U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno has accused WFAA-Channel 8 television and its owner, the Belo Corp., of criminal complicity in the 1994-1995 wiretapping of former Dallas school board member Dan Peavy. In a pleading filed under seal July 6 with the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans,…
If the Deep Ellum Public Improve-ment District survives what likely will be a contentious public hearing in city council chambers August 25, Barry Annino may get some of the credit. If it fails, he’ll take most of the blame. Annino has spent the last year putting a face on the…
Bailon for the defense Word from The Dallas Morning News is that the editors there would like to find — then gut, dress, and eat — whoever has been leaking to Buzz internal newsroom memos concerning the controversy over Belo Corp.’s decision to invest in the arena and the Mavericks…
Everyone in the Kevin Young story has a story. Everybody’s covered. But if everybody’s covered, and if everybody has a story, then how could this have happened? Can a man — any man, woman, human being — literally rot in jail, almost until his limbs fall off, while he waits…
The news that Mayor Ron Kirk ignored Councilwoman Laura Miller when he doled out committee leadership assignments last month was hardly a surprise: Who could blame Kirk for shutting the door on his loudest critic? No one except Donna Blumer, Miller’s closest ally on the council and the only returning…
Last year, employees of the Dallas marshal’s office were alarmed when Sgt. Don Madewell, a veteran of the department, admitted he had taken an unauthorized loan from the Dallas Police Patrolman’s Union, where he had served as its treasurer. But the peace officers were even more outraged when Madewell, who…
Deafening silence The cone of silence has descended on The Dallas Morning News after last week’s Buzz, a reprint of a scathing memo from the daily’s three City Hall reporters complaining about the paper’s coverage of the Belo Corp.’s decision to invest in the Dallas Mavericks and the arena. Buzz…
In the destitute world of animal rescue work in Dallas, the SPCA of Texas’ plan to build the Russell H. Perry Animal Care & Education Campus truly is revolutionary. Located in Collin County between Plano and McKinney, the 29-acre campus promises to be a “pastoral oasis,” as one report put…
It’s 24 hours after meeting with Stephen Jarchow, and the only detail about the man that remains in the memory is how utterly unassuming he appears. This is not a knock against Jarchow; his friends and colleagues say much the same thing, but always with the caveat that looks deceive…
Children’s bed sheets hang in the windows of what was once Cedric Lamont Seamster’s home on North Hamilton Street, their cartoon characters smiling into empty rooms. A child’s deflated swimming pool and plastic beach toys are scattered on the dirt and grass alongside the house. An air of loss hangs…
The case of the headless, handless corpse shook off the summer doldrums last week and lurched forward, as events in Detroit and San Antonio added insight and enigma to the gruesome tale. In Detroit, at a court hearing for Gary Karr, one of those suspected of murdering and beheading Danny…
Trouble in paradise Think the Belo Corp.’s decision to pay $24 million cash for 12.38 percent of the Dallas Mavericks and a 6.19 percent share of The Arena Group reeks of a conflict of interest? You’re not alone. Someone from The Dallas Morning News, which is owned by Belo, anonymously…
On a moonlit July night three years ago, as Godwin Omokaro headed out to celebrate his 37th birthday, his life seemed full of possibilities. After all, he had come so far already. Of the 11 children in his family, only Omokaro had managed to escape the political and economic repression…
The Lower East Side of Manhattan is not exactly a slice of New York known for its cinematic beauty, what with its crowded tenement buildings, grime-baked streets, and indigenous odors of vomit and urine. Yet for a handful of years, it has been the last bastion of downtown bohemia for…
The sudden, unexpected death of Maurice Levy’s Knox Street antiques business came early July 8, while he was on a roof, repairing an air conditioner. Marcie Williams, the manager of Knox Street Antique Mall, delivered the news with a phone call. “She told me that Keith Cecil came early in…
Spanish flyways You’ve probably seen them: those sneaky ads disguised as articles that appear in newspapers. “Scientific breakthrough: Miracle drug melts pounds away,” the headline says, and there above it in tiny type is the word “advertisement.” Well, we looked in the August D magazine for the word “advertisement” on…
No bell rang to mark the beginning of class. It was just one of many things missing from this high school. For two months, as winter segued into spring, about 40 students who had either dropped out or been kicked out of Arlington public high schools attended class inside a…
Crusty, cootish, a legendary ass-chewer, W.A. “Tex” Moncrief Jr. is — to put it lightly — blunt. So when the multimillionaire Fort Worth oilman spoke to the Dallas Observer last summer about the particularly embarrassing defense his ex-secretary used against charges she embezzled from him, Tex put it like this:…
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,…
It’s hard to get on Texas’ death row these days — if you want to interview an inmate there. According to regulations that cover death row visitations — including those by news media — almost any news organization that isn’t considered mainstream is barred from getting face-to-face with inmates at…
citizens group trying to keep Tenison Park in Old East Dallas from becoming a semi-private high-end golf club suffered a defeat recently when an appeals court tossed out their suit. Justice Michael J. O’Neill of the 5th District Texas Court of Appeals said in an opinion July 8 that individuals,…
Two Dallas Observer staff writers and Editor Julie Lyons were winners in two national writing and reporting competitions among alternative newspapers. Reporters Christine Biederman and Thomas Korosec were awarded first place for investigative reporting among newspapers with circulation greater than 54,000 by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. They won for…
