When you meet him, you can’t help but like Aurelio Castillo. At 36, he’s a big man, but in the jolly sense of the term. There’s no menace to his presence, despite his reputation for unbounded machismo. He invites you into his constable’s office with a glad hand and a…
It was Craig Murphy’s idea, really. The Oak Cliff Democratic precinct chairman was tired of listening to the party faithful moaning about how local Democrats had no decent candidates running for countywide races. “We were mostly putting up sacrificial lambs,” he says, “people who would go on the ballot just…
His bright red hair has turned ashen with age, bereft of the pompadour that once gave him a more towering presence in court. His hawkish blue eyes appear puffy and sullen, clouded by too many years of litigation and liquor. His back hurts, his arthritis is killing him, and too…
Make nice It sounded like a right honorable thing to do: District Attorney Bill Hill, still in his rookie year, told The Dallas Morning News he was dustin’ off his trial boots this week and gettin’ back into the courtroom. He claimed he was just living up to the campaign…
The truth shall set you free Seems Dallas Independent School District superintendent and chief hatchet man Bill Rojas is quick to learn how we do things in Dallas. Taking his cues right out of Mayor Ron Kirk’s playbook, Rojas has figured out how to quiet his critics: by making them…
S E C O N D O F T W O P A R T S When Kerry Max Cook arrived on death row on July 18, 1978, he was given a haircut, doused with disinfectant, tagged with an execution number, and branded a punk, a fag,…
For this kind of decision, Kerry Max Cook needed room to pace, but 5 feet was all he would allow himself: Two steps forward, turn, two steps back, turn. The distance was set in his bones. Pacing that same 5-foot span for hours at a time had been his way…
Spare the rod and spoil the rider Buzz has never understood the love affair Texans have with their cars. (Now in their cars–that’s a different story.) We’ve also never been one to snub mass transit, particularly since the old Buzzmobile is about as sexy as a pair of Dr. Scholl’s…
Punching Rocco’s Ticket It didn’t take long. Less than a week after the Dallas Observer’s story about KTCK-AM (1310) appeared (“Talking up The Ticket,” March 18), Ticket noon-to-3 p.m. talker Rocco Pendola was fired by station management. Not that the Observer story had anything to do with the talk-jock’s firing…
Things hadn’t been right in the Kastler household for quite some time. Building a new life in suburban Los Angeles, raising a family, growing a business–none of this seemed to matter to Samantha Kastler anymore. During her and her husband’s years in the Dallas Police Department, she was the one…
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It was one of the hardest phone calls he ever had to make, a courtesy call all candidates running against incumbents are expected to make. But to phone District Attorney John Vance, his old boss and mentor, a man he’d known and respected for 30 years, and say hey, nothing…
Certainly, I’ve known failure. In high school, the day I got cut from the varsity football team after the coach told me I had hands like feet; the night of the homecoming dance when my date, on whom I had a terrible crush, informed me she’d agreed to go steady…
Awaiting the arrival of Newt Gingrich at his Barnes & Noble book-signing in North Dallas, I figure the place should be silly with conservative Republicans: well-heeled women carrying laminated copies of the Contract with America in their Prada handbags; right-wing Christians who find it morally reprehensible that the president of…
The details would kill a mere mortal. Making gefilte fish from scratch, shaping matzo balls with your bare hands, chopping liver, stuffing cabbage, purging your kitchen of every crumb of bread, all to commemorate some ancient fast food eaten at Mount Sinai by the 10 tribes of Israel and carried…
This is where the plot was hatched–or so the story goes. Not in some smoke-filled room at City Hall where politicos broker deals that placate rather than please, not on the top floor of some downtown bank building where law firms send buttoned-down lawyers to fight for the status quo,…
The cloyingly heartfelt sound of new-age music swells in the background as the credits brashly announce the topic for the day’s show: “Help! My Daughter’s Been Kidnapped.” Sally Jessy Raphael’s nasal voice rises over the music as images of girls playing with their fathers flood the screen. “Today,” says the…
On November 3, 1993, both the letter and the tape were introduced as further evidence for terminating forever Pat Hope-Hall’s parental rights. Court-appointed social worker Paula Everett and Carol Bowdry, a retired CPS administrative reviewer, both urged this harsh remedy. Bowdry described Pat’s relationship with Alicia as “toxic.” She testified…
Act II The year is 1988. The scene is Granbury, now brimming with free enterprise, country charm, and overpriced antiques. After the Opera House began playing to sold-out houses, a new merchant class had come to town, snapping up every stone-slab building on the square. This sleepy farming hamlet was…
Don Venable gulps down a cup of coffee, looking a bit bleary-eyed before court this August morning. Venable had stayed up late the night before with Rick Finlan, his partner in gadfly-ism. They were hoping to divine a trial strategy to convince a judge to take the unusual step of…
The 1992 bond election passed by a 2-1 margin. The TEA audit had found no illegality in the use of the ’85 bond funds. But Finlan and Venable were just getting started. “We had to establish a sense of paranoia in government,” explains Finlan. “They had to be afraid of…
At 10 weeks, the procedure seems simple enough. The woman assumes the standard gynecological position–back flat against the table, thighs spread, feet elevated in stirrups. Nitrous oxide is offered to calm her anxiety, deep breathing encouraged to take off the edge. Think of a favorite place, says the counselor, a…
