The yellow school bus rolled into the oncoming December darkness, headed toward Abilene, carrying with it a cargo of teen-age boys who just hours earlier had been celebrating the rewards of an undefeated junior varsity football season. Our prize had been a trip to Dallas and the historic old Cotton…

Lacresha Candy Murray, only 12 years old, was seated in an Austin courtroom, her frightened brown eyes darting among a thicket of strangers. Found guilty of murdering a small child, she listened as a judge sentenced her to 25 years in prison. Whatever emotion might have welled inside her was…

WHARTON–As the recent terrorist attack struck the Pentagon and New York’s World Trade Center, Texas pilot Jim Folks was where one would have expected him to be–in the air, enjoying the peaceful solitude and quiet satisfaction of a job he’s been doing for more than two decades. Never caught up…

The lingering legends of Jim Thorpe, perhaps the most talented and honored athlete in American history, are as colorful as they are numerous. So varied were his gifts that he won track meets single-handedly. His speed and agility on the football field enabled the tiny all-Indian college he attended to…

ODESSA–On a recent summer afternoon, long after the temperature had climbed past the 100-degree mark and even the dust devils seemed to weave and dance with lackluster effort, it was all but impossible to imagine how things once were. Standing amid the parched mesquites and the rhythmic nodding of the…

Pacing the Addison hotel room he calls home, a cell phone pressed to his ear, Ron Cohen is speaking in a firm but understanding voice to a 26-year-old Florida man who is standing outside a federal penitentiary in Fort Dix, New Jersey, preparing to surrender himself to begin serving a…

ALVARADO–There are days now–rare but more frequent than he’d ever thought possible–when John Maddux’s life follows a routine path that he finds both welcome and comforting. But then, with the slightest provocation, his mood will darken and the memories flood back, returning him to that moment almost a quarter of…

In a perfect world, where youthful fantasies grow into reality, 42-year-old Bryan A. Garner would right now be making his way to the next stop on the PGA tour instead of standing in front of a stuffy room filled with corporate attorneys. The Dallas lawyer/author would be high on the…

On quiet evenings, before Malcolm X Boulevard teems with late-night life, Harold Williams climbs into an old pickup with a cranky transmission and visits the ghosts of the city’s past. Caretaker of the 60-acre Oakland Cemetery, one of the oldest and most historic graveyards in Dallas, Williams takes with him…

NACOGDOCHES–Joe R. Lansdale’s days of busting his butt at the nearby aluminum-chair factory or toiling in the brain-baking heat of East Texas rose fields are far in the distance now, faded memories he resurrects only to assign to an occasional character in one of his novels or short stories. Gone…

“The murderer of Miss Florence Brown may be caught within the next five minutes, he may be arrested during the next six months; he may never be deprived of his liberty…” –The Daily Times Herald, 1913 The cemetery caretaker was at first reluctant, concerned about the disturbance he feared the…

TRINIDAD, Texas–When last we heard from the rebellious John Joe Gray family it was still entrenched on its 47-acre river-bottom farm near here, vowing if local authorities attempted to serve long-standing arrest warrants on its patriarchal leader all hell would break loose. It has now been more than a year…

Location: Denton County, Texas Victim: Frieda Lorraine (Becky) Powell, w/f, 15 In June 1983, Henry Lucas described to officers that he and the victim were in Denton County…He and the victim began arguing, and she slapped him, at which time he drew his knife from his belt and immediately stabbed…

It was a Friday in June 1994, and Dallas private investigator Bill Dear, dapper as ever in his three-piece suit, monogrammed shirt and alligator boots, had completed his speech to the National Conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors and remained in the St. Louis Convention Center to answer questions. On…

MOUNT VERNON–At first blush, they sound like scenes concocted by a struggling writer trying to sell a television series, one that combines the two most time-honored story lines available: lifesaving doctors and crime-busting cops. For instance: It is in the pre-dawn hours of a quiet East Texas morning, and the…

TEXARKANA–The enduring legend began not with death, but with a frightening and vicious attack on two young lovers who managed to survive. On a February night in 1946, 24-year-old Jimmy Hollis and his girlfriend Mary Jeanne Larey, 19, had attended a downtown movie, then decided to prolong the evening with…

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico–The fine-powder caliche dust rises from the road, forming a suffocating haze that clears only when Esther Chavez slows her car to avoid ruts and rocks or to yield right of way to the dozens of stray dogs trotting aimlessly through the colonia located on the northern edge…

“Violence always marks the end of a relationship…” –from the journals of convicted murderer Ira Einhorn On days like this, when the wintry skies signal a chill, she stands at her kitchen window looking out onto the rolling Tarrant County pasture where a couple of mares leisurely feed on the…

Last Saturday, while thousands of Dallas residents tended the traditions of the season by cheering a downtown Christmas parade or assaulting neighborhood malls, others with an appetite for things a bit more hard-edged gathered to tour the dark side of the city’s history. It was not Santa the busload of…

SEVEN POINTS–On a late morning last week, as the cool Texas air was sweetened by overnight rains and the sun sparkled on the surface of the nearby Cedar Creek Lake, 34-year-old Keith Tarkington stood in the parking lot of the local Dairy Queen, pulled on his straw hat, and declared…

“Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. There is no such thing as concealment…” –Ralph Waldo Emerson PROLOGUE The search had been under way for three days in the early summer blast furnace of the El Paso County desert, and, finally, the young female detective in charge…