He was a ladies’ man who owned a tavern. He kept gators in a pool behind the place, into which he liked to toss small animals. He hired women to wait tables, and some of them disappeared. What happened? With Joe Ball, it was easy to believe the worst.
In 1996 the body of a cheerleader from a small town in Oklahoma was found on the Texas side of the Red River. She had been raped and shot. The brutal crime destroyed several families and the illusions of an isolated slice of the world.
His cache of unpublished interviews and unreleased recordings is unrivaled—but both collector and collection are showing signs of age. Who will save the legacy of the man who saved Texas music?
In 1994 the president of Grapeland High’s senior class committed a brutal, senseless murder. Now he’s on death row, waiting for the courts to decide his fate.
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.
Last September a human torso was found floating in Galveston Bay—a gruesome discovery that opened a window into the bizarre life of the accused murderer, New York multimillionaire Robert Durst.
Once upon a time I thought I wanted to be a bullfighter (and not the kind that wears sequined tights). A legendary cowboy named Leon Coffee and an animal named Pretty Boy changed my mind.
The life of Roky Erickson—one of the most influential Texas rock and rollers of all time—has been one calamity after another. His family and friends have taken care of him with the best of intentions, but you know what they say about the road to hell.
The Houston-based energy giant put the pursuit of profits ahead of all other corporate goals, which fostered a climate of workaholism and paranoia. And that was only part of the problem.
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.
For teenage girls in the Hill Country town of Llano, life can be short on glamour and excitement—except at the annual rodeo, when one of them gets a rhinestone tiara and a rare, thrilling moment of glory.
Brandon and Denise were not like other people. They were smarter, more introverted. They adored computers, playing games online at three in the morning with people in Finland. When they and other hard-core techies moved to Walden, a Houston apartment complex with the fastest residential Internet connection in the world,
The most famous bank-robbing lovers of all time weren't nearly as glamorous as Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Although the fragile, pretty Bonnie Parker had her good points, Clyde Barrow was a scrawny, two-timing psychopath. They were straight out of a country and western ballad. And when they died in
Nine years after the brutal murder of four teenage girls in a yogurt shop rocked the city of Austin, the police say they have finally caught the killers. But they have no evidence and no witnesses—only two confessions that the defendants say were coerced. Which is why, when the case
These days, a plane trip can entail more time in the terminal than in the air. But why get stressed when you can have a massage, taste Texas wines, go for a jog, check your e-mail—even eat gumbo while watching (other people’s) planes take off? A survivor’s guide to DFW,
In the Gulf Coast town of Santa Fe, high school football games had always kicked off with a prayer, but in June the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the practice violated the separation of church and state. Now the issuewhich has turned neighbor against neighbor and provoked some decidedly un-Christian
What they lack in cash they make up for in cachet: on the road with the Trail of Dead, Austin's coolest punk rockers of the moment, as they head east in search of fans, fame, and a free place to crash.
Buddy Holly. Waylon Jennings. Carolyn Hester. The Hancocks. The Flatlanders. An oral history of the state's most storied music scene.
For Tom Cherry, the precise place where loyalty to his dad ends and a larger obligation to society begins lies deep in the woods of East Texas, at the intersection of history and conscience, where the truth about a church bombing during the struggle for civil rights in the South
The richest man ever tried for murder has found the Lord, along with a new career peddling hand cream. Are you buying the latest incarnation of Cullen Davis?
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.
Amarillo is a city where conformity counts, so the death of a punk at the hands of a football player had more than a little symbolic significance there. So did the jury’s decision to keep the killer from going to jail.
When Fast Eddie Garcia was shot to death, San Antonio mourned the loss of not only a man but also a behind-the-scenes power broker at the center of the city’s good ol’ amigo network.
When you’re underpaid, inexperienced, and overloaded with files detailing allegations of child abuse, there is a limit to how well you can do your job. Eight months in the life of an investigative team in the Travis County office of Child Protective Services.
Out of uniform, in his own words, Texas icon Nolan Ryan on baseball, ranching, values, and his love for his native state.
Why Peter Bogdanovich filmed in black and white, who discovered Cybill Shepherd, which onetime soap opera diva read for the role of Jacy, and other secrets of the making of ‘The Last Picture Show.’ Plus: A few words from the late Ben Johnson.
Twenty years ago, he was inspired by the redneck rock of Steve Fromholz and Guy Clark. On his new album, he says thanks.
For the first time in its history, the world-famous King Ranch is being run by someone other than a descendant of its founder. Can the mythic institution survive a changing of the guard?
Since I started taking Viagra, I have had the time of my life. You can too—but there’s more to romance than a little blue pill.
He’s the front-runner even before he has officially entered the race, but sky-high expectations are the least of the obstacles George W. Bush faces in his quest for the White House.
In suburban Fort Worth the frail psyche of a football prodigy collided with the crazed ambition of his dad, who himself had been a high school football star way back when. The consequences were deadly.
For fifteen years Galveston knew Tim Kingsbury as a civic leader and do-gooder. Then the wife—and life—he deserted back in Ohio caught up with him in Texas.
He may soon compete for the super featherweight championship of the world, but for now Austin boxer Jesus Chavez is in the fight of his life—with federal immigration officials.
The Red Headed Stranger is about to be eligible for Medicare? Ain’t it funny how time slips away.
More than a year after his death, he’s still being remembered as the best Texas songwriter of his time. This month’s star-studded Austin City Limits tribute shows why.
With a major retrospective of his work at three Houston museums, Robert Rauschenberg is once again the talk of Texas. What’s he been up to? A portrait of the artist as an old man.
The verdict is in: Oprah loves Texas—and Texas loves Oprah. The queen of daytime talk swept into the Panhandle, turned the tide of public opinion, and had courtroom watchers asking, Where’s the beef?
After thieves stole his daughter’s horse, deputy U.S. marshal Parnell McNamara didn’t make a federal case out of it. Instead, he rounded up a group of old-style lawmen and lit out after them.
In sleepy Carthage a rich, haughty widow disappears, and nobody seems to notice. When she turns up dead, everybody seems to feel sympathy for the nice young man who killed her.
All over Texas, smart shoppers are bidding on everything from antiques to airplanes. Join them before the best buys are going, going, gone.
It’s unpalatable to cattle, an invader of grasslands, and a water hog. So why can’t I just get rid of it? Because it’s a vegetative Vietnam.
A year after Kris Kristofferson’s standout role in Lone Star, Hollywood is still marveling over his comeback. He is too. by Gary Cartwright
William Guess seemed to be an ordinary man: He had a wife and three children and owned his own business. So why did he become the most prolific bank robber in Texas history?
All she did was walk into the bar, sit down, and smile. But I knew right away why, even at age fifty, Farrah Fawcett is still an angel.
In February two stolen frescoes paid for and restored by Dominique de Menil will be unveiled in a new Eastern Orthodox chapel in Houston.
David Graham and Diane Zamora were intelligent, young, and in love. And they shared a secret: They had brutally murdered Adrianne Jones.
He shone in Lone Star; now he’s thrilling ’em in A Time to Kill. How talent and timing made native Texan Matthew McConaughey Hollywood’s hottest leading man.
No one ever suspected a thing until she asked her best friend if she could keep a terrible secret: the bizarre story of teenager Marie Robards, the devoted daughter who murdered her father.
Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker—and now Junior Brown? The former community college teacher is the latest outlaw to hijack Texas country music, and he may be the greatest.
When the double life of pioneering record producer Huey Meaux was exposed, it was time to face the music: How well did I really know the legend I once called my friend?
