Try, try again It took only 22 years, three trials, and a long stretch on death row for a man who is likely innocent to be released from prison. Now another Tyler grand jury is ready to look into the Kerry Max Cook case. This time, they’re starting by reading…
Westlake Park, on the western edge of Lewisville Lake, has that pretty ordinary look that characterizes many of the man-made lakesides in North Texas: It’s flat and it’s bland. But compared with the vista of Cellular Warehouses, Hooters, and Basset Furniture Outlets bracketing nearby I-35 — now fully cemented from…
Education activist Russell Fish might have gotten poured out of court in April when state District Judge Martin Richter ruled that he had no right to force the Dallas Independent School District to disclose 10 years of student scores from the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS), but he is…
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…
It was a foregone conclusion that ex-con David R. Waters, one of the men suspected of killing atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair, would be sentenced to serious prison time in a court hearing last week on an old theft case in Austin. What was not anticipated was that he would…
Cover up They’re the hottest act in country music, selling seven million albums and winning armfuls of golden awards. Now it seems that the Dixie Chicks have gotten too big for Texas Monthly. The magazine wanted the Chicks for the cover of the September “Texas Twenty” issue, which hits the…
Jack Gargan sought to raise a ruckus, if not spawn a revolution. The retired financial consultant from Florida started a campaign in 1990 against corrupt politicians who he believed had wrested the government away from its rightful owner, the people. Gargan founded THRO — Throw the Hypocritical Rascals Out! –…
Cher Lon Phalen, a divorced mother, grimly recalls her first class in a 12-week course at the Coparenting Institute of the Southwest. On a Wednesday evening three months ago, Phalen and a handful of other divorcées crowded into a claustrophobic conference room on the second floor of a nondescript office…
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…
