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.
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.
Selling crime self-help devices has become a booming business. But do any of these gadgets really make us safer?
The story of Lenell Geter’s release from prison is unfinished without the tale of the conservative engineers who stuck their necks out to help a friend in trouble.
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.
Sometimes women fall in love with men behind bars, but once the bars disappear, the love itself may become the prison.
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?
Sometimes prison is harder for the people on the other side of the bars.
Probation gives criminals a chance to show society that they can stay straight. Probation officers like Jan Purdom believe the system works.
Used correctly, the polygraph can tell whether or not an accused criminal’s claim that he didn’t do it is true. Too bad the police can’t take that to court.
Hugh Roy Cullen found the oil and made one of Houston’s great fortunes; now his grandson is spending his inheritance like there is no tomorrow, and suing for more.
The life—promising beginning, overripe middle, bloody end—of Lee Chagra, the biggest drug lawyer in El Paso.
To unjam its prisons, Texas is moving convicted felons out of the big house and into a house on your block.
Trial by jury is a right most people charged with a crime never get to exercise. Instead, they accept a quicker, less risky alternative: the plea bargain.
Every year thousands of men and women assault, molest, or murder innocent victims - their own children.
John Catchings can sole crimes without witnesses, confessions, or clues. How? He’s a psychic.
Mandatory sentencing means every felon gets the same sentence for the same crime - and for the rest of us it means a lot of crimes that won’t happen.
Violence within the family tends not to be taken too seriously by the courts. But eventually that violence will burst loose to threaten us all.
Houston police said they shot Randy Webster because he pointed a gun at them. Randy’s father set out to prove they were lying.
Bob Doherty was a Texas ranger who believed in the myth of the Old West; Greg Ott was a college dope dealer, a child of the sixties. When they met, it destroyed both their lives.
There’s more at stake than money when two hustlers cue up.
If you ever go to Houston, you’d better walk right. You’d better not gamble, and you’d better not fight.
You won’t find Greta Garbo at these classic establishments, but some things that happen there are straight out of a movie.
Profile of a society murder and the woman who lived to tell about it.
The life and times of Candy Barr—the woman who made headlines by always being in the wrong place at the right time.
Two self-styled Texas soldiers of fortune engineered one of the more bizarre jailbreaks in history. Here’s how it happened.
The girl wanted love, the men wanted money, and when they all got together it was murder.
Sometimes the history books leave out the best part.
He left a police department, a mayor, and fifty bodies in his wake.
It’s easy to lock yourself out of your own home, but keeping someone else out is rather more difficult.
A San Antonio patrolman tells what it is like on the job.
Those who enforce our narcotics laws often use the stuff themselves.
Tired of running, he let himself be caught; then he busted right out again.
At least 90 are already dead as drug lords fight for routes into Texas.
High-speed chases, murder investigations, and window-peeping are all in a day's work.
Making the rounds with Texas’ most unlikely cop.
