There’s a sprinkle of rain falling outside the Green Elephant, a small dive bar near Southern Methodist University, when Draco Pendragon takes the stage. He dresses like a heavy-metal circus ringmaster, clad in black leather pants and a steam-punk top hat, and wields a whip that spouts flames when he cracks it. He…
Dallas concert promoter Gabe Reed pleaded guilty Monday morning to a federal charge for defrauding investors, promoters and performers who were investing in concerts and World Wrestling Entertainment events. Reed, 46, admitted in court that he received money from victims after he misled them into believing that the events would…
Mary Dozier was watching the nightly news when she saw a report about a child who was upset because she was being taken away from her foster mom and given to her birth mom. “She didn’t know the foster parent wasn’t her mother,” says Dozier, who had a child of…
Far West nightclub, at the corner of South Buckner Boulevard and Elam Road in Dallas, has had its share of problems over the years. It’s one of the most popular Mexican nightclubs in Dallas and has more than 180,000 followers on Facebook. When it was located near the Lakewood Hills neighborhood, some…
The latest project of Kavita Khandekar, the deputy director of the nonprofit Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, began as a fever dream. She and her coworkers at the small agency wanted to host a large-scale fundraiser, but they didn’t want to do a big gala or luncheon like other…
Steven Apilado says he dreamed of Mister Rogers when he shot and killed his father two days after Thanksgiving in 2015. The dream, Apilado later told detectives, was like a TV commercial in which someone had thrown a tomato at Mister Rogers’ face. “I guess that was my dad getting…
Jacob Henderson, crying uncontrollably, told 911 dispatchers that his wife shot her two daughters, 7-year-old Kaylee and her 5-year-old half-sister, Kenlie, in the head. They’d been sleeping in the living room. “What did I do?” she can be heard saying in the background of the 911 call that the Henderson…
We Slaughter Barbecue isn’t easy to find. On the outskirts of Bastrop about 30 miles east of Austin, it sits off the side of state Highway 304 in what was once known as the Last Chance Gas Station. It was the only full-service gas station for miles around, and it had the…
Kiss Destroyer, Texas’ premiere Kiss tribute band, has been performing across North Texas for more than a decade. When vocalist Robby Wayne (Paul Stanley), guitarist Bob Thomas (Ace Frehley), bassist Steve Cleere (Gene Simmons) and drummer Dave Bower (Peter Criss), took the stage at Lola’s Trailer Park in Fort Worth…
On Monday afternoon police arrested the father of a missing 3-year-old Richardson girl. Wesley Mathews appeared voluntarily at the Richardson police station with his attorney to speak with detectives. He was subsequently arrested on a charge of Injury to a Child, a first degree felony that carries a 5 to 99…
Social media users broke the news that 3-year-old Sherin Mathews’ body had been found Sunday in a field not far from the Mathews’ home in Richardson. She has been missing for more than two weeks. Police found the body of a small girl believed to be Sherin in a culvert near…
Nearly two weeks have passed, and 3-year-old Sherin Mathews is still missing. According to her father, Wesley Mathews, she disappeared at 3 a.m. Oct. 7 while standing in an alley about 100 feet from their home in Richardson. Mathews, 37, told Richardson police he put his daughter in timeout in the…
Three mediums stand near the tree where a 3-year-old Richardson girl was last seen in the early morning hours of Oct. 7. They’re not here in any official capacity for the Richardson Police Department, but they’re determined to use their self-stated psychic “gifts” to find Sherin Mathews. Like others who…
Janelle Hofeldt had a gut feeling. She says she first felt it when, during a visit from Minnesota, she met her niece’s boyfriend at a North Texas gas station. Chris Revill seemed friendly when he pulled up in his car. At 34, he was older than Typhenie Johnson, who was in…
At 54 years old, the unnamed subject of a Purdue Pharma ad, a writer, suffered from osteoarthritis of the hands, a degenerative joint disease that guitarists and other musicians dread. Purdue claimed in its 2012 ad, which it called a “pain vignette,” that OxyContin was the key to the writer’s…
Elle Gargano stood near the front of the stage at the Jason Aldean concert with a friend when the shooting began Sunday night. At 23, she recently graduated from Texas Christian University with a degree in strategic communication. She moved home to California, where she got a job as a…
Dallas concert promoter Gabe Reed wanted to be a rock star. In the late ’80s, he assumed the persona “Tomi Child” and made an appearance in documentary filmmaker Penelope Spheeris’ Decline of Western Civilization II: the Metal Years. Reed put down the microphone, picked up a law degree at SMU,…
Only 16 bikers showed up for the Remembrance Ride bike parade Sunday morning in Austin. It was the first year for it to be in the city, but it was billed as the 23rd year for the event. “It’s beyond terrible,” said Theresa “T” Barksdale, the event’s new president. “I…
The “Denton County Confederate Monument, The Citizens Report – 2017” reads like a declaration our forefathers would have sent to King George III demanding the repeal of his intolerable acts. Only this declaration is addressed to Denton County Judge Mary Horn, the Denton County Commissioner’s Court, the county’s Historical Commission,…
Jared Thomas, a Denton musician, planned to go to Nashville to spend the week writing and schmoozing with music industry people when Hurricane Harvey made landfall in late August. Instead, he loaded up his backyard grills, his family and two friends and headed toward Houston. “I just told my wife…
John Tufts was accused of a horrific crime involving his adopted daughter. Now he speaks out to reiterate his claims of innocence.
Theresa “T” Barksdale considers herself a diehard Stevie Ray Vaughan fan. Her back is decorated with a mural to the late Texas guitarist. The ink has personal significance: She and her older brother, who died last year, designed it. She still remembers him sharing the recordings of Vaughan igniting his…
