McCurley was living a quiet life in Fort Worth when new DNA evidence linked him to the notorious crime. Police suspect it wasn’t his first murder—or his last.
The Fifth Circuit is led by four judges who got their start in Texas politics. For these activists, overturning the right to an abortion is only the beginning.
He’s pushing ninety and still saddling up at the Four Sixes Ranch. Just don’t call him the last cowboy.
Organized crime! Illicit booze! The beach! In this exclusive excerpt from her new novel ‘Last Dance on the Starlight Pier,’ Sarah Bird explores Galveston at the end of the twenties, a setting she calls “a gift to a novelist.”
After a quarter century in statewide office, Texas’s most popular politician remains an enigma—even to the folks who keep electing him. But the truth about the governor is hiding in plain sight.
At Elsik High School, students from Honduras, Senegal, Houston, and most places in between form the best boys soccer team you've never heard of.
Jeb’s son is running for his political life in the Texas attorney general’s race. But Donald Trump may get the last laugh.
What pushed an East Texas mother to kidnap at gunpoint the director of the famed college drill team and her nineteen-year-old daughter?
Oil-field medics face long hours, grisly accidents, desolation, and low pay. So why do they do it?
In “the trial of the century,” a Houston socialite was accused of plotting her husband's murder—and of having an affair with her nephew. But Candace Mossler was only getting started.
The record influx of recent arrivals from all over might be exactly what the state needs. That includes Californians. (And no, they’re not turning Texas blue.)
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.
The Houston social media influencer is a gay Black man with a gift for the absurd and a passion for platform heels. He’s also a star dancer in one of the world’s most rigid, gendered, and segregated art forms.
You love your pet. You love her so much that if you could, you’d buy an exact copy of her. Well, you can! Take it from Blake Russell, president of ViaGen Pets & Equine—and owner of a very unusual horse farm.
The party assumes people of color will turn the state blue. But most Tejanos consider themselves white. And more are voting Republican.
Wheal became a guru in the city’s self-optimization scene, hobnobbing with the likes of Elon Musk. But will anyone listen to his warnings about the movement that brought him renown?
A shoot-out at a Big Bend ranch captured the nation’s attention: first as an alleged ambush by undocumented migrants, then as a fear-mongering hoax. The real story is much more mysterious.
The sheriff blames his death on a big cat—but animal experts aren’t buying that theory.
The young woman who mysteriously drowned in the Ropers Motel pool in 1966 might have remained anonymous forever, if not for cutting-edge genetics, old-fashioned genealogy—and the kindness of a small West Texas town.
In 1981 three Black teenagers drowned while in law enforcement custody during a Juneteenth gathering at Lake Mexia. Four decades later, Texas’s proudest Emancipation Day celebration still hasn’t recovered.
Is Phil Collins’s legendary Texana collection everything it’s cracked up to be? An adapted excerpt from ‘Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth.’
Residents of the South Texas beach town say SpaceX’s billionaire owner is ruining their “little piece of heaven.”
In her best-selling memoirs, her eclectic, taxidermy-filled San Antonio bookstore, and her unvarnished tweets, the author makes light of her darkest times—and helps her readers make light of theirs.
In announcing an ambitious renewable-energy push this week, the Biden administration highlighted a vessel under construction in Brownsville as proof of the economic opportunities of going green.
Thirty years ago, Ralph Hayles fired the missiles that killed two American soldiers in Iraq. Ever since, he has worked to develop technology that could prevent similar deaths, while the military has looked elsewhere to address the problem—with little success.
When the power went out and the water stopped running, Trae tha Truth and DJ Mr. Rogers were there to pick up the slack.
He wanted to become a serious literary novelist, like Faulkner or Hemingway. Fortunately for millions of Hank the Cowdog fans, he failed.
When several women spoke out against a powerful man in the former ghost town of Terlingua, the backlash was fierce.
Sprawling ranches. Rare animals. Rich folks with guns. Welcome to the state’s booming business of stalking wildlife from around the globe.
Karnack’s “Queen of Sequins” brought style, success, and unprecedented longevity to her legendary rodeo career.
As CEO of Occidental Petroleum, Vicki Hollub made the biggest deal the oil business had seen in years. Will it also go down as the biggest failure?
From ‘Urban Cowboy’ to ‘Northern Exposure’ to ‘No Country for Old Men,’ Texas’s finest character actor isn’t hanging up his spurs just yet.
The University of Dallas professor is urging Republicans to build a post-Trump, big-tent, big-spending party that’s economically populist and socially conservative.
One morning in late January 2019, Rhogena Nicholas texted a prayer to her mother, Jo Ann Nicholas, just as she did every day. A widow in her eighties, Jo Ann could no longer make the four-hour drive from Natchitoches, Louisiana, to visit her daughter and her son-in-law, Dennis Tuttle, at
“I’m definitely more paranoid wherever I go. I definitely watch my back more and pay attention to what’s going on around me.”
“The people of the town are calling us and saying, ‘Do we have a monster that lives in our community?’ I wish I could give them solace.”
Texas GOP chairman Allen West is at war with the governor and in love with the camera.
“I’m like, ‘What in the heck is that?’ So, I walk around some shrubs, and as I get closer, I can see that it kind of looks like bone.”
The New York–born singer-songwriter got to Texas as soon as he could—and spent the next five decades changing the lives of seemingly everyone he met.
“It’s kind of strange that your investigator calls this search, and, lo and behold, right after he starts the search, a cellphone is found.”
DNA evidence proved Lydell Grant's innocence. So why won't the state’s highest criminal court exonerate him?
“I'm sitting there thinking, ‘Oh God, I'm so scared right now.’ I couldn't convince them. And so I just let them hammer me.”
They're not disengaged—they’re waiting to be heard, and fully understood.
The election has yet to be decided, but one result can already be called: the Texas Republican party has lost its ability to speak to much of the electorate. And Democrats are poised to reap the benefits.
In 1963, Lackland Air Force Base experienced a cataclysmic explosion. People thought World War III had started. Today, it's been almost completely forgotten.
“Makes you want to go to the church, get on your knees, and say a few words, right?”
State leaders have long tried to correct for the problem of too much democracy. But voters may get the last laugh this election.
“My gut tells me he hasn't left Hemphill County. I think he's here somewhere, and I don't know if he intends to come out in the next day or two.”
With its industry reeling, the Fort Worth–based airline giant is quietly betting that diminished competition will keep passengers coming—even as they grumble about the carrier’s poor service, late arrivals, and the jam-packing of its flights amid the pandemic.
In 2016 a popular teenager disappeared in the tiny Panhandle community of Canadian. Two years later, his remains were discovered beneath a tree outside of town. But to this day, no arrests have been made, and it seems that nearly everyone involved in the case has fallen under suspicion.
