Quick Links

News

True Crime|
March 31, 2010

The Lost Girls

Every year thousands of women are smuggled into the United States and forced to work as prostitutes. Many of them end up in Houston, in massage parlors and spas. Most of them will have a hard time ever getting out.

By

Susan Wright, the blue-eyed butcher of Houston.
True Crime|
February 1, 2010

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?

By

True Crime|
March 1, 2008

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.

By

True Crime|
December 1, 2006

“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.

By

True Crime|
February 1, 2004

Family Man

To his suburban Dallas neighbors, Todd Becker was a doting husband and devoted father. They had no clue that he led a secret, lucrative life as a safecracker.

By

True Crime|
December 1, 2000

Child of a Lesser God

It was a modern-day horror story: a little girl hidden away in rat-infested squalor for most of her life. When the authorities took her away from her mother and grandmother, the nine-year-old had never been to school or played outside.

By

True Crime|
June 30, 2000

Capital Murder

In a year-long spree that began in late 1884, Texas’ first serial killer butchered seven women and one man in Austin. More than a century later questions about his identity and his motive remain unanswered.

By

True Crime|
July 31, 1999

Evil

How serial killer Rafael Resendez-Ramirez struck fear in the hearts of the men and women of Weimar, a tiny Texas town that will never be the same.

By

True Crime|
January 1, 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.

By

True Crime|
January 1, 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.

By

Being Texan|
August 31, 1997

The Texas Twenty

They worked hard, overcame obstacles, bucked conventional wisdom, and touched our lives. Meet the most impressive, intriguing, and influential Texans of 1997.

By

News & Politics|
January 1, 1997

Down on the Drag

Panhandling, digging through dumpsters for food, roaming the streets near the University of Texas campus: This is the life of Austin’s “gutter punks,” homeless kids with little money and even less hope.

By

The Stand Up Desk|
December 1, 1996

Running With the Big Dogs

From Fred Gipson’s fictional Old Yeller to A&M mascot Reveille and Lyndon Johnson’s beleaguered beagles, dogs have always reigned as Texans’ pets of choice. The long line of distinguished dog lovers includes John Graves of Glen Rose, Texas’ writer emeritus, and acclaimed Beaumont photographer Keith Carter, who joined forces

By

Being Texan|
August 31, 1996

The Texas Twenty

They worked hard, overcame obstacles, bucked conventional wisdom, and touched our lives. Meet the most impressive, intriguing, and influential Texans of 1996.

By

The Stand Up Desk|
May 31, 1996

Swartz and All

We didn’t know it at the time, but there was something karmically appropriate about asking senior editor Mimi Swartz to write about riding around the state with Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Victor Morales in his dented white pickup truck (see “Truckin’,”). At first, it seemed to make sense

By

News & Politics|
May 31, 1996

Around the State

THE MAIN EVENTShtick Shift These days, stand-up stalwarts like Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres get rich off genial, self-deprecating, politically correct routines, but comedy has not always been so pretty. For half a century or so, in cheesy lounges and joke-filled rooms, Vegas and the Borscht Belt have buckled under

By

News & Politics|
January 1, 1996

Good-bye to a Friend

He braved dangerous criminals, stalked wild wolves, waded into floodwaters, and chased a hurricane down the Texas coast into Mexico, but in a cruel turn of fate he was felled by a tiny insect. Photographer Doug Milner died November 13 after suffering an allergic reaction to a wasp sting at

By

True Crime|
December 1, 1995

Carrillo’s Crossing

In the billion-dollar business of drug trafficking, Amado Carrillo Fuentes is king. He's the elusive ringleader of a smuggling operation that police are powerless to stop.

By

The Stand Up Desk|
September 30, 1995

Time for a Change

Texas Monthly sports a brand-new look this month. The thorough resesign includes many reader-friendly changes, which were overseen by deputy editor Evan Smith, art director D. J. Stout, and associate art director Nancy McMillen. Around the State, for example was reorganized by city instead of subject, and State Fare

By

Being Texan|
August 31, 1995

The Texas Twenty

In the past twelve months they worked hard, overcame obstacles, bucked conventional wisdom, touched our lives, and—above all—demonstrated the conviction, character, and individuality that defines our state today. Presenting our second annual list of the year’s most interesting and influential Texans.

By

News & Politics|
December 1, 1991

A Round Per Second

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any pumpkins; they would have shown vividly the violence these guns could do. But we didn’t let that slight disappointment stop us. At a remote rifle range, we blasted away. Or, to be precise, I blasted away, as my two friends, a law enforcement officer and

By

News & Politics|
March 1, 1991

Into the Storm

In normal times, Fort Hood teems with troops training in tanks and helicopters. But in their absence, the huge base is left with a scattering of soldiers and a uneasy sense of peace.

By

Energy|
October 1, 1990

Power Switch

Are customers of the Comanche Peak nuclear plant better off with safety advocate Juanita Ellis on the inside or the outside?

By

True Crime|
August 31, 1988

A Legacy of Evil

In the town George Parr once dominated, a nineteen-year-old mother was gang-raped by her neighbors. In the aftermath of the crime, the old horrors of San Diego have surfaced anew.

By

Magazine Latest