Crime & Police

Texas may be tough on crime but there are several unsolved murders dating back decades.

The April 17, 2013 West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people, destroyed more than 500 homes and left a crater 93 feet wide and 12 feet deep was caused by a fire that was intentionally set, the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Wednesday. “We have…

In the months before she was murdered in Midlothian’s Creekside Church of Christ on April 18 while setting up for her fitness class, Missy Bevers was engaged in an online relationship that turned “flirtatious and familiar” Midlothian police said in a search warrant released Thursday. Beginning in January, Bevers communicated…

Former Texas A&M quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel turned himself into Dallas County authorities Wednesday afternoon. His surrender came after a Dallas County grand jury indicted him last week for assault causing a bodily injury to a member of his household, a misdemeanor. Manziel is accused of hitting his…

For supporters of equal rights and equal protection, the outcome of Monday night’s Rockwall City Council meeting was good. Despite the best efforts of Mayor Jim Pruitt, the city did not pass a bathroom ordinance that would’ve required city facilities and  businesses to make sure customers use the restroom matching…

The Department of Justice has ended it’s long-term freeze of federal forfeiture funds from the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. Monday, District Attorney Susan Hawk announced that as of March 14 her office had assured the feds that it had taken appropriate measures to ensure that forfeiture funds were being…

A Kimball High School student’s week got off to a bad start Monday, Dallas ISD police say, when he shot himself in the leg at the end of first period. The student, who has not been identified, was able to get inside with the gun because typical metal detector policies…

They aren’t NERF guns, but the “sponge guns” the Dallas Police Department will get aren’t lethal either — or mostly not lethal, rather. DPD Deputy Chief Jeff Cotner introduced the guns Thursday at the Safer Dallas Better Dallas meeting a police headquarters. They’ve got a 14-inch barrel, shoot 40 mm…

Dallas Police Chief David Brown is on the ropes. Thanks to an increase in violent crime over the first third of 2016, discontented police unions and a City Council that’s seemingly grown weary of his days as chief seem numbered. The media, the Observer included, has been all over crime…

Helena Tantillo, a former Austin tech executive on the outer edges of the federal corruption case against Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, was sentenced Friday to six months in federal prison for lying to FBI agents investigating the case against Price. Tantillo’s company, BearingPoint, employed Christian Campbell as a…

Midlothian police, it seems, are not really any closer to finding out who killed Missy Bevers, the Camp Gladiator instructor found dead inside Creekside Church of Christ just after 5 a.m. Monday. Friday afternoon, for the third time, the released additional footage of the person they believe is Bevers’ killer, vandalizing…

Maybe, Missy Bevers’ killer was a woman. Maybe not. Maybe Bevers was singled out, hunted down after she made it clear where she’d be before sunrise Monday. Or maybe she walked in on a burglary. All of those possibilities are plausible and all have been cited by Bevers’ family or…

In January the Observer noted with a certain amusement that a bunch of JFK stuff was being hawked by New Jersey’s Goldin Auctions. These included a bullet fired from the gun that fired the bullet that killed the guy (Jack Ruby) who killed the guy who killed Kennedy (Lee Harvey…

In the worst sign yet for his NFL prospect, former Texas A&M quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel has been dumped as a client by his agent, Drew Rosenhaus. Tuesday afternoon’s announcement came after the Dallas County District Attorney announced that accusations that Manziel beat his ex-girlfriend, Colleen Crowley,…

Evening descends on Tent City. Overhead, the incessant whir of traffic on Interstate 45 has become a muffled groan with the onset of rush hour. The sun hasn’t yet sunk low enough to squeeze between the underside of the freeway and the roofs of the low-slung warehouses that surround it,…

A couple of days a week, Missy Bevers taught a boot camp exercise group called Camp Gladiator outside Creekside Church of Christ on East U.S. Highway 287 in Midlothian. Monday, the 45-year-old arrived at the church just after 4 a.m. for her 5 o’clock class. Because of the rain Sunday, she…

As drug reforms go, the cite-and-release marijuana policy Dallas recently considered was pretty tepid stuff. Getting caught with weed would have still been a class B misdemeanor, still carried a potential penalty of a $2,000 fine and six months in jail and still left a permanent mark on a convicted…

Ethan Couch, the affluenza-suffering teen who killed four in a 2013 Tarrant County drunk driving incident, had his first day in adult court Wednesday. Couch, originally sentenced to 10 years probation, will remain in Tarrant County Jail for two years as a condition of that probation, Tarrant County District Judge…

After conversations with some of the city’s top criminal attorneys and having invested a decent amount of time in reading stuff on the Internet, I have rendered myself qualified, in my own opinion, to offer the following non-legal and inexpert advice: Persons accused of capital crimes in Texas who may…

Listening to the Dallas City Council talk to the chief of police yesterday about smoke shops and convenience stores, thinking about Bill Clinton getting protested by Black Lives Matters, remembering a visit to our offices here last week by a group of Serbian prosecutors, I believe that I have discovered…

Three years ago this month, Dallas police officers Bryan Burgess and Michael Puckett were on a late-night patrol in South Dallas when they noticed a man behind Kwick Stop Liquor, later identified as 51-year-old Fred Bradford, riding his bicycle without a helmet and generally looking furtive. Burgess pulled behind Bradford…