Small-time Parasite Don’t feed on Christ’s flock: Thanks for Lisa Singh’s article “Fool’s Gold” (November 16). It is a devastating portrait of a second-rate flimflam man who, obsessed with building monuments to his own magnificence (if I may crib a line from W.B. Yeats), reveals that he has no magnificence…
Cookie monster: The 1994 case is infamous. An 81-year-old New Mexico woman spills hot coffee on herself at a McDonald’s drive-through and sues the chain, winning a $2.9 million judgment from a jury and making herself the instant national poster-granny for the cause of tort reform. Though a judge reduced…
There is one simple reason why a jury was able to convict Clint Shelton of murdering Michael Hierro and wounding his wife, Marisa, with a shotgun in the driveway of their Rowlett home on December 20, 1999. The reason is, Rowlett police officer J.B. Rutherford had to take a pee…
If you want to survive prison, there is only one way to do your time: Mind your own business. Prison culture demands that you keep to yourself and show no weakness, emotion, or tears unless you want to be someone’s punk or prey. Someone disrespects you, plays on you by…
Dave Thomas’ star potential is not obvious at first glance. At 43, the British-born computer programmer smiles easily, keeps his hands deferentially in his pockets, and, when prompted, proffers neither poetry nor song but digestible explanations of arcane technological references. Nevertheless, in this age of the Internet, Thomas, a resident…
It’s an accepted irony that local news television stations shine only on the darkest days. So it was with KTVT-TV Channel 11 a year ago, about the time it became CBS-owned and Tracy Rowlett-led, when the heretofore news-lite station covered the Texas A&M bonfire collapse. It was the day Channel…
Animal Farm Perfectly terrorized: This story (“If Horses Could Talk,” November 23) sounds like another attempt by the SPCA to fabricate charges of cruelty and neglect. It would be a perfect world if everybody had to live under as much scrutiny as animal business owners. All could live in terror…
Fart of the deal: Unlike nice people, Buzz just loves to say we told you so. The words roll off our keyboard especially sweetly when we get to say them to Belo Corp., the owner of The Dallas Morning News, as in, “We told you that buying a share of…
Waspy American men take note: Hundreds of Asian women in the Dallas area want you. At least Cathy Wang says so. Seated in her small office in Fort Worth with a “Visa-MasterCard” sign on her desk, the 36-year-old Chinese native leafs through folders, perusing her client list of men and…
For nearly three years they have claimed that Dallas developer Lou Reese hid an ill-gotten S&L fortune overseas rather than pay his creditors and the U.S. government. Now they say they found the treasure map. Advantage Capital Group, a Phoenix-based collection agency that has pursued Reese through an elaborate sting…
TERLINGUA–With Old Dixie and the skull and crossbones dangling overhead, some Hill Country cedar burning on the campfire, and Jell-O shots on the breakfast menu, a couple of West Texas chili rowdies offered a quickie site map of the action. “It’s kind of a clash of styles here. The people…
When Johnie Hopkins walked into Deeper Life Christian Church, a Pentecostal storefront mission in East Oak Cliff that ministers to Dallas’ homeless, he had nowhere else to turn. A former ironworker turned transient, Hopkins and his wife, Tina Howard, had been on the Dallas homeless circuit, from shelter to soup…
A small herd of horses stops grazing and looks up at a pair of strangers hanging onto a fence at Samuell Farm. To the city dweller’s eye, they look well-treated. But they aren’t, according to a Dallas Park and Recreation Department committee. The horses, part of a horse-riding concession that…
Bobby Vicious Crude, yes, but also clever: Wilonsky needs to get his facts straight. Bobby Soxx (“Grave City,” November 2) wasn’t all rage and violent temper. Some of the people who knew him best saw that side, but they also saw one of the funniest, cleverest human beings ever to…
SOMEWHERE IN THE STATE OF SONORA, MEXICO–As night falls, Gary Reeder rips through his motel room, hurriedly stuffing clothes into a small suitcase. After three days in this hellhole of a town somewhere in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert, Reeder looks frantic. Crazed. Downright scared. “I’m leaving tonight,” he says, spotting me…
JUNCTION, Texas–In the biblical version of the tale, the older son of the patriarch was filled with spite and jealousy, killed his younger brother, and was then marked by God and condemned to a life of wandering. In the ongoing West Texas remake, the younger son of the one-armed man,…
Nearly two years ago, Pat Melton stood up in front of the Dallas Park and Recreation Board and vented. She was angry and, as an animal lover, she had good reason to be. Some of the 300 or so farm animals at an obscure city park were freezing and thirsty,…
More than 8,700 women are incarcerated in the Texas prison system. Thieves. Killers. Drug dealers. But even the hardest cases in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice are prone to loneliness. After all, there’s just not much to do during all those forlorn nights in the stir. Take, for instance,…
(Editor’s note. Our media columnist disappeared at approximately 6 p.m. on election night. At 7 p.m., we declared him dead. A few hours later, we received word he was not dead. We rescinded our declaration. By 2 a.m., we were tired and annoyed, so we declared him dead again. But…
Looking for a reason why judicial candidate Mary Ann “Kamikaze” Huey, the only Democrat with enough guts and self-delusions to run against a Republican judge in Dallas County, came within a gavel’s throw of disrobing incumbent Bill Rhea? Wondering why Rhea, who had the unqualified endorsements of the legal establishment…
Judge Not Yellow-bellied story: Are you proud of your cover story, Adam Pitluk? (“Marked man,” November 2.) You told me many times when we spoke that you had no opinion, that you just wanted to be fair. So, I would have to then assume that this one-sided, yellow-bellied excuse for…
No news is good news: Your regular Buzz correspondent is back–pale, rested, and ready from a vacation that absolutely did not involve involuntary commitment or heavy doses of psychotropic drugs, as far as you know. And didn’t young Eric Celeste do a fine job while we were away? Don’t you…
