did Kari Baker, despondent over her daughter’s passing, commit suicide? Or was she killed by her husband, Matt, a Baptist preacher in Waco and an alleged sexual predator? He says he didn’t do it, but her family insists otherwise—and they say they’ll keep after him until justice is done.
“You Don’t Want to Know What We Do After Dark”
The young, tattooed men who are members of the Southwest Cholos, La Primera, La Tercera Crips, Somos Pocos Pero Locos, Mara Salvatrucha, and other Houston gangs are vicious career criminals who regularly rob innocent people in some of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. They steal cars and break into businesses. They deal drugs on street corners. And they constantly wage war with one another.
O Sister, Where Art Thou?
History makes no mention of what was one of the most popular all-female country acts ever. Yet the story of the Goree Girls-inmates who banded together in the forties at Texas' sole penitentiary for women—is worth a listen.
Blue Notes
Goree prison unit inmate Hattie Ellis had a short-lived recording career, but her music made a lasting impression.
Bringing Down the Dogmen
The bust that nabbed Houston’s top dogfighters was the work of two gutsy undercover cops who knew that the only way to infiltrate this secret world was to become dogfighters themselves.
Fight Club
Without the cooperation of Texas law enforcement, the dogfighting subculture will continue to thrive.
Hi, Society!
How did a girl from Harlingen become Houston's hostess with the mostest? Sweetie, Becca Cason Thrash has always been the life of the party.
Girl Gone Mild
After spending her adolescence largely out of view (except for a few scrapes with restaurant and bar employees), presidential spawn Jenna Bush is emerging as a public person in her own right. But her return to private life can’t come soon enough.
The Woman On Top
So what if Sandra Brown’s novels have wildly implausible plot twists, banal endings, over-the- top characters, and other literary no-no’s. She’s published nearly 70 of them since 1981, and 55 have gone on to be best-sellers. We’re sure the sex scenes have nothing to do with it.
Still Life
A violent tackle in a high school football game paralyzed John McClamrock for life. His mother made sure it was a life worth living.
Feature
Honor Thy Father
In suburban Fort Worth the frail psyche of a football prodigy collided with the crazed ambition of his dad, who himself had been a high school football star way back when. The consequences were deadly.
Angel of Death
What was it, exactly, that caused Vickie Dawn Jackson, a sweet, soft-spoken nurse at Nocona General Hospital, to become one of the most prolific serial killers in Texas history?
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The Real Troy Aikman
His dreams. His fears. The truth about his love life. A candid chat with Texas’ most misunderstood sports hero.
Feature
The Unsinkable Lisa Blue
Her husband, Fred Baron, helped bankroll John Edwards's presidential campaign, only to die of cancer amid the most sordid political scandal in recent history. But before long, Dallas's newest rainmaker had emerged from the wreckage—with every hair in place.
The strange case of Jeffrey and Yvonne Stern gets stranger. Yvonne filed a lawsuit against her husband's ex-mistress, Michelle Gaiser, who is expected to testify that Jeffrey helped plot his wife's murder.
Playground Rules
The suicides of four Texas teens who were brutally bullied have prompted cries for new legislation. But one lawyer has a different plan: Sue the school districts.
Rich Man, Poor Man
The tragic culture clash that led to the murder of a governor’s son.
Angels and Devils
CBS’s 48 Hours fills in the final chapters of the notorious Matt Baker.
In Our Backyard
The faces—and voices—of eighteen Texans who are living the debate over illegal immigration.
On the Road—In Tents
Dad wanted us to remember our family camping getaways. After so many disasters, how could I forget?
193
That’s the number of times Harris County housewife Susan Wright stabbed her husband in a brutal 2003 murder that riveted the nation and landed her in prison for 25 years. But should the butcher of the burbs be freed?
Perversion of Justice
Cathy McBroom loved working as a case manager for Samuel Kent, Galveston’s brilliant, charismatic, all-powerful federal district judge. Then he started attacking her.
Letter From Refugio
Sleeping Booty
Has an out-of-work Los Angeles musician discovered a sunken Spanish treasure worth hundreds of millions of dollars in a lake near Refugio? Maybe!
Parental Paradise
Location: Lakeway Resort and Spa, outside Austin What You’ll Need: Bathing suit, trashy magazines Don’t get me wrong: My wife and I are happy to take the Beloved One (our daughter) around the state so she can see things. Still, there are times when our idea of…
X Marks the Spot
Texas is full of buried booty—or, to be a bit more accurate, full of stories about buried booty that no one has been able to find. Here are six of the supposedly greatest Texas treasures still out there. May the hunters strike gold.
The Lost Boys
Can a former member of a vicious Houston gang leave crime behind and build a new life for himself?
The Witches of Garland
How a mother and daughter hired a hit man to kill their husband and father, and why they might just get away with it.
Going Out In Style
A Houston funeral home where the dead do not go modestly into that good night.
She Got Gamed?
On January 13, the girls’ basketball team for the Covenant School of Dallas, an elite private Christian school in upscale North Dallas, demolished its opponents from the Dallas Academy, a lesser known East Dallas school that focuses on students who face a variety of learning problems.
The Last Pickens Show
When T. Boone Pickens launched his Pickens Plan last summer, crude oil was at $136 a barrel. Now, with crude at or below $40, does anyone care anymore about what Pickens has to say?
The Great Developer
Trammell Crow made millions based on what he called hunches—warehouses, atrium marts, huge hotels—and amazingly, most of his deals he did on a handshake.
The Fugitive
Friends and family knew Deborah Murphey as a mild-mannered nurse and a loving wife and mother. Then a U.S. marshal knocked on her door.
There Will Be Boone
Our most iconic oil and gas man, lately a water marauder and now a celebrated windcatter, has saved himself a couple of times in his eighty glorious years. Who’s to say he can’t save America?
The Killing Field
Before they clubbed two deer to death in their tiny West Texas town, the four high school football stars were treated like royalty. Afterward, when news of their exploits hit the Internet, they were celebrities of a very different sort.
Girl, Interrupted
Houston’s most famous teenage killer is trying to reclaim her life and move on.
Child’s Play
Summer vacation is right around the corner, but that doesn’t mean you should panic. We’ve rounded up 68 of our favorite things to do with your toddlers, teens, and every kid in between. Dance the hokey pokey. Rope a horse. Eat way too many hot dogs. Zip down a waterslide. And yes, feed the animals.
The Searcher
When a UFO streaks across our skies— c’mon, the truth is out there!—Ken Cherry gets to work.
Me and Tommy Lee
No Country for Old Men is Tommy Lee Jones’s new movie. I don’t think he’ll be granting me an interview anytime soon.
The Last Rustler
If he was asked what he did for a living, Roddy Dean Pippin would smile and say something about the cattle business. But he didn’t exactly buy and sell cows. He stole them. And right up until he was caught, he was as good as any such thief had ever been.
Casualty Of War
A real-life G.I. Joe, Master Sergeant James Coons hardly seemed like a candidate for post-traumatic stress disorder. But when his demons got the best of him, there was nothing anyone could do—not that anyone really tried.
Y’all Come Back
Homecoming in the town of Spur means football, the crowning of a queen, parades, pep rallies, barbecue, a bonfire, and so much more.
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The Last Ride of Cowboy Bob
The feds knew him as a prolific bank robber. But the bearded man who eluded them for so long was not who they imagined him to be. And absolutely no one expected the story to end the way it did.
Angie Barrett Does Not Use Butt Cream
She shares that curious fact with you for posterior’s— er, posterity’s sake. What you really need to know about the shopgirl turned shoplifter is that her rehabilitation is continuing apace atop Dallas’ social heap. And thanks to a new reality show about her life, there’s no end in sight.
I Inject, Your Honor
The Panhandle DA known statewide for his zeal in busting drug dealers and abusers turns out to have been an addict. Prosecutor, heal thyself.