Texas Monthly - Texas Monthly On…. Texas True Crime

TexasMonthly ON ...
TEXAS TRUE CRIME

From the editors of TEXAS MONTHLY

INTRODUCTION BY EVAN SMITH
Editor, Texas Monthly

Copyright 2007 by Emmis Publishing LP d/b/a/ Texas Monthly

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Printed in the United States of America

First edition, 2007

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Texas Monthly on Texas true crime / from the editors of Texas
Monthly; introduction by Evan Smith, editor. 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-292-71675-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-292-71675-3

1. CrimeTexasCase studies. 2. CriminalsTexasCase
studies. I. Smith, Evan, 1966 II. Texas monthly (Austin, Tex.)

HV6793.T4T56 2007

364.10922764dc22 2006038717

EVAN SMITH

SKIP HOLLANDSWORTH

PAMELA COLLOFF

CECILIA BALL

PAMELA COLLOFF

SKIP HOLLANDSWORTH

KATY VINE

SKIP HOLLANDSWORTH

MICHAEL HALL

SKIP HOLLANDSWORTH

PAMELA COLLOFF

SKIP HOLLANDSWORTH

When they say everythings bigger in Texas, they mean nice things: hair, smiles, steaks, sky. Crime is too depressing to make the cut, but like it or not, our crime is not just big but bigger than anyone elses, so we may as well brag about it. Our iconic criminals are larger than life, their names so well ingrained in our culture that they trip off the tongue without so much as a raised eyebrow: Bonnie and Clyde. Charles Whitman. Lee Harvey Oswald. Andrea Yates. Even if their acts were ghastly, they are or have been fixtures in our lives, the stuff of everyday headlines, for as long as we can remember. Theres no point in ignoring them or wishing theyd go away.

From a journalistic standpoint, we couldnt, and we havent. Since its inception, Texas Monthly has made hay of true crime, in the great tradition of our literary forebears. A previous anthology of terrific crime stories culled from our pages covered the celebrated likes of the folks mentioned above. In your hand is, to my mind, a more interesting collection. The crimes chronicled are not as widely known, nor are the perpetrators. (With the possible exception of that nice lady from Houston who ran over her adulterous husband with her Mercedes and then did it again and again, just to make sure she got him. Maybe you saw the TV movie? This stuff is entertainment gold.) But start reading about themand then try to stop.

These twelve gems have in common what youd want from any good read: memorable characters, a compelling plot, and rich scenes. And, of course, great writing. The authors are some of the finest, not just in Texas but anywhere.

Perhaps the finest among themat least when a dead body is at the center of the actionis Skip Hollandsworth, one of the magazines longtime executive editors. Its no surprise that Skip wrote half the stories in this collection. A master spinner of yarns, he mixes deep-dive reporting with stylish storytelling in a way that gets his stories consistently talked about at dinner tables and around watercoolers. Hes such a favorite of our readers, and of mine, for one simple reason: He treats true crime not as pulp or pap but as serious journalismevery bit as worthy as any other genre, which it is. And also every bit as big.

Evan Smith, Editor

TEXAS MONTHLY

August 2006

TexasMonthly ON ...
TEXAS TRUE CRIME

SKIP HOLLANDSWORTH

Why would a devoted wife deliberately run over her beloved husband three times? Its quite simple, really. He was having an affair with a woman accused by her allegedly pill-popping ex-husband of carrying on a lesbian relationship with her best friend, whose ex-husband has been indicted for an illegal wiretapping scheme designed to catch the two in the act and cover up his own infidelities with her former Lamaze-class buddy. Any questions?

LATE IN THE AFTERNOON OF JULY 24, Clara Harris, a pretty and personable 44-year-old dentist from the Houston suburbs, put on a silky blue blouse and cream-colored slacks. She brushed her hair and tied it in place with a little bow. She then took Lindsey, her husbands sixteen-year-old daughter from a brief first marriage, for a drive in her silver S-Class 430 Mercedes-Benz.

Clara loved her Mercedes-Benz. She had once told her husband, David Harris, a spectacularly successful orthodontist who had as many as 120 crooked-teethed adolescents a day coming through his office, that the only extravagance in life she cared about was owning a Mercedes. For her, the car was a shining symbol of all that she had been able to accomplish. She had been born in Bogot, Colombia, and raised by her widowed mother. Determined to make a living for herself, she had studied dentistry there before coming to the United States for more training in the late eighties. With her thick red hair and perfect smile and little mole on her left cheek, she looked like a beauty queen. In fact, she had been. She was crowned Miss Colombia Houston in a local contest soon after completing her residency at the University of TexasHouston Dental Branch. I remember David calling soon after he had met Clara and telling me he was completely smitten, his father, Gerald, would later tell me.

Clara felt no differently about David. They had met in 1991, when they were both in their early thirties and working at the Castle Dental Center in Houston. David was not only brilliant when it came to teethhe had graduated second in his class (also from the Houston Dental Branch)but he had a charming, folksy nature, his favorite word being golly. They married on Valentines Day, 1992, less than a year after their first date, and held the reception at the Nassau Bay Hilton hotel, about thirty miles south of downtown Houston, across the highway from the looming Johnson Space Center and not far from where David would eventually open his first practice, Space Center Orthodontics. I found the best, Clara once told a reporter from a Brazoria County newspaper serving Lake Jackson, a nearby community where she had opened her own dental practice in 1993. I found the one God had reserved for me. She put photographs of the two of them in her office, replacing them with new ones every few months, and she talked to David two or three times a day on the phone, never hanging up before saying, I love you. In 1998 she gave birth to healthy twin sons, and she enjoyed a splendid relationship with Davids daughter, Lindsey, a talented violinist who lived with them in the summers after spending the school year with her mother, who had moved to Ohio. No matter how many patients Clara had to see, she always got home in time to cook dinner for her family in their palatial white-brick home, worth more than half a million dollars, in the cheerily named suburb of Friendswood. She had the perfect life, she often told her patients. For Clara, it was always David, David, David, one of her co-workers said. I used to tell people that I wished I could be able to love my husband in the same way that Clara loved David.