Matt Orwig could smell victory. Perched nervously on the edge of his swivel chair, the assistant U.S. attorney tried not to glance too obviously at the big wall clock in the conference room of the city manager’s office. “I wanna vote, I wanna vote, I wanna vote,” he thought, half…
Highland Park police chief Darrell L. Fant is the first to admit that morale on his 65-man force isn’t what it could be. “There’s been a lot of misinformation and a lot of misunderstandings, and it’s led to a lot of unhappy employees,” says the 46-year-old chief, sitting in the…
Looking back, Sean Brockette knows the job sounded too good to be true. The 28-year-old television producer, who has an Emmy award to his credit and loves sports, had been toiling as an “account executive” for the Dallas Burn, the professional men’s soccer team. It wasn’t his dream job. “The…
Romeo Hristov is worried. “I know my colleagues,” says the 35-year-old Ph.D. candidate in archaeology. “They will say, ‘He is dreamer. He is romantic. He is not serious person’…Is very dirty game.” His thick, Bulgarian voice rises until he is almost yelling, spitting out words. “They attack each other like…
On the surface, it looked like just another Monday on the fifth floor of the Frank Crowley Criminal Courts building. Potential jurors warmed the benches, waiting for their chances to do their duty. In one of the four courts on the south wing, a lone TV news cameraman aimed his…
It is the last Saturday night in May, and several hundred “velvet-heads” — the fans, owners, and trainers of hunter-jumper horses — are gathered on the warped wooden bleachers of a show barn on Royal Lane in Irving. One by one, 30 or so high-strung horses enter the main ring…
For the past 10 days, the gaming press and the ION Storm alumni grapevine have been vibrating like a coin-operated bed at a sleazy motel. First, May 24, came the flying-to-California rumor. According to former ION employees, the previous Friday the chiefs at Eidos, the London-based game publisher that has…
Milan Michael Malina wasn’t the first Plano youth to die of a heroin overdose. In the endless game of death and law enforcement that we call the war on drugs, it’s hard to tell what number he rolled. According to The Plano Star-Courier, he was the eighth of 15 deaths…
Info:Correction Date: 05/06/1999 Info: Vapor war ION Storm’s Daikatana still isn’t out, but several legal filings are By Christine Biederman For a bunch that set out to have the highest profile in the $2.5 billion-a-year, in-your-face computer-game business, the silence has been deafening. In fact, if you strain hard enough,…
In an unexpected move, last week a divided Dallas County Commissioners Court voted to raise the salaries of independent court translators. “I was pleased to see it,” says Lana McDaniel, presiding felony judge at the Frank Crowley courts building. “Frankly, I was kind of surprised.” As the Dallas Observer reported…
Some people have been known to sniff that when it comes to culture, Dallas ain’t New York or Washington, D.C., or Chicago. But a new traffic study undertaken by the city suggests that may soon change–for better and for worse. The good news is that if a city-proposed deal to…
Liquor led to argument, argument to guns, and guns to murder. It began in the wee hours of October 9, 1997, at El Que Paso on South Lamar Street, one of the dozens of bars that draw lonely Hispanic men to the shadows of southern Dallas’ freeway underpasses. Angel Santiago…
Info: Stormy weather Hot new computer game maker ION Storm appears to have all it needs for success — top talent, plenty of money, and legions of anxious fans. So why is its future so cloudy? By Christine Biederman Now is the moment to do or die. Again.XXXIt’s come about…
The Dream varies according to talent, of course, but also according to circumstance and tradition. Young hoopsters on city street corners may fantasize about a ticket to the NBA, while Canadian boys dream of ice and pucks, and prep-schoolers of glory in tennis, crew, or lacrosse. And for young women…
It’s Friday night when Lynn Kopp opens the door of her small single-story house off Story Road in Irving. Seeing a reporter, she doesn’t even ask what it’s about. “I have not seen him since October 2, 1992, after his father died,” says the 60-year-old former sales secretary, cutting to…
After a long weekend in Phoenix with officials of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Dallas boosters came home this week facing what may be the toughest challenge some of them have seen in their entire business and civic careers: If they’re serious about bringing the Olympics here in 2012, it looks…
In litigation as in politics, fortunes turn suddenly. And since the case of Jones vs. Clinton lies at the crossroads of both, the relative positions of the two sides have been swapping faster than Yankee baseball cards.X X X XXX XNearly two months have passed since President Clinton went on…
After three and a half years, hundreds of thousands of dollars shelled out in attorneys’ fees by both sides, and countless trips to the appeals court in New Orleans, at least one part of the legal brawl between federal Judge John H. McBryde and his fellow jurists appears to be…
At first glance, there seems little danger that R.D. Rucker, Democratic candidate for the 292nd Judicial District, might actually win. After all, the days when a Democrat would automatically sweep into office are long gone. Dallas hasn’t elected a Democrat to a trial court bench since 1992, when John Creuzot…
To hear lawyers at the Dallas law firm of Baron & Budd tell it, they are frontline warriors in a battle against callous corporations whose product, asbestos, claimed the lives and health of thousands of working men. But the first casualty of war is truth, and at Baron & Budd,…
The secrets of Jones vs. Clinton are beginning to out, and in the darnedest manner: Through friendly fire. On June 10, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright released letters that Paula Jones’ former lawyers, Joseph Cammarata and Gil Davis, sent their client last summer. The letters, which concern an attempted…
For the second time in four months, a woman charged with fracturing the skull of a 21-month-old infant while in this country illegally is sitting in a Mexican jail, awaiting extradition to face murder charges in Dallas. But plugging the legal loophole that allowed her to escape justice in the…
