Love and Loss on the Great Plains
The day the fire came to the Franklin Ranch.
Skip Hollandsworth is a staff writer at Texas Monthly specializing in longform narratives. He grew up in Wichita Falls, attended TCU in Fort Worth, and after graduation worked as a reporter and columnist for newspapers in Dallas. He also worked as a television producer and documentary filmmaker.
In 1989, Hollandsworth joined Texas Monthly, where he has received several journalism awards, including a National Headliner Award, the national John Hancock Award for excellence in business and financial journalism, the City and Regional Magazine Association 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 comic crime movie Bernie, which Hollandsworth cowrote with director Richard Linklater, was released in May 2012. It’s based on Hollandsworth’s 1998 story “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas.” His book, The Midnight Assassin, a true-crime historical thriller, was published in April 2016 and became a New York Times best-seller.
The day the fire came to the Franklin Ranch.
A struggling community forges a life for itself against the odds.
Two years after a deadly Waco shoot-out, the local district attorney is trying to take down the Bandidos and Cossacks biker clubs. It won’t be easy.
He’s a billionaire. He says whatever is on his mind. He thinks he can run the country. No, it’s not Trump we’re talking about. Could Mark Cuban be our next president?
Edwin Debrow committed murder at age 12. Now 37, he remains behind bars. When should a child criminal be given a second chance?
On the heels of tragedy, community policing in Dallas remains as valuable as ever.
Texas may have inspired Larry McMurtry to become a writer, but there is no writer who has inspired an understanding of Texas quite like Larry McMurtry. At age eighty, our most iconic author still has work to do.
Two decades after killing Marjorie Nugent, Bernie Tiede was sentenced this spring for her murder—again. So what do we make of him now?
An exclusive excerpt from The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer reveals a forgotten time in Austin history, when a series of brutal, unsolved slayings terrified officials and left them wondering if a madman was on the loose.
The descendants of Richard and Henrietta King do hereby invite you into the King Ranch with these exclusive photographs of the one-hundred-year-old Main House.
The district attorney of Dallas County is making headlines for all the wrong reasons. What happened?
Behind the lens with photographer Laura Wilson.
He’s the best defensive player in the NFL but writes his own Christmas cards. He has thousands of fans who’d love to party, but he goes to bed at seven-thirty. He could be the league’s next MVP but enjoys buying his own groceries. Is Houston’s J. J. Watt for real?
Ah, NorthPark, how Dallas loves thee.
After the deadly shoot-out in Waco, what do the Bandidos want? To be left alone.
When I was a teenager growing up in Wichita Falls, which is regularly hailed as one of the hottest cities in the state (and sometimes the country), I spent my summers smelling like roadkill. The moment I stepped outside my house, sweat began sliding like syrup down my back.
By Texas Monthly and Skip Hollandsworth
Last summer, Theresa Roemer’s three-story closet made her the country’s most famous social climber. But she was only getting started.
Skip Hollandsworth drills into the surprising (and not so surprising) fortunes of Denton’s anti-fracking ballot measure.
Olivia Lord told Dallas police officers that her boyfriend put a gun to his head after a drunken argument. Detective Dwayne Thompson couldn’t see how the evidence—or motive—made any sense. How did Michael Burnside die on May 9, 2010?
University of Texas regent Wallace Hall has been accused of leading a witch hunt against UT-Austin president William Powers. But the Dallas investor insists he's doing his job. And he doesn't care what you think.
By Skip Hollandsworth and Texas Monthly
The 76-year-old Amarilloan gained international fame for funding the Cadillac Ranch art installation, which turns forty this weekend. But his legacy was tainted by sordid allegations of sexual abuse.
Scott Catt was a single dad who held up banks to make ends meet. As his greed intensified, he knew just whom to enlist as accomplices: his kids.
And he'll live in Richard Linklater's garage apartment.
How did Robert Jeffress turn Dallas’s once-declining First Baptist Church into a vibrant megachurch? Certainly not by pussyfooting around.
Robin Doan was ten years old when a stranger killed her entire family. Nearly ten years later, she refuses to let the past haunt her.
Bernie Tiede, the Carthage man whose story of shooting the town's richest widow inspired a movie, may be walking free next week.
Six years ago, the State of Georgia sent U.S. marshals to Murphey’s home in Frankston, Texas, to take her back to the prison she’d escaped from 33 years earlier. That didn’t work. But now the state has another plan.
The juiciest celebrity trial of the year concluded in December but not, alas, with a satisfactory answer to the most important question of all: Who was Farrah Fawcett’s true love?
For decades, Stanley Marsh 3 was one of the most celebrated eccentrics in Texas. Then one Houston attorney set out to prove that he had a dark and terrible secret.
Half a century ago, the women’s basketball team at Wayland Baptist College set an extraordinary record that may never be broken: the longest winning streak in sports history.
How the sex scandal consuming Amarillo art patron Stanley Marsh 3 also might bring down America's most famous roadside attraction.
By Skip Hollandsworth and Texas Monthly
In a city that loves its parties, there’s perhaps none so aesthetically significant as Two x Two for AIDS and Art, Dallas’s most cutting-edge fundraiser—and one hell of a good time.
By Skip Hollandsworth and Jason Sheeler
Michelle Gaiser, the mistress who is charged with collaborating with Stern on a murder-for-hire plot to kill his wife, has now been accused of taking a hit out on Stern.
. . . from teaching my fifteen-year-old daughter about her Texas roots. So when I realized I was failing to accomplish this most sacred of duties, I did what any well-meaning parent would do: loaded her (and her friends, of course) into the car and hit the road.
To Addison they come, tweens and teens with talent in abundance, so Linda Septien can teach them how to be the next big thing. Jessica Simpson is her most famous success story, but there are many others. And more in the making.
The latest Alamo chronicler offers a glimpse of his reference library.
Nearly fifteen years after Richard Linklater and I started talking about turning a Texas Monthly story into a major motion picture, it’s finally hitting the big screen, with a little help from Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, Shirley MacLaine—and a seventy-year-old retired hairdresser from Rusk named Kay Baby Epperson.
Police had all but given up looking into a pair of assaults against two prostitutes in the Houston neighborhood of Acres Homes. But when a third turned up dead, investigator Darcus Shorten embarked on a search that revealed a brutal reality.
Miranda Lambert has a lot to be happy about—she’s recently married, with a brand-new album and a string of hits that has made her the toast of Nashville. So why is she so twangry?
Who cares if TCU went to the Rose Bowl last season and shocked the world? If the extremely intense coach of the Horned Frogs is going to keep his thrilling roll going, he’s got to keep! these! kids! focused!
Have you heard the one about the Mormon polygamists who descended on a tiny West Texas town? It would be funny if it wasn't so serious. (Okay, it's pretty funny too.)
Why I have no sympathy for the Eldorado polygamists.
Dorothy Hilligiest's son David disappeared one day in 1971. She spent her days and nights searching for him, following leads, and eagerly awaiting his return. And then she found out about Dean Corll, one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history.
Researchers have discovered a mistaken identity and another possible victim.
Two luxury retailers: Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. One desirable market: Houston. The fight for the hearts and credit cards of couture clotheshorses like Lynn Wyatt and Carolyn Farb officially begins next month, but already the fur is flying.
Thanks to his wildly popular bluebonnet paintings, Dallas artist W.A. Slaughter is living on easel street.
The L.A. life of a girl from Burleson (or, You can take Kelly Clarkson out of Texas . . .).
How an East Texas attorney spawned the most massive products-liability case ever—one that has cost millions of dollars and involved thousands of plaintiffs and might never end.
Preston Hollow gets its Bush back.
Ty Murray is the last pure American cowboy, a throwback to the mythic West. And if you visit him on his Stephenville ranch, you’d better be ready to ride.