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Criminal Justice

True Crime|
November 1, 2012

The Innocent Man, Part One

The National Magazine Award–winning story about Michael Morton, a man who came home from work one day in 1986 to find that his wife had been brutally murdered. What happened next was one of the most profound miscarriages of justice in Texas history.

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Web Exclusive|
March 31, 2012

Justice in Time

Fifteen years after being released from death row, Kerry Max Cook is still looking for freedom.

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March 6, 2012

Another Questionable Conviction?

Ernie Lopez, who was convicted of sexually assaulting a baby and became the focus of a ProPublica investigation into mishandled child death cases, was released from prison after the state appeals court overturned his conviction.

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True Crime|
January 1, 2012

Hannah and Andrew

On October 3, 2006, a four-year-old boy named Andrew Burd died in a Corpus Christi hospital. The cause of death was determined to be salt poisoning, an extremely unusual occurrence. Even more shocking was what happened next: his foster mother, Hannah Overton, was found guilty of killing him. But could

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Web Exclusive|
October 29, 2010

Free at Last

For eighteen years Anthony Graves insisted that he had nothing to do with the gruesome murder of a family in Somerville. That’s exactly how long it took for justice to finally be served.

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True Crime|
September 27, 2010

Innocence Lost

Anthony Graves has spent the past eighteen years behind bars—twelve of them on death row—for a grisly 1992 murder. There was no plausible motive nor any physical evidence to connect him to the crime, and the only witness against him repeatedly recanted his testimony. Yet he remains locked up. Did

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News & Politics|
June 30, 2009

Searching for Truth

Investigators and social workers in the Mineola Swingers Club cases have admitted that there was plenty of evidence that never made it into the first three trials that resulted in three life sentences. Will it make a difference?

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News & Politics|
April 1, 2009

Hysteria

When adults are accused of unthinkable crimes against children, what’s fact and what’s fiction can get lost in translation.

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True Crime|
April 1, 2009

Across the Line

Was the quaint East Texas town of Mineola home to a horrific child sex ring? Were the three people sent to prison last year for running it guilty? Was justice served? Depends on which district attorney you ask.

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Clete Buckaloo standing tall with a gun over one shoulder.
Texas History|
March 31, 2007

Law of the Land

Nearly two centuries after their forebears protected colonists from Indian raids, the Texas Rangers are alive and well and wrestling with the realities of the twenty-first century. In their own words, the iconic crime fighters explain how their world has changed—and what it takes to battle the latest generation of

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Education|
November 1, 2006

Acting Up

At the Giddings State School, violent teenagers come to terms with their horrific crimes—and learn how to avoid committing them again—through role-playing exercises in a jailhouse version of group therapy. This is what your tax dollars are paying for? Well, it works. For a while, at least.

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Texas History|
April 1, 2005

Unholy Act

No one in McAllen saw Irene Garza leave Sacred Heart that night in 1960. The next morning, her car was still parked down the street from the church. She never came home.

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Criminal Justice|
June 30, 2004

Greg Ott, Free

Greg Ott, the philosophy graduate student who was convicted of killing a Texas Ranger in 1978, has finally been released and is getting on with his life.

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True Crime|
January 1, 2001

Under the Gun

Nine years after the brutal murder of four teenage girls in a yogurt shop rocked the city of Austin, the police say they have finally caught the killers. But they have no evidence and no witnesses—only two confessions that the defendants say were coerced. Which is why, when the case

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Criminal Justice|
July 31, 2000

Free Greg Ott!

Twenty-two years ago a Texas Ranger was shot and killed during a drug raid on the home of Greg Ott, a philosophy graduate student. Even today, no one really knows what happened on that tragic night.

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Crime|
February 1, 2000

Unhappy Trails

Although they hate to let anyone get away with murder, Harris County detectives Harry Fikaris and Roger Wedgeworth are finding that cracking unsolved cases is no easy task.

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True Crime|
November 1, 1999

The Outsiders

Amarillo is a city where conformity counts, so the death of a punk at the hands of a football player had more than a little symbolic significance there. So did the jury’s decision to keep the killer from going to jail.

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News & Politics|
February 1, 1999

The Getaway

There’s something romantic about a jailbreak, even when the escapee is a cold-blooded killer on death row. That’s why our feelings about Martin Gurule were more than a little complicated.

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