Tony Rand and his two boys, Greg and Bill, owe the government money, and a lot of it. Last year, they admitted that their humble family business, Aspen Exploration, was more of a Ponzi scheme that leveraged the company’s supposed oil and gas holdings to raise $100 million from investors…
Tarrant County jailers are breathing a collective sigh of relief: Ladies and gentlemen, Steven Lawayne Nelson has left the building. Convicted and sentenced to death for suffocating a 28-year-old Arlington preacher and suspected in the killing of a fellow inmate, Nelson’s new home is the Polunsky Unit in Polk County,…
It’s the kind incident that makes you want to take everyone you love to the gun range for lessons: A woman — we don’t know her age — is watching television upstairs a little before noon on Wednesday at her home, which isn’t far from Camp Wisdom Road and Interstate…
Last night, a group of people were standing outside Sherlock’s, a bar and restaurant in North Dallas, when a man approached. He carried a pistol and, according to police, he demanded money from someone. It was a moment many of us script in our heads when we read these types…
Around midnight today, Dallas police received a call about a man walking around West 10th Street in Oak Cliff, “wielding a large knife,” as the police report puts it. The caller said the man with the knife had, furthermore, phoned him up not long ago and said, “I’m going to…
Because of a new law passed in the last legislative session, Texas Department of Criminal Justice inmates are now faced with a choice when they need to see a doctor: pay a yearly $100 fee, or don’t go in for treatment at all. As the Texas Tribune reports today, many…
Update: Steven Lawayne Nelson, who was just handed a death sentence in the suffocation of an Arlington preacher, has flooded his holding cell and the courtroom, according to Star-Telegram reporter Dianna Hunt’s Twitter feed. She said he could be heard screaming as water began seeping into the courtroom. Original item:…
We heard last week from John Wiley Price, who responded defiantly in the feds’ ongoing effort to squeeze him on their way to a corruption case. It’s a hail mary, he said of investigators’ effort to sieze $229,000 found in a December raid, nothing more than an effort to “fill…
The house at 4823 Dolphin Road is a ramshackle affair in South Dallas all but engulfed by surrounding brush. For weeks, it had been the subject of near-constant complaints. Drugs were being sold there, neighbors said, and the loud music was rattling their nerves. So too was the resident who…
Elizabeth Escalona, the 23-year-old mother of five accused of torturing her two-year-old daughter Jocelyn Cedillo, has been sentenced to 99 years in prison, several news outlets are reporting. According to Scott Goldstein at the Dallas Morning News , one of several reporters who’s been live-tweeting the trial for the past…
Jennifer Ciravolo woke early Wednesday morning, knowing that day she would look into the face of the man accused of killing her brother in a Tarrant County jail. She got her sons dressed and packed for elementary school. Instead of the uniform she wears to her job as a cashier…
Back in June, just after the federal government filed a lawsuit asking for the forfeiture of some $229,000 seized from the home of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, outside observers predicted that such a detailed public account of Price’s allegedly criminal activities meant an indictment was two months away,…
At some point last night, someone smashed in the glass front door of Medallion Animal Clinic on Northwest Highway with a rock and stepped into the lobby. They rifled through the cabinets and drawers in the reception area, opted not to walk to the back of the clinic, which would…
Larry Lake lives comfortably in a red brick McMansion in Colleyville with his wife Kathy, enjoying the fruits of a handful of successful businesses he owns. He’s a licensed pharmacist and co-owner of the Grapevine Drug Mart. On the side, he established VIP Finance, an auto-title loan business with branches…
Last night, SMU’s Daily Campus reported that university police released a crime report to students, informing them that a female SMU student was sexually assaulted at an apartment off-campus by a male acquaintance, also an SMU student. The assault took place on Friday, October 5 in the 3400 block of…
The incident report on DPD’s public access website regarding Marshall Moreno’s death is bare-bones. Yesterday at 4:47 p.m., the 43-year-old died at Baylor Hospital of unknown causes, and his body was taken to the medical examiner’s office for an autopsy. But the cause of Moreno’s death isn’t quite as obscure…
This morning around dawn, as Stevens Park Golf Course was preparing for the day, a worker passing noticed something odd sticking out of the sand trap on the 18th hole. Closer inspection revealed it to be a silver 2004 Ford sedan. Police were called to the club and, through careful…
There is good news to be found in the city’s crime stats. For the ninth year in a row, Dallas is on pace to see a drop in its crime rate and, while violent crime is about flat, burglary and theft are down by 15 and 11 percent, respectively. The…
The police report for Sunday afternoon’s robbery of the Zone d’ Erotica on Forest Lane doesn’t say much. Someone walked into the adult novelty retailer with a knife, demanded cash, and left. The robber got the money, about $250, but he (or she — the report doesn’t specify) also made…
Steven Lawayne Nelson was found guilty Monday morning in the slaying of Clint Dobson, a 28-year-old pastor who was discovered in Arlington’s NorthPointe Baptist with a plastic bag clinging to his face. Investigators say Nelson wielded a Daisy air pistol during the March 2011 robbery that ended in Dobson’s murder…
The Indigo on Forest is, per its website, a wonderful community located in “prestigious North Dallas” that still manages to offer apartments at the low, low price of $440 per month. It would be almost idyllic if it weren’t for the contingent of MS-13, a.k.a. Mara Salvatrucha, a.k.a. the brutal…
Meet Ricky Carr. He’s 53, from Fort Worth, and a regular visitor to both the Dallas and Tarrant County jails. One’s first impression upon looking at his picture is probably not “Hey, he looks just like a police officer!” or “Finally! Someone who can tell me if this pile of…
