In those days before the cancer would spread and claim his life, longtime law enforcement officer Billy F. Fowler could recount old cases worked with recall that suggested photographic memory. A member of the Dallas Police Department for two decades, he had been the partner of J.D. Tippit, off-duty on…
Luther “L.J.” Lee looks out toward the interstate highway just north of Roanoke and to the Texas Motor Speedway beyond. As a younger man, he borrowed $25,000 to buy the land here, where he once farmed and where he stands in worn leather tennis shoes and blue jeans. He grew…
To the end, Herbert Lee Madison insisted he was no cop killer. Maybe not, but he definitely should learn to look both ways before crossing the street. He’ll have plenty of time in jail to consider that lesson. A Dallas County jury last week didn’t buy Madison’s story that he…
Same Old Prejudice Change must go deep: I thought I’d picked up a decades-old Dallas Observer on reading of University Park paramedics’ contemptible response to Ricardo Vasquez’s dire medical crisis at (of all things) an AIDS awareness rally (“Déjà Vu,” October 25). Fire Chief Ledbetter’s initial comment that “Sometimes when…
The yellow school bus rolled into the oncoming December darkness, headed toward Abilene, carrying with it a cargo of teen-age boys who just hours earlier had been celebrating the rewards of an undefeated junior varsity football season. Our prize had been a trip to Dallas and the historic old Cotton…
Domingo Garcia confirmed to Buzz this week that he is “forming an exploratory committee” to look into the possibility of declaring his candidacy for mayor. That’s pol-speak for: “Vote for me for mayor.” He will run, presumably, in the upcoming special election sometime early next year to replace no-longer-sitting Ron…
Editor’s note: This is the third in a continuing series of stories examining the effects of a massive overhaul of Texas’ juvenile justice system in the mid-’90s. With a state-issued razor blade Becky scraped the skin off her knuckles, shaved strips of flesh from inside her arms and carved…
Trinity Water Torture What Mayor Kirk “forgot”: Without Jim Schutze, Dallas’ readers wouldn’t have a clue as to what is really going on in the city! Thank you and thanks to Jim for accurate, brilliant investigative reporting. In addition to the incidences Jim mentioned in his article on the Trinity…
Dallas officials said they were “surprised” and angered last month because the decades-old aquarium in Fair Park was jilted by the national zoo and aquarium association. But, the truth is, the aquarium has been deteriorating and cash-strangled for more than a decade. The only surprise seems to be that it…
It wasn’t a good week at The Dallas Morning News. The city lost out on its Olympic bid to friggin’ Houston. (Hey, but that means the streets will be fixed and cops ‘n’ teachers ‘n’ firemen will be paid more. Right? Hello? Isn’t that right?) The rank-and-file reporters don’t care…
Welcome to a recap of The Short Happy Life of Dirk Nowitzki, in four-part harmony. Part I: Dirk rips down a rebound at one end, spins and takes off, bolting past unsuspecting defenders, dribbling the length of the court, then finishing with a thunderous dunk. Performed on numerous occasions at…
“They aren’t mine,” says Burger House co-owner Angelo Chantilis when asked why his burgers at the new American Airlines Center are garnering so many complaints. In the big picture, critical e-mail and personal complaints about burgers desiccated to the consistency of hockey pucks might not sound earthshaking. But if you’re…
Another Bad Apple Attention whore: I think the teacher involved here (“Bad Apples,” October 25) is more of an attention whore than a person truly interested in seeing justice done. I would not be surprised to find the sleuth married to one of the wrongly accused in the near future…
Alvin Kelly leans forward and folds his hands together on the white table in front of him. From behind a plastic window, the 50-year-old Kelly, with black hair speckled gray and dark circles under his eyes, looks sympathetic, sincere and innocent. He’s not injecting methamphetamine or stealing from anyone anymore…
As part of the May 1998 bond election, Dallas voters overwhelmingly decided the city should spend $3.5 million to replace the outdated animal shelter in Oak Cliff–a killing camp where roughly 80 percent of the animals brought there wind up in the city dump. Local animal activists, who used grim…
Seconds after Ricardo Vasquez went into his first seizure, bystanders pulled out their cell phones and called 911. The skinny 37-year-old had been attending an AIDS awareness rally on the Southern Methodist University campus, so the emergency calls summoned a University Park ambulance. When the two paramedics arrived, Vasquez was…
I am confused. I don’t know what to write. I have no strong opinions. Every steadfast and firm conviction I had has been turned into tapioca. This is what happens when you talk to too many lawyers. Not that lawyers are bad people. In reporting this column about how Dan…
First, a little disclosure on Buzz’s part. We were talking this week with Gilberto Cortez, publisher of the local Spanish-language newspaper La Prensa, concerning a list of complaints he has about the way the city communicates with Spanish-speaking media. Interesting, we said. Is there anyone else who feels the same…
No Fear Not immune: Mr. Schutze’s article “Fear Itself” (October 4) did a great job of putting everything in perspective for people in North Texas. The story should help everyone understand the nature of the threat from terrorists. We are not totally immune; we don’t have a crystal ball that…
Newsroom staff at The Dallas Morning News filed into the downstairs auditorium somberly. It was going to be bad. That much they knew. Reporters and editors had been openly speculating for weeks that declining revenues, increased spending on post-September 11 coverage and the $37 million write-off known as CueCat would…
Lacresha Candy Murray, only 12 years old, was seated in an Austin courtroom, her frightened brown eyes darting among a thicket of strangers. Found guilty of murdering a small child, she listened as a judge sentenced her to 25 years in prison. Whatever emotion might have welled inside her was…
Come January 1, one of the perks of being a state criminal judge may be legislated out of existence. No longer would judges have the unfettered discretion to appoint lawyers for indigent defendants. No longer would there be a patronage system–or at least the appearance of one–that allows judges to…
