Just before Trina McReynolds was carjacked, she remembers being in the crowded drive-through lane at the Cityplace Whataburger. Things were going down that could only happen at 2:30 a.m., during the after-the-bars-close Saturday night rush. A young woman in the BMW in front of her was leaning out the driver-side…
Problem Witnesses Just a screwed-up family: I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness but am no longer practicing, so I picked up a copy of the Dallas Observer to read the cover story (“Sects and Lies,” December 7). I was outraged that the religion was shown in such a negative…
Ah, the bourgeoisie and the quiet lives they live. Here in Bachman Lake, homes with neatly trimmed lawns line the streets, as do cars and Christmas lights and…condoms. Condoms? These days, many beleaguered Bachman-area residents–already sick of the strip clubs and other sexually oriented businesses (SOBs) that proliferate in the…
Buh-bye Belo: The revolving door is spinning again at Channel 8. City Hall scoopdog Dave Evans left for WABC-TV in New York months back. Then three bigwigs–Robert Riggs, Alan Berg, and Vince Patton–bolted Belo earlier this month. And if you think they’re the only big-time talents who will be leaving…
“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…
Experience has made Haifa Bale tough. She can speak about being beaten by her first husband, about being separated from her sick mother, about being denied access to her native country, and about the grim reality of living through an arranged marriage without any self-pity. She won’t cry until she…
Let’s say you’re a disgruntled employee working for corporation, and your boss, the CEO, really pisses you off. You’ve grown weary of his sharp business practices, his wasteful spending, his penchant for young women. Let’s say you are sitting at home in front of your computer, and you decide to…
SONORA–After a four-day trial that laid open the Cardwell family closet, Cody Cardwell was acquitted of murdering his older brother Bill in a confrontation on the family ranch more than three years ago. The verdict brought to a close a case that has bitterly divided one of Kimble County’s pioneering…
Killer Raisin Stem Or whatever it was: My first big mistake was believing I was protected by the FDA food safety standards and could safely purchase and eat an Otis Spunkmeyer cookie during an afternoon break (Buzz, November 30). The errant stem was sent to the laboratory of Otis Spunkmeyer’s…
It spread like some contagion, ruthlessly ravaging the wardrobes of lawyers across the city. First there was the occasional “casual day.” Dressing down became a reward for a job well done, a celebration when a law firm’s billable rate topped $400 an hour. Then things got more habitual. Every Friday…
His looks could not have helped. That’s the first thing you think as you watch Edward Lee Stevenson lower his large, lumpy frame onto a visiting-room stool. His face appears narrow and squirrel-like, compressed as it is by goggle-size bifocals and limp, gray-black hair. His teeth, noticeably misaligned and punctuated…
Here we are at the wheel of a black SUV in the dark of night, splashing through dirt ruts in a driving rain, faking our way past sullen security guards–the height of derring-do, in other words–all of it in search of the fabled Lost Loza. The Lost Loza? Come now…
On this Thursday afternoon, Ronnie Wilson holds up the latest clue–the most recent footprint, really, left by the person or persons who got their mitts on her identity eight months ago and have been on an illegal $10,000 shopping spree ever since. It is a letter, arrived today, from Dillard’s…
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…
Never mind the upcoming opening of DART’s CityPlace light rail stop; the events that have DART employees buzzing lately are unfolding in Houston, where former DART exec Shirley DeLibero, now head of that city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, is demonstrating how not to handle a sudden career crisis. For weeks now,…
Small-time Parasite Don’t feed on Christ’s flock: Thanks for Lisa Singh’s article “Fool’s Gold” (November 16). It is a devastating portrait of a second-rate flimflam man who, obsessed with building monuments to his own magnificence (if I may crib a line from W.B. Yeats), reveals that he has no magnificence…
Cookie monster: The 1994 case is infamous. An 81-year-old New Mexico woman spills hot coffee on herself at a McDonald’s drive-through and sues the chain, winning a $2.9 million judgment from a jury and making herself the instant national poster-granny for the cause of tort reform. Though a judge reduced…
There is one simple reason why a jury was able to convict Clint Shelton of murdering Michael Hierro and wounding his wife, Marisa, with a shotgun in the driveway of their Rowlett home on December 20, 1999. The reason is, Rowlett police officer J.B. Rutherford had to take a pee…
If you want to survive prison, there is only one way to do your time: Mind your own business. Prison culture demands that you keep to yourself and show no weakness, emotion, or tears unless you want to be someone’s punk or prey. Someone disrespects you, plays on you by…
Dave Thomas’ star potential is not obvious at first glance. At 43, the British-born computer programmer smiles easily, keeps his hands deferentially in his pockets, and, when prompted, proffers neither poetry nor song but digestible explanations of arcane technological references. Nevertheless, in this age of the Internet, Thomas, a resident…
It’s an accepted irony that local news television stations shine only on the darkest days. So it was with KTVT-TV Channel 11 a year ago, about the time it became CBS-owned and Tracy Rowlett-led, when the heretofore news-lite station covered the Texas A&M bonfire collapse. It was the day Channel…
Animal Farm Perfectly terrorized: This story (“If Horses Could Talk,” November 23) sounds like another attempt by the SPCA to fabricate charges of cruelty and neglect. It would be a perfect world if everybody had to live under as much scrutiny as animal business owners. All could live in terror…
