It wasn’t quite daybreak on the Saturday before Labor Day 2010 when Latonya Lyons pulled her decade-old Ford Taurus to the side of the Central Expressway entrance ramp at Yale Boulevard. Something was wrong with the car. Lyons turned on her emergency flashers, checked her mirrors to make sure no…
The classic Nigerian phishing scam operates on the principal that if you email a far-fetched story about an West African prince in dire need of a place to stash millions of dollars to enough people, some poor schmuck will be gullible enough to wire some money. It’s not that the…
Early in Ted Cruz’s campaign for the U.S. Senate, he released a campaign ad featuring an idyllic shot of him and his father walking on a sun-dappled path shaded by live oaks. His father, young Cruz explains in a voiceover, escaped torture in Cuba by fleeing to Texas, where he…
District Attorney Craig Watkins’ office wants a Porsche. They just won’t say why. “I can’t … give you a comment for the article,” Watkins’ spokesperson Debbie Denmon said when asked about item No. 15 on tomorrow’s Dallas County Commissioners Court agenda: Authorizing the acceptance of a 2001 Porsche Boxter for…
Wendy Davis, the “Abortion Superstar,” is jerking our chains a little bit. She still won’t say whether she’ll run for governor in 2014 or just re-election for her seat in the Texas senate. But a Texas lobbyist with “credible sources” has posted on his blog that she’s definitely gunning to…
It’s no secret that Dallas-based utility Energy Future Holdings is headed toward a restructuring of its untenable debt. As part of a potential bankruptcy plan disclosed back in April, senior debt holders would forgive tens of billions of dollars owed by the company’s power generation arm, Luminant, in exchange for…
The police who patrol West Dallas know 21-year-old Juan Delarosa well. In his brief time as an adult, he’s already been convicted on three car theft-related felonies and awaits trial on a fourth. His preference is large pickups — Ford F250s, Dodge Ram 3500s and the like — though he’s…
On Friday afternoon, Dallas Police Chief David Brown announced that he’d terminated four employees — three cops and an administrative worker — following that day’s series of disciplinary hearings. Three of the firings involved alcohol and were fairly unremarkable: -Officer Nicole Thomas was arrested for DWI after a hit-and-run accident…
The story, too vague to be quite believable, not sufficiently fanciful to be cut from whole cloth, has for 15 years been whispered to the curious who go to seek the grave of Lee Harvey Oswald and come away wondering “Who’s Nick Beef?” That’s the name on the gravestone that…
Last night, WFAA’s Brett Shipp released the latest in what’s becoming a series of investigative pieces on the administration of Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles. “For the third time in less that two months, a DISD internal investigation has uncovered alleged wrongdoing by a top district administrator,” the report begins…
Avi Adelman, the self-appointed watchdog of Lower Greenville who’s spent a quarter century hounding yard-pissing drunks, bar owners, certain elected city officials and whoever else happened to cross his path, is moving. He’s not saying where just yet. “I will tell you why. I’m protecting my family from crazy people…
The Fort Worth Zoo has a new baby elephant. Maybe you’ve seen her, or maybe you’ve just glimpsed the “Biggest Baby in Town” ad campaign. Maybe you’ve watched one of the sickeningly adorable YouTube videos of the elephant toddling around by her mother or spritzing herself with water. Perhaps you…
It started out as an ordinary transaction: A man walks into the Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway outpost of Sara’s Secret just before 9 p.m. Wednesday and asks to see their selection of fetish swings. The employee goes and retrieves an available model and shows it to the customer, who seems…
When City Council member Dwaine Caraway proposed a ban on single-use bags (paper and plastic) earlier this year, it seemed like another of the sweeping but ineffectual campaigns he fixes onto every so often. Sort of like the sagging-pants thing, except less entertaining. But then, in June, the measure sailed…
The prosecutor asked Alan VanHoozer how he knew Heather. “I’m Heather’s father,” Alan said, his voice struggling to finish the sentence. Not long after, he broke down and cried. Heather VanHoozer was 24 when she was killed by a drunk driver almost a year ago. She was supposed to start…
Aereo, an online television streaming service backed by Fox television network creator Barry Diller, launched in New York City on Valentine’s Day 2012. Two weeks later, the major networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW, Univision, and, yes, PBS — banded together and asked a federal judge to shut down…
There’s a Tumblr waiting to be made about U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert. Maybe “Sh*t Gohmert Says” or “Texts from Louie.” Right Wing Watch, where the Tyler Republican garners only slightly fewer mentions than Glenn Beck, does a solid job, but its reports lack the proper memeiness to properly convey the…
A former dancer for the Dallas Mavericks’ male dance team went on a violent rampage in far southwest Dallas last night, using guns and a grenade, killing four people and wounding others, police say. It began at around 10:30 p.m., when 44-year-old Erbie Bowser walked into his ex-girlfriend’s home on…
Trendon Shavers, the McKinney man accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of running a pioneering Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, hasn’t denied that he was running a scam or that he was using investors’ cash to finance his day trading and trips to the casino. His main defense is that Bitcoin…
Tyler Holder, the Saginaw teen accused of brutally raping and murdering 6-year-old Alanna Gallagher, was moved from the hospital to the Tarrant County Jail on Wednesday. That means his condition has improved significantly since he was shot in the head during his July 23 gun battle with police. (Chris Lodatto,…
Parkland Memorial Hospital, the Dallas County-run hospital, has had a rough go of it the past few years: the psych patient dying after being illegally restrained; the tainted vaginal instruments; the resident whose sexual assault of a patient was swept under the rug; the federal government’s declaration that the hospital…
It’s no secret that the gentleman buying you tons of free drinks doesn’t give a crap about your health, safety, or even how much you like drinking. He’s just making a calculated investment, figuring that you’re more likely to have sex with him after you have $30 worth of vodka…
