Only in Texas could crime stories contain such characters as a murderous cheer mom, a fraudulent fruitcake accountant, and a polo shirt–wearing bandit. Over the years, we’ve shone a light on these true tales to look deeper than the headlines and tell the stories of the victims.
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.
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.
In 1990 the legendary Thoroughbred was put to sleep after his leg was broken—an accident, it seemed, until a tenacious prosecutor linked his death to a Houston bank scandal.
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
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.
Investigators in the coastal plain think so, and they’re doing what they can to tie the retired NASA engineer to the deaths of at least four young women there. But thus far the tangible evidence has eluded them. And, consequently, so has he.
A River Oaks bookie is tried for murder.
The mysterious murder of a small-town mayor.
UNTIL A STAR-STUDDED FILM SHOT THEM BACK into the spotlight, the Newton Boys had faded from public memory. Famous during the twenties, the four brothers—Jess, Willis (below left), Doc, and Joe (right)—were part Western desperadoes, part newfangled gangsters. They pulled off dozens of bank and train robberies but, unlike more-notorious
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.
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.
The slashing of a cadet’s throat at the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen is only the latest incident of violence at a venerable institution under not-so-friendly fire.
There was something comical about the plot by four Klan members to blow up a chemical plant in Wise County— and that was before their own Imperial Grand Wizard turned them into the feds.
She had a secret life, and so did her husband. For a while they seemed to have a pleasant existence in the affluent Houston neighborhood of River Oaks. But then she turned up dead.
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?
Now that Joe Chagra is dead, it’s time to clear his name in the 1979 assassination of San Antonio federal judge John Wood.
An idyllic small town confronts a controversial rape case involving four high school boys and a thirteen-year-old girl and discovers that nothing is certain—except that its children can’t escape the big-city culture of teenage sex.
David Graham and Diane Zamora were intelligent, young, and in love. And they shared a secret: They had brutally murdered Adrianne Jones.
Now that the crack epidemic has leveled off and gang violence is down, urban Texas is being terrorized by a new type of criminal: the superpredator. He murders without motive, feels no remorse, and worst of all, seldom gets caught.
What could drive a suburban housewife to murder? The bizarre cases of Rowlett’s Darlie Routier and Fairview’s Candy Montgomery hint at the answer, and it may be closer to home than we’d like to think.
Drugstore Cowboy.
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.
Something stinks in the Department of Criminal Justice, and it’s a lot more than VitaPro. A special report on the worst state scandal in decades.
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?
The shocking and sad story of the East Texas kids who beat a horse to death just for the thrill of it.
Since the day Stanley Marsh 3 finally went too far and locked up George Whittenburg’s son in a chicken coop, all of Amarillo has been abuzz about the bizarre battle between these intractable foes.
A young black man with a spotless record is facing a controversial death sentence for the murder of four whites. An East Texas town remains divided.
A daughter’s gruesome murder became a grieving father’s dark crusade to find her killer and thrust him into an ever-widening spotlight as an advocate for victims of violent crime.
Eleven years after the death of her youngest daughter, Tanya Reid sits in an Amarillo prison. Is she a murderess, or has she been railroaded by overzealous prosecutors?
On a sleepy day last September, two women came barreling down Route 66 with five police cars in hot pursuit. A tiny Panhandle town will never be the same.
Gambling became a way of life for young Josh Levine. When he got in too deep, he came to believe that only a holdup could get him out.
Gangs, guns, and getting in trouble are a way of life for too many teenagers in San Antonio’s projects.
The shocking story of Austin’s underworld, and how a state bureaucrat got in too deep.
Dallas police say Charles Albright is the coldest, most depraved killer of women in the city’s history. To me, he seems like a perfect gentleman. Maybe too perfect.
Not long after she made her trek from Texas to New York, Marla Hanson saw her modeling career end at the hands of a razor-wielding thug. Six years later, the cuts on her face have healed, but the emotional wounds remain.
It seemed like the perfect inside job: A respected cop conspires with his teller girlfriend to pull the biggest bank heist in San Antonio history. If they hadn’t been so careless, they might have gotten away with it.
When Chuck Smith kidnapped his own small boys to keep them from his estranged wife, a simple divorce case turned into an international family feud.
The way two mysterious deaths affected the town of Childress says a lot about the lure of satanism and the power of gossip.
For six years, my landlord and his wife were the perfect neighbors. Then he was accused of murdering her—and suddenly I didn’t know what to believe.
A man with big ambitions, Paul Rush bought his way into San Antonio society. Too bad the money he spent wasn’t his.
Steve Benifiel was an old-fashioned outlaw who practically owned the town of Ranger—until he was busted for running one of West Texas’s biggest drug rings.
Some Vietnamese immigrants live the American dream. But for the family of Vu Dinh Chung, the dream turned into a fatal nightmare.
Sure, they were gangsters, but they were our gangsters.
A tale of rivalry, intrigue, and foul play in the science lab.
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.
To understand Wanda Holloway’s dark and desperate story, you have to start with where she came from.
In a venerable Austin neighborhood, the laid-back residents are tormented by a menacing presence—neither they nor the police—can defeat.
In the farming town of Whitewright, stolen tenth-century illuminated manuscripts and ivory reliquaries weren’t all that Joe Meador had to hide.
