You can almost pinpoint the exact moment Rudolph Casillas realized he wasn’t going to get the cash. The note (“Give me all the money I have a gun”) and firearm (actually a pellet gun purchased a few minutes before, but no one had to know that) seemed to work well…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
Two days after 14-year-old Deston Bibbs was killed by a hit-and-run motorist as he crossed Sycamore School Road at 9:20 p.m. on the night of April 25, his mother went to the media with a heartfelt plea. “Just turn yourself in already,” DeShundria Parks told WFAA’s Carla Wade. “There’s no…
Arnold Troy Crayton has matured a lot in the past decade. Back then, he was “Lil’ Arnold,” a 21-year-old junior member of a Fort Worth-based crack distribution ring busted by the feds in 2002. Now, according to federal prosecutors, Crayton’s moved on to marijuana, apparently smuggled to him straight from…
To be fair, the man couldn’t have known Antonio Quintanilla was a cop. It was 3 a.m., and Quintanilla wasn’t in uniform. He was just some guy smoking a cigarette on the balcony of the apartment below at the Villas of Katy Trail early on Saturday morning. That said, Quintanilla’s…
Dafe Kelly Sokoh wasn’t technically supposed to be patrolling the Burger King parking lot. El Rancho Supermarket in Oak Cliff hired him as a security guard to keep an eye on things there, but, when he spotted 26-year-old Roy Castillo leaving the grocery store at what he considered to be…
By the time firefighters showed up at the Newport Landing Apartments in Far Northeast Dallas on Tuesday, Lesley Williams’ had already escaped from her burning unit, running outside and calling for help until a neighbor was able to douse the flames that still covered her body. Her hands, back and…
Douglas Alan Feldman, 55, the remorseless, highly intelligent psychopath who terrorized three North Texas counties for more than a week while he went on a shooting rampage, was executed Wednesday. And he shuffled off his mortal coil with the same venom with which he inhabited it. According to an Associated…
The Facebook photo shows 51-year-old Dallasite Bobby Ray Carter Jr. grinning as he stands beside his son and a handful of friends chest deep in the crystal clear water. Behind him, the sandy beach, lush foliage and sheer cliff face suggest a tropical paradise. The picture was taken outside the…
It should have been apparent to Ronald Dale Ackers that his ex-girlfriend wants nothing to do with him. Even if she never used those exact words, the mere fact that she left him behind in Bedford, Texas while she established permanent residence in Jonesborough, Tennessee should have sent the message…
Mark Bumpers was standing behind his Red Bird home late on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 26, when a stranger walked by. In one arm, he carried a leaf blower. Tucked beneath the other was a DVD player. He pushed an electric lawnmower with his free hand. The man paused…
The feds were quite pleased in 2010 when Operation Greedy Grove, their months-long takedown of a Pleasant Grove-based crack ring, resulted in 28 arrests and the seizure of several kilograms of cocaine, more than a dozen guns, and $210,000 cash. But the guys they picked up — “Rat,” “Ron Don,”…
At closing time Tuesday night, the cash register at Afrika Fusion came up short. The restaurant’s manager, Mondi Baskin, recounted the money and checked her math again. It was stil short. Baskin narrowed the source of the discrepancy to one of the servers, a woman who’d been working at the…
A few months back, we broke the very important news that Dallas is in midst of an epidemic of hair weave heists. Sometimes, the thieves would try to palm a few packages while pretending to shop. Other times, they went for volume, knocking holes in the wall of beauty supply…
