HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Fifty years ago, Huntsville, Texas, became the center of national attention as a tense prison hostage crisis unfolded inside its first state prison known as the “The Walls Unit.” For 11 days behind its 15-foot red brick wall in the sweltering summer of 1974, three armed inmates held fifteen people hostage, culminating […]
The Malibu Murders: A Journalist’s Journey from Trust to Truth
On Christmas Eve, 1977, Malibu’s sunny beaches set the stage for what appeared to be a fairy tale wedding. Fred Roehler and Verna Johnson, both widowed and seeking solace, united their families in a ceremony that seemed to promise a happy ending to their past tragedies. Ivor Davis, a London-born former foreign correspondent, recalls the […]
John Dillinger and the Rise of Public Enemies in the 1930s
The 1930s were a time of great turmoil and transition in America. The Jazz Age had ended, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) pushed through the repeal of Prohibition, but the country was in the grip of the Great Depression. Amidst this backdrop, a new breed of criminal emerged. These were not the pseudo-businessmen of […]
Until Death Do We Part: The Postman Cometh with a Sinister Surprise
On September 21, 1995, the quiet town of Centerville, Texas, population 900, was thrust into a terrifying ordeal that would shake its small-town charm to the core. As the local mail carrier made his rounds on the Leon County Square, he delivered a package that would later be revealed as a potentially catastrophic threat to […]
Devil Lovers: Waco’s Dark Cult and the Meth Empire
A Cult in the Heart of Texas In the late 1980s, the quiet city of Waco, Texas, became the unlikely backdrop for one of the most bizarre and sinister stories in the state’s history. A group known as the Devil Lovers, composed of middle-aged men and women from prominent families in Central Texas, emerged as […]
J. David Bethel Turns Real-Life Horrors into Page-Turning Thrillers
Meeting a Dictator David Bethel’s fascination with the psychological depths of the human mind began at an early age. As the son of a U.S. State Department Foreign Service Officer stationed in Cuba, an 11-year-old Bethel had a memorable encounter with Fidel Castro just after the Cuban Revolution. “Castro was a tall guy. I mean, […]
The Murderous Saga of Dallas Drug Kingpin Geno Camacho
Geno Ruiz Camacho was a feared drug kingpin in Dallas, Texas, during the late 1980s. Connected to a powerful Mexican drug cartel, Camacho’s brutality was unparalleled—he put a woman through a tree mulcher and murdered a three-year-old boy and his mother. After a Dallas County jury sentenced him to death, the judge remarked that the […]
Body Cameras: Reshaping Police Encounters and Protecting the Public
In the wake of high-profile cases of police misconduct, including the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in 2020, questions have arisen about whether body-worn cameras could help prevent excessive force by law enforcement. According to Dr. Jennifer Matthews, an expert who has trained over a thousand Chicago-area officers on body camera programs, […]
