For the first time in his long career of homicidal violence against women, Texas prisoner Coral Eugene Watts has been charged with murder–thanks to a man who saw a television show about Watts, recalled something he’d witnessed 25 years ago and telephoned Michigan authorities. For two years, victims’ families have…

When the train pulled into the station, Bryan Mark Rigg wrestled his bicycle onto the platform, balanced a rucksack stuffed with a video camera, laptop and tripod on his back and started pedaling through the German countryside. He had 70 miles to cover before dark. The Yale student had learned…

When federal agent Jason Meadows interviewed the elderly resident at the Primrose Oaks senior living center in Oak Cliff, the man presented him with a business card for Universal Health. “Here’s your crook,” the man told Meadows, according to a recently unsealed affidavit filed in federal court. The name on…

Curiosity–and not a little paranoia–pulled Jaie Benson to her condo’s spare bedroom. In the last two months her guest had lived with her, things weren’t adding up. Instead of answering questions about her past, the woman quoted scripture. Though she claimed to have three children, they never called. And instead…

Even a 14-year-old can appreciate a swank dressing room: fruit basket, vase of flowers, even his own shower. Not to mention the sumptuous buffet in the “green room,” where guests cool their heels. Corbin Corona and his parents, Gary and Detta Corona, attacked it with gusto. “They treated us like…

He’s a wood shop machinist at the Ellis Unit in Huntsville, his oversized hands and muscular arms as brawny as the day in 1982 when he first entered a Texas prison, as powerful as the day he last choked a woman to death. By some accounts, Coral Eugene Watts has…

You didn’t just walk up to Jeremiah Simmons and start talking business. You had to go through someone he trusted–that’s how he survived. So when one of his associates asked him to meet a white high school kid with money to spend, Simmons was willing but wary. “He wants to…

Like a corpse in a horror movie, Amy Shackelford shot straight up in bed, going from comatose to wide awake in seconds. In those moments she realized she was naked. She leaped off the mattress, clutching the bedcovers around her body. Looking around, she saw that she was standing in…

The work is painstaking, but Bettie Beets says she likes it. Certainly it beats doing nothing. Every morning at 7, she and three other women settle down in a big room cozily decorated with craft projects they have completed–doilies, afghans, lap quilts. For years, Bettie made toddler-sized dolls, with painted…