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.
When a UFO streaks across our skies— c’mon, the truth is out there!—Ken Cherry gets to work.
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.
David Hanson on robot love.
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.
When the rough-and-tumble bikers known as the Bandidos gathered in San Antonio for the funeral of one of their beloved members, they swore a lot, drank a lot, defended themselves against the police and the public’s misperceptions, and—amazingly—let a reporter observe the whole fascinating scene.
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.
Andrea Yates does battle with her demons. Again.
As Helen Wagner’s world turns.
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
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.
Homecoming in the town of Spur means football, the crowning of a queen, parades, pep rallies, barbecue, a bonfire, and so much more.
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.
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.
The Panhandle DA known statewide for his zeal in busting drug dealers and abusers turns out to have been an addict. Prosecutor, heal thyself.
How a woman who sold sex toys in Burleson became public enemy number one and survived the bad buzz.
The car crash that killed four teenage girls in Tatum last September is an East Texas version of a Greek tragedy, one that has forced the tiny town's residents to address some of life's most agonizing questions: When the worst things happenwhen the most heartbreaking events come into your life
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.
Three cheers for Tyler Hollandsworth, a stereotypical Dallas girl.
America's notoriously needy readers certainly doand for the robust health of this publishing genre, they have Dallas in general and Phil McGraw's agent in particular to thank.
Michael Morales' guilty plea doesn't answer the most interesting question about his attempted extortion of Tony Sanchez: Who else knew about his cockamamy plot, and when did they know it?
Good question, and everyone seems to have an answer: To be respected for her accomplishments as a U.S. senator. To help lead the GOP after its Election Day triumph. To be a mom, finally, in her late fifties. To come back home and run for governor—maybe. But, please, no psychobabble.
Why would a devoted wife deliberately run over her beloved husband three times? It’s quite simple, really. He was having an affair with a woman accused by her allegedly pill-popping ex-husband of carrying on a lesbian relationship with her best friend, whose ex-husband has been indicted for an illegal wiretapping
AS MUCH AS I LIKE to think of myself as a grand adventurer, an explorer of all things exotic, I have to admit that when it came time for my Mexican vacation, I headed straight for a beach resort. I’m not talking about a tiny hotel on a remote beach
Darlie Routier has been on death row for five years now, always insisting that she didn't kill her sons Devon and Damon. And as her lawyers prepare to head into court yet again, new information about her case raises the possibility that she may have been telling the truth all
Executive editor Skip Hollandsworth talks about Pat Green and this month's cover story, "With Envy."
Pat Green’s fans—and they are legion—love his songs about the joys of Luckenbach and Lone Star beer. His critics—also legion—think his lyrics are trite. But no matter how you feel about him, there’s no denying that he’s the hottest country music act in Texas. And that he has made the
The Dallas Police Department's Sheetrock Scandal.
The North Texas teenager went missing in the late eighties. For years, no one knew where she was, or even if she was still alive-no one, that is, except a mysterious young woman two thousand miles away.
Vanessa Leggett plots her own true-crime story.
Psst! Looking to have somebody murdered? You might want to call Gary Johnson, the number one hired killer in Houston. Then again you might not. You see he works for the cops.
On October 14, 1987, an eighteen-month-old toddler named Jessica McClure fell 22 feet into an abandoned Midland water well that was only eight inches in diameter. For the next three days, rescuers frantically dug a tunnel to reach her while the little girl sang nursery rhymes to herself, called
It was the great Houston murder mystery of the nineties. Who shot 46-year-old Doris Angleton, the beautiful, ebullient River Oaks mother of two young daughters and the wife of Robert Angleton, Houston’s top bookmaker? When Doris was found in her home in 1997—she had been shot thirteen times—their friends speculated
Once notorious, Candy Barr's now anonymousand happily so.
In 1990 the legendary Thoroughbred was put to sleep after his leg was broken—an accident, it seemed, until a tenacious prosecutor linked his death to a Houston bank scandal.
LeAnn Rimes was a marshmallow-cheeked thirteen-year-old when she made it big. Now, five years later, she is locked in bitter legal battles with both her estranged father and her Nashville record company, and her life and career are collapsing around her. Can America's country princess get back on track?
Executive editor Skip Hollandsworth tells the story behind this month's cover story about LeAnn Rimes.
How the Texas Seven will change the state's prisons.
A passel of Texans invaded the nation’s capital in January, and the town may never be the same. A report from the inaugral front.
Can a savvy Hollywood dealmaker also be as down-home and unassuming as an old shoe? He can if he's Austin's Bill Wittliff, an award-winning screenwriter, an accomplished photographer, a collector with a passion for the pastin short, the nicest Renaissance man you'll ever meet.
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.
Senior editor Skip Hollandsworth tells the story behind this month's cover story, "Can't Buy Me Love." How he got his sources to talk, what he did when they wouldn't, and other secrets of his reporting.
Take one of the nation's wealthiest men, the enigmatic, Egyptian-born Fayez Sarofim. Add his socialite first wife and her brassy successor. Stir in River Oaks mansions and greedy lawyers, boatloads of money and oceans of booze. Mix it all together and what do you get? A hell of a mess
Not just a pretty face.
Sixteen years after her Olympic triumph, Mary Lou Retton talks about her family, her career, and what she really thought of Bela Karolyi.
It's all in the gams.
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.
For years Dallas’ most prolific jewel thief robbed the mansions of socialites like Nancy Brinker and Annette Simmons. If not for his girlfriend’s crack use, he might have gotten away with it forever.
“When it comes to individual athletic superiority, few people in the world can touch long, lean, impossibly fast Carl Lewis, who came to Texas in 1979, qualified for the Olympics in 1980, and dominated his sport—the world of sports, actually—for the next sixteen years.”
Investigators in the coastal plain think so, and they’re doing what they can to tie the retired NASA engineer to the deaths of at least four young women there. But thus far the tangible evidence has eluded them. And, consequently, so has he.
