True Crime

True Crime |
February 1, 1997

Good Fella

Now that Joe Chagra is dead, it’s time to clear his name in the 1979 assassination of San Antonio federal judge John Wood.

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True Crime |
February 1, 1997

Brenham’s Paradise Lost

An idyllic small town confronts a controversial rape case involving four high school boys and a thirteen-year-old girl and discovers that nothing is certain—except that its children can’t escape the big-city culture of teenage sex.

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True Crime |
November 1, 1996

Thrill Killers

Now that the crack epidemic has leveled off and gang violence is down, urban Texas is being terrorized by a new type of criminal: the superpredator. He murders without motive, feels no remorse, and worst of all, seldom gets caught.

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True Crime |
September 30, 1996

Death and the Matrons

What could drive a suburban housewife to murder? The bizarre cases of Rowlett’s Darlie Routier and Fairview’s Candy Montgomery hint at the answer, and it may be closer to home than we’d like to think.

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True Crime |
June 30, 1996

Poisoning Daddy

No one ever suspected a thing until she asked her best friend if she could keep a terrible secret: the bizarre story of teenager Marie Robards, the devoted daughter who murdered her father.

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josh levine breaking the bank
True Crime |
January 1, 1995

Breaking the Bank

Gambling became a way of life for young Josh Levine. When he got in too deep, he came to believe that only a holdup could get him out.

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True Crime |
April 30, 1993

See No Evil

Dallas police say Charles Albright is the coldest, most depraved killer of women in the city’s history. To me, he seems like a perfect gentleman. Maybe too perfect.

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True Crime |
January 1, 1993

Scarred

Not long after she made her trek from Texas to New York, Marla Hanson saw her modeling career end at the hands of a razor-wielding thug. Six years later, the cuts on her face have healed, but the emotional wounds remain.

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True Crime |
November 1, 1992

The Almost Great Bank Robbery

It seemed like the perfect inside job: A respected cop conspires with his teller girlfriend to pull the biggest bank heist in San Antonio history. If they hadn’t been so careless, they might have gotten away with it.

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True Crime |
April 1, 1992

The Killer Next Door

For six years, my landlord and his wife were the perfect neighbors. Then he was accused of murdering her—and suddenly I didn’t know what to believe.

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True Crime |
February 1, 1992

The Ranger Bandit

Steve Benifiel was an old-fashioned outlaw who practically owned the town of Ranger—until he was busted for running one of West Texas’s biggest drug rings.

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True Crime |
July 31, 1991

A Guard in Gangland

Never before had a correctional officer been tried for the murder of an inmate—and never before had such chilling details been revealed about how our prisons really work.

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Terri Hoffman taught that the line between life and death was meaningless. For some, the idea was fatal.
True Crime |
May 1, 1990

The Curse of the Black Lords

Terri Lee Hoffman was a New Age Aunt Bee whose gospel attracted many followers. But some of those believers ended up on a dark, twisted path that led to violent death—and the enrichment of their guru.

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True Crime |
August 31, 1989

“I Loved the Dapper Bandit”

She was a hooker. He was a race car driver. They fell in love. She moved in. He put on his three-piece suit and went to work. She was always on call. They fought. She moved out. Then she found out that his real job was bank jobs.

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True Crime |
May 31, 1989

The Work of The Devil

The disappearance of a University of Texas student in Matamoros led police to the discovery of a drug-dealing cult whose rituals were not only unholy but unthinkable.

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True Crime |
March 1, 1989

Forgery, Texas Style

As Texans’ pride of place rose with the price of oil, collectors scrambled for the few documents of the Texas Revolution. Suddenly there seemed to be plenty to go around. But no one thought to ask why.

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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.

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A conceptual photo illustration of a model stand-in for Reverend Walker Railey, with a shadow of a cross obscuring his face.
True Crime |
January 1, 1988

The Sins of Walker Railey

He had a wife and a girlfriend. His ambition was unchecked. He tried to commit suicide. But when I came face to face with the minister of my boyhood church, the sin we talked about was murder.

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Every One a Victim
True Crime |
November 1, 1987

Every One a Victim

The parents of a confessed killer went to jail rather than testify against their son. Now the murder conviction has been reversed, and the family of the deceased must endure renewed anguish.

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True Crime |
April 1, 1986

Swamp Gas

When Jimmy Lee, an unrepentant troublemaker, felt he had taken one insult too many from the powerful Fredeman family, he called in the law. The results of that action have exposed decades of larceny and corruption in Port Arthur and threaten a Gulf Coast empire.

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True Crime |
August 31, 1985

The Final Gun

In a small East Texas town a black principal and a white coach loved the same woman. First came the gossip. Next came the strange letters. And then there was a murder.

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Business |
August 31, 1983

The Big Con

From his early days in Big Spring, Eugene Anderson wasn’t what he seemed; neither was the mysterious element he later claimed turned water into fuel.

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Health |
July 31, 1983

The Death Shift

The three-to-eleven evening shift, Bexar County Hospital, San Antonio: nurse Genene Jones was on duty in the pediatric intensive care unit, and for months babies kept having mysterious—sometimes fatal—emergencies. Why?

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True Crime |
March 1, 1983

Blood of the Lamb

A high school teacher shot up the First Baptist Church in the East Texas steel town of Daingerfield, and the agony lasted longer than anyone could have imagined.

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