Charlie Brooks’ Last Words
Charlie Brooks was the first man to die by lethal injection, but everyone wondered whether he or his partner was the real murderer. In his last days, Brooks answered that, and other questions.
Dick J. Reavis was a freelancer for Texas Monthly from 1977 to 1981 and a staff writer from 1981 to 1990. He has written about undocumented immigrants, guerrillas, convicts, Mexican coal miners, a Mexican banker, security guards, and the Bandidos Motorcycle Club (which he also rode with) for publications as diverse as Soldier of Fortune and the Wall Street Journal. While working for Texas Monthly, he took jobs as a guard at a mental hospital, a security guard at six different companies, and a carnival worker so he could write about his experiences. In 1987, he drove every highway mile on the official map of Texas to write about the state for TM.
Reavis has written six books, including The Ashes of Waco, an investigation into the 1993 Waco siege, and has translated two books from Spanish. An anthology of his work, Texas Reporter, Texas Radical, was published in June 2022. Before retiring in 2014, he was a professor in the English department at North Carolina State University. He lives in Dallas.
Charlie Brooks was the first man to die by lethal injection, but everyone wondered whether he or his partner was the real murderer. In his last days, Brooks answered that, and other questions.
By Dick Reavis
Every year communities scattered across Texas hold wet-dry elections. Each one pits the forces of fundamentalism against the forces of realism. This is the story of one such election.
By Dick Reavis
Anybody can get a job as a security guard. Anybody.
By Dick Reavis
On the surface, Mexico’s presidential election looks a lot like ours—rallies, placards, speeches—but the outcome there is never in doubt.
By Dick Reavis
People still think of cotton as a Dixieland crop, but the heart of the nation’s production is on the dry, flat, and windswept High Plains of Texas.
By Dick Reavis
Supplicants in the Valley worship at the shrine of faith healer Don Pedrito Jaramillo, more powerful in death than he was in life.
By Dick Reavis
A carny’s life is an endless ramble from one small town to the next—and that’s why he likes it.
By Dick Reavis
In her darkest, final hours, a young mother turns to a new kind of medical care for help.
By Dick Reavis
When black militant Lee Otis Johnson got out of prison his old friends welcomed him with open arms. Later, some of them wished they hadn’t.
By Dick Reavis
Nuevo Laredo’s Boys’ Town, where lost innocence meets failed dreams.
By Dick Reavis
You learn one clear and not so very grim lesson by looking death in the face.
By Dick Reavis
You can always spot a smoker. He fiddles with matches, his shirt pocket bulges in a tiny rectangle, and fumes emerge from his mouth and nose. But what should we do about him?
By Dick Reavis
Someone was gunning down members of the state’s toughest motorcycle gang one at a time. Doe hoped her man wouldn’t be next.
By Dick Reavis
Can a Texas revolutionary find happiness exiled in Europe? Not when his revolution is in Mexico.
By Dick Reavis
That’s exactly what the Mexican government tries to do when journalists get out of hand.
By Dick Reavis
A few years ago guards ran the Rusk State Hospital for the criminally insane. Now sociopathic criminals rule the wards.
By Dick Reavis
Second-generation refinery workers don’t believe in politicians or corporations and some of them don’t believe in unions. The question is, do they believe in strikes?
By Dick Reavis
Hey, buddy, can you spare a dime?
By Dick Reavis
More than once San Antonio has been the crucible for a Mexican revolution. A band of guerrillas in Oaxaca believes it could happen again.
By Dick Reavis