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.
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 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.
Terri Lee Hoffman was a New Age Aunt Bee whose gospel attracted many followers. But some of those believers ended up on a dark, twisted path that led to violent death—and the enrichment of their guru.
The guy whose name is synonymous with swindling is finally a free man—but it may not last.
She was a hooker. He was a race car driver. They fell in love. She moved in. He put on his three-piece suit and went to work. She was always on call. They fought. She moved out. Then she found out that his real job was bank jobs.
Two nice guys with financial troubles thought they found the perfect solution to the bust. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The disappearance of a University of Texas student in Matamoros led police to the discovery of a drug-dealing cult whose rituals were not only unholy but unthinkable.
They were elderly people, flattered by the attention of a nice young man. But sometimes it’s a mistake to depend on the kindness of strangers.
An employee’s vandalism by computer might have gone unpunished but for a rookie prosecutor out to test a new law.
As Texans’ pride of place rose with the price of oil, collectors scrambled for the few documents of the Texas Revolution. Suddenly there seemed to be plenty to go around. But no one thought to ask why.
In the town George Parr once dominated, a nineteen-year-old mother was gang-raped by her neighbors. In the aftermath of the crime, the old horrors of San Diego have surfaced anew.
He had a wife and a girlfriend. His ambition was unchecked. He tried to commit suicide. But when I came face to face with the minister of my boyhood church, the sin we talked about was murder.
The parents of a confessed killer went to jail rather than testify against their son. Now the murder conviction has been reversed, and the family of the deceased must endure renewed anguish.
The rich and eccentric heir to a rich and eccentric Galveston family, Shearn Moody, Jr., craved an empire all his own. But his lack of self-restraint cost him his bank, his insurance company, his fortune, and now, perhaps, his freedom.
There are three secrets to Miguel Felix Gallardo’s multimillion-dollar empire of drugs and power. Corruption, corruption, and corruption.
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.
Had she joined some cause? Was it suicide? Or had she wanted to disappear? After months of searching, I found the answer.
Nobody could stop San Antonio’s killer cop—except another cop.
In a ninety-minute reign of terror, gunshots rang out that still echo in the history of Texas.
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.
Starting with his alma mater and using little more than charm, Robert Hicks conned the college fundraising industry out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. His name is mud at A&M.
When five-year-old Christi Meeks disappeared and the police couldn’t find her, her father turned to Bill Dear, one of the most controversial private detectives in Texas.
He had it all: a wife and a mistress, a limousine and a motorcycle, the second-highest job at the Pentagon and some good-time Dallas buddies. Then the SEC took an interest in his life.
Candy Montgomery thought her affair with Allan Gore was over, until she found herself fighting for her life against Allan’s wife.
Urban refugees fleeing high-tech Dallas have created ersatz rural communities in the nearby countryside. This isolated, pastoral life sometimes erupts into adultery and murder.
Everything is bigger in Texas, including the scams.
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.
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?
A high school teacher shot up the First Baptist Church in the East Texas steel town of Daingerfield, and the agony lasted longer than anyone could have imagined.
The end of the Chagra family’s drug empire, a few words on murderer-for-hire Charles Harrelson, and the most incriminating tapes since Watergate.
Multiple-choice question: UT’s Tom Philpott is (a) the best professor on campus, a selfless reformer, and the victim of an assassination attempt; (b) the worst professor on campus, a publicity hound, and a nut who staged his own shooting.
The life—promising beginning, overripe middle, bloody end—of Lee Chagra, the biggest drug lawyer in El Paso.
A tale of passion in the double-knit aristocracy.
The Denton millionaire hated drugs and liked cops. He also liked Muscles Foster, a footloose cowboy who was one of Texas’ biggest drug runners.
It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap. But was it justice?
Someone was gunning down members of the state’s toughest motorcycle gang one at a time. Doe hoped her man wouldn’t be next.
