In 1982, Dick J. Reavis chronicled the first government-led lethal injection in world history—and the last moments of Charlie Brooks's life.
The Huntsville penitentiary wants to tear down the abandoned warehouse where a massive bat colony spends half the year. Locals and conservationists have banded together to find an alternate solution.
Thanks to the pandemic-delayed 2020 season, the Bearkats and their star quarterback are 21–0 in 2021 and three games away from making history.
Since 1980, police and an army of amateur sleuths have puzzled over the East Texas cold case. New forensic DNA techniques have finally given a name to the teenage girl whose brutal murder has haunted so many for so long.
After surviving a devastating accident that left her disabled, Amber McDaniel felt like she could overcome anything. Then her ten-year-old son contracted a rare condition associated with COVID-19.
Sam Houston was his only Division I offer coming out of high school. Three years later, the outfielder from Cypress is headed to the Majors.
The fires are still burning at the restaurant, newly named Holy Smoke BBQ, next to New Zion Missionary Baptist Church.
The Bearkats are the state’s first FCS winner since the tournament began, and its first NCAA Division I champ since the University of Texas in 2005.
The Sam Houston Bearkats are hosting the defending FCS champions from North Dakota State in the national quarterfinals.
Maurice Chammah’s “Let the Lord Sort Them” is a searing history of the rise and fall of capital punishment.
A newcomer to East Texas thinks it’s fine to dispatch venomous snakes on sight.
Ernest Willis spent seventeen years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. And he has a few things to say about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for a strangely similar crime that many experts believe he didn’t commit either.
History makes no mention of what was one of the most popular all-female country acts ever. Yet the story of the Goree Girls—inmates who banded together in the forties at Texas’ sole penitentiary for women—is worth a listen.
Remember the Sherlock Holmes story in which the great detective solves a mysterious death case because a dog did not bark at a thief in the night? The lesson is that what doesn’t happen can be just as important as what does happen—in crime or in the Legislature. (Please, no
Music|
September 30, 1996
My parents were jazzers. In 1954 my father was appointed chairman of the music department at Sam Houston State Teachers College in Huntsville; my mother sang live on the radio. My first memory of any sound at all was of Miles Davis’ muted trumpet; I came out in my pajamas
The death of a thief in the Big Thicket has federal officials probing the conduct of local lawmen—and local lawmen complaining about a federal vendetta against the Texas prison system.
Young girls who want to win an Olympic gymnastics medal have to pay the price, and Bela Karolyi makes sure that they don’t get off cheap.
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.
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.
Ellis prison houses 2400 dangerous criminals, and it’s the safest place to live in Texas.
The rodeo where it really doesn’t pay to win.