The Longest Ride of His Life
When Randall Adams was sentenced to death ten years ago, the Dallas community thought a cop killing had been put to rest. But it hasn’t.
Gary Cartwright earned his BA in journalism at Texas Christian University. He had a distinguished career as a newspaper reporter and as a freelance writer, contributing stories to such national publications as Harper’s, Life, and Esquire. He was a senior editor at Texas Monthly for 25 years, until his retirement in 2010 at age 76. He died in 2017.
Cartwright was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 1986 in the reporting excellence category. He was the recipient of a Dobie-Paisano fellowship and won the Texas Institute of Letters Stanley Walker award for journalism and the Carr P. Collins Award for nonfiction. He won the 1989 Press Club of Dallas Katie Award for best magazine news story. He also received the 2005 Headliner Club of Austin award for best magazine story. Cartwright wrote several books, including Blood Will Tell, Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter, Dirty Dealing, Galveston: A History of the Island, and Heart Wiseguy, a memoir published in 1998. He cowrote three movie scripts, for J. W. Coop (Columbia, 1972); Pair of Aces (CBS TV, 1990), which he also coproduced; and Pancho, Billy and Esmerelda, which he coproduced for his own production company in 1994. He also coproduced Another Pair of Aces for CBS. Blood Will Tell was adapted by CBS TV as a four-hour miniseries in 1994.
When Randall Adams was sentenced to death ten years ago, the Dallas community thought a cop killing had been put to rest. But it hasn’t.
When I was growing up, Arlington didn’t have air conditioning or Six Flags. But it did have Albert’s Pool Hall and twenty-cent Jax beer, and that made all the difference.
Nobody could stop San Antonio’s killer cop—except another cop.
I was curious when I found that three of my friends had delved into the mysteries of psychic surgery. After three “bloody operations” of my own, I knew what it was all about. About $30 a minute.
The residents of San Antonio’s King William Historic District saved their neighborhood from bums, bulldozers, and bogus bay windows. Now, if they can only save it from themselves.
The solution politicians fear.
When Jimmy Lee, an unrepentant troublemaker, felt he had taken one insult too many from the powerful Fredeman family, he called in the law. The results of that action have exposed decades of larceny and corruption in Port Arthur and threaten a Gulf Coast empire.
A turf battle over shrimp on the coast; a nominee for the meanest man in Houston; a former Cowboy’s reflections on why athletes go broke.
In a small East Texas town a black principal and a white coach loved the same woman. First came the gossip. Next came the strange letters. And then there was a murder.
Starting with his alma mater and using little more than charm, Robert Hicks conned the college fundraising industry out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. His name is mud at A&M.
The dreamiest of the practical decisions.
My pack trip in Mexico’s Sierra del Carmen wasn't exactly the Gray Line Tour.
Can gas become oil? Can a Lubbock institution become an Austin one? Can preservation become exploitation? Can Houston become Austinized? Can Amarillo escape Pottergate?
“When the cowboys on the 06 ranch talked about losing a way of life, they often pointed to their neighbor, Clayton Williams, as an example of what they meant. He was a millionaire and an oilman, and he represented everything they hated.”
They told me alligators don’t eat people. But when I found myself face to face with one in a dark East Texas swamp, I hoped they’d told him too.
Son of a gun, they've got great food on the bayou.
What is it that makes them dance across the desert night? A trick of physics—or something stranger?
Coming to grips with Al Lipscomb, Dallas critic turned city councilman; remembering the clip joints along Fort Worth’s infamous outlaw alley; flipping for San Angelo, a honey of a West Texas town; taking a bizarre trip through Texas on Gary Hart’s press plane.
Gary Bradley, a hot young land speculator in Austin, was in the middle of a $50 million deal when he ran into an outraged environmental movement and a lobbyist with some powerful clients. The fight was on.
The best local news programs in Texas make big bucks for their stations, but so do the worst ones. Here’s how they stack up.
Local TV news has as much to do with show biz as with journalism. Unfortunately, most viewers take it seriously.
And I’m telling you, if you can’t batter it, fry it, spike it with chiles, or bathe it in buttermilk, it’s not worth your time.
The end of the Chagra family’s drug empire, a few words on murderer-for-hire Charles Harrelson, and the most incriminating tapes since Watergate.
Every parent with a teenage kid knows the fears: drinking, drugs, and rebellion. For the Cartwrights, those fears all came true.
The life—promising beginning, overripe middle, bloody end—of Lee Chagra, the biggest drug lawyer in El Paso.
It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t cheap. But was it justice?
Bob Doherty was a Texas ranger who believed in the myth of the Old West; Greg Ott was a college dope dealer, a child of the sixties. When they met, it destroyed both their lives.
It was Memorial Day weekend and the pickings were slim. Most of the ships that normally would have been in port lay anchored in Galveston Bay so they wouldn’t have to pay time and a half to longshoremen. The old longshoreman they called Goat made his rounds, cadging drinks and looking
The Texas Rangers are spending their way to an American League pennant—or bankruptcy.
Amarillo millionaire Stanley Marsh 3 couldn’t believe his own good fortune—the Cullen Davis murder trial was coming to town.
Praise the Lord for gentle creatures and pass the ammunition.
You don’t have to be crazy to attend Texas-OU Weekend, but it helps.
The most popular club at the Colonial Golf Tournament is the one with barstools.
The Baja wilderness isn’t a great place to confront one’s own neuroses, but it’s an even worse place to confront someone else’s.
Forget all those myths about poverty and welfare. This family is real and they live it.
Profile of a society murder and the woman who lived to tell about it.
The life and times of Candy Barr—the woman who made headlines by always being in the wrong place at the right time.
Don’t blame Darrell Royal for all those orange toilet seats.
Not all the action was on the field at Super Bowl X.
A real-life detective caper, complete with surprise ending.
If you thought you knew, you were probably wrong.
Was the death of the Fort Worth Press murder or euthanasia?
Ringside as two dogs—father and son—fight to the death.
He may have pleased the court, but what about himself?
A rodeo is an anachronism, like javelin throwing: but its bumps, bruises, and brawls are real.
How do you find a folksy town of 7,500 people 20 years later in a sprawling city of 110,000?
Those who enforce our narcotics laws often use the stuff themselves.
Behind the mask is a man of God, a man devoted to the all-American goal of winning the all-American game as few have done before him.
Old Glory is a long way from Madison Avenue, and Bigun Bradley probably knew it.
Why the best runner in pro football ran right out of the game.