Police had all but given up looking into a pair of assaults against two prostitutes in the Houston neighborhood of Acres Homes. But when a third turned up dead, investigator Darcus Shorten embarked on a search that revealed a brutal reality.
In 1982 a man named Wayne East was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of one of Abilene’s most prominent citizens. To this day, he maintains his innocence. And one member of the victim’s family believes him.
Miranda Lambert has a lot to be happy about—she’s recently married, with a brand-new album and a string of hits that has made her the toast of Nashville. So why is she so twangry?
Terry Grier is the hard-charging, reform-minded, optimistic superintendent of the largest school district in the state. He’s also the most divisive, embattled, and despised man in Houston. Did it have to be this way?
After eleven contested elections dating back three decades, Rick Perry remains undefeated. Is he brilliant? Lucky? Ruthless? We asked the people who know best—his vanquished opponents.
Who cares if TCU went to the Rose Bowl last season and shocked the world? If the extremely intense coach of the Horned Frogs is going to keep his thrilling roll going, he’s got to keep! these! kids! focused!
Texas has a serious problem with feral hogs, which cause more than $400 million in damage every year. But it can be solved—one delicious bite at a time.
The Civil War may be 150 years old, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still stir up a fuss (Confederate license plate, anyone?). Just ask one of the hundreds of very accurately uniformed reenactors who descend on Jefferson every year to die for the cause.
When Randall Adams was sentenced to death ten years ago, the Dallas community thought a cop killing had been put to rest. But it hasn’t.
For more than seven decades, Camp Mystic has been one of the prettiest, happiest, and most exclusive destinations in Texas. But after a bitter, multimillion-dollar legal battle, the very thing that the owners cherished—family—may be the force that tears the camp apart for good.
Why did Jason Bourque and Daniel McAllister, two Baptist boys from East Texas, set fire to ten churches across three counties last year?
The Rangers? Don’t look now, but after four decades of haplessness, the boys from Arlington are poised to make a run at something more than just another pennant. They might just be . . . America’s (new) Team.
Victor Emanuel can find you a hooded warbler, a horned guan, or maybe even an Eskimo curlew. But his real genius is that he can get you to really look at a grackle.
It was the most shocking crime of its day, 27 boys from the same part of town kidnapped, tortured, and killed by an affable neighbor named Dean Corll. Forty years later, it remains one of the least understood—or talked about—chapters in Houston's 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.
On November 18, 1999, at 2:42 a.m., the most passionately observed collegiate tradition in Texas—if not the world—came crashing down. Nearly sixty people were on top of the Texas A&M Bonfire when the million-pound structure collapsed, killing twelve, wounding dozens more, and eventually leading to the suspension of the ninety-year-old
His life was as short and sweet as his songs, but who was the Lubbock rocker whose influence over popular music will not fade away?
No kid ever had more fun with his favorite toy than Herb Kelleher has in running Southwest Airlines.
The King Ranch saga: how one family conquered, tamed, loved, toiled on, and fought over a great piece of Texas.
Once, the State of Texas was going to put Kenneth McDuff to death as payment for his crimes. Instead, it set him free to murder again.
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?
When parents at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School, in Austin—where the Capital City’s moneyed elite have educated their kids for more than fifty years—rebelled against the teaching of Brokeback Mountain, it was, you might say, a learning experience for everyone involved.
During his lifetime, he captivated Houston with his courtroom brilliance, outsized ambition, and high-dollar lifestyle. But in the year since John O’Quinn’s tragic death, a bitter estate battle has revealed who he really was.
It has more supporters here than anywhere else. It fueled the Republican landslide. It has its own caucus. But what is the tea party? And how will it use its power?
Anthony Graves had been behind bars for eighteen years when the prosecutors in his case abruptly dropped all charges and set him free. How did it happen? What happens next?
He was one of the most influential cultural figures in Texas—a generous godfather to a generation of rappers, an entrepreneur of Houston's mean streets, the master of a scene fueled by codeine cough syrup and hip-hop beats. When he overdosed in November at the age of 29, it was easy
Ah, redistricting—that partisan, vengeful, hazardous battle for domination the Legislature fights every decade. Here we go again.
Anthony Graves has spent the past eighteen years behind bars—twelve of them on death row—for a grisly 1992 murder. There was no plausible motive nor any physical evidence to connect him to the crime, and the only witness against him repeatedly recanted his testimony. Yet he remains locked up. Did
What does it take to break a wild mustang? Patience, horse sense, experience, and if you’re Teryn Lee Muench, no more than one hundred days.
For nearly sixty years, a succession of obsessed blues and gospel fans have trekked across Texas, trying to unearth the story of one of the greatest, and most mysterious, musicians of the twentieth century. But the more they find, the less they seem to know.
Want to see the Texas of Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mance Lipscomb, and other pioneering musicians of the twentieth century? Your trip through time begins near Washington-on-the-Brazos.
Texas is facing an unprecedented deficit in the next legislative session, so to help our poor, overworked elected officials, I went ahead and balanced the budget for them. And good Lord! It wasn’t pretty.
In the campaign for governor, the Republican nominee is out to prove to voters—and himself—that he’s his own George Bush.
Is Friday Night Lights the best TV show ever made about Texas? Or just the first one (sorry, J.R.! Sorry, Hank!) that’s tried so hard to get the details right?
Twenty-five years ago, Larry McMurtry published a novel called Lonesome Dove—and Texas hasn’t looked the same since. Listen in as more than thirty writers, critics, producers, and actors, from Peter Bogdonavich and Dave Hickey to Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, and Anjelica Huston, tell the stories behind the book (and
How a mild-mannered database analyst from Dallas became the undisputed king of extreme competitive deep-frying in Texas—which is to say, the world.
Meet Toribio Romo, the patron saint of immigrants.
Forget the Outer Continental Shelf. There’s a good old-fashioned boom happening in Midland, thanks to a crafty drilling technique that unlocked the secret reserves of the Permian Basin and revived the late, great West Texas oilman.
After 164 years, what more is there to say about (or see at) the old mission church in downtown San Antonio? That depends on how you look at it.
The short life and tragic death of Johnny Romano, the youngest professional skateboarder ever.
Twenty-five years ago, in the wake of integration, he was the football star at my mostly white high school in Wichita Falls. Not much has gone right for him since.
Die-hard fans of America’s Team are debating that very question as we speak—and also wondering if the kid from Wisconsin with the buxom distraction can take them to the Super Bowl any faster than, say, Gary Hogeboom did.
Bolstered by his favorite phrase, my son Mark faced life with grace, dignity, and good humor. I knew he’d face death the same way.
The case against Fran’s Day Care in Austin raised the specter of Satanic conspiracy—just like hundreds of similar controversial child abuse cases across the country.
Fred Thomas was young, poor, and black. Not only was he afflicted with the terror of schizophrenia, he was also faced with the chaos of the Texas mental health system.
Working on his memoir one day in 1969, LBJ spoke more frankly into a tape recorder about the Kennedys, Vietnam, and other subjects than he ever had before. The transcript of that tape has never been published—until now. Michael Beschloss explains its historical significance.
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 .
