News from the Lone Star State

[TexasStooge]

2 men killed in vehicle fire

By BRANDON FORMBY / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS, Texas - Dallas police are investigating the deaths of two men found Saturday night in a burning pickup.

Fire crews called police at about 10 p.m. Saturday after they responded to the 2700 block of South Ledbetter Drive.

Police said the bodies were burned beyond recognition and a cause of death will have to be determined by the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s office.

[TexasStooge]

Pipe burst damages Rowlett library

By BRANDON FORMBY / The Dallas Morning News

ROWLETT, Texas - By the time Rodney Bland showed up, about 40 ceiling tiles had fallen, thousands of books were wet and about 2 to 3 inches of water sat in the children’s area.

As director of library services for the Rowlett Public Library, Mr. Bland spent today trying to assess damage and clean up a wet mess left after a fire sprinkler pipe burst. About 10,000 of the library’s 80,000 volumes were affected, he said.

“There are some that will be a total loss because even with the drying that a professional can do and some of the other remedies that can be done, they’re just soaked clear to the spine and they’re coming apart,” Mr. Bland said.

Cleaning crews were assessing damages, but no estimates were available early today. Mr. Bland said it could be a few days before they have a final tally of the number of books destroyed.

The pipe burst between 6 and 7 a.m. today, Mr. Bland said. Once the water started pouring out, the library’s fire alarm went off. The library will be closed today through Tuesday, but Mr. Bland said they hope to open the doors again on Wednesday.

The children’s area was affected the most, though there was also water in the adult fiction area, two public restrooms and near the reference desk. Mr. Bland said he’s glad no water reached the library’s meeting room. He’s also relieved that no computers were affected.

“We’ll get through this,” Mr. Bland said. “The library will reopen. The city manager has assured us that the city will help us take care of the damage and replace the books that were damaged.”

The 15,000-square-foot building opened in 1996 after residents approved $1.9 million for its construction in a 1993 bond election. Mr. Bland said the library, at 3900 Main St., will still allow people to turn in checked-out materials while it is closed for clean up.

[TexasStooge]

Allen: 12 apartments damaged in blaze

By BRANDON FORMBY / The Dallas Morning News

ALLEN, Texas - Allen residents from 12 units of an apartment complex in the 300 block of North Greenville Avenue were displaced this morning after a two-alarm blaze damaged their homes.

Red Cross staff was working with the residents this morning to find new housing. The fire started at about 4 a.m.

Fire personnel said a cause had not been determined. No one was injured in the blaze.

[TexasStooge]

Thanksgiving bombing remains a mystery (Part 1 of 3)

By DOUG J. SWANSON / The Dallas Morning News

The condemned man sends her letters that she refuses to read.

Dear Susan, says one, I am in no way whatsoever connected to the murder of your loved ones.

Susan Blount does not buy this. She believes that the man who writes her will someday meet the endless suffering that he richly deserves.

Mrs. Blount is 60 now, a large woman not in the best of health. She talks about retribution as she stands at Lot Eight of the Hilltop Mobile Home Park, in suburban-sprawl scrublands northwest of Fort Worth.

Here, on Thanksgiving Day 1985, someone killed her nephew, her daughter and her husband. They were ordinary people slaughtered anonymously.

To this day, no one has been able to say why.

The crime against the Blounts was both instant and relentless. Those who survived have learned how pain and sorrow can claw through the decades.

Mysteries deepen, suspicions linger, and nightmares won't abate.

Twenty years after it happened, Mrs. Blount has driven her blue Chevy Impala more than 2,000 miles to be here, and she is sorry she came. Because as she moves unsteadily on the crumbling pavement, she can still hear her dying family's cries.

"You don't recover from it," she says. She means not just the grief but also what trails it: fear, fury, disbelief, despair, recriminations and, finally, at best, a ragged coming to terms.

Over the years, questions mount: In an East Texas prison, a man lingers on the brink of execution for these murders. At least two crucial witnesses who put him there have since changed their stories.

I have been screaming, proclaiming my innocence, he types from his cell, but it has fallen on deaf ears.

He has only the slimmest chance of avoiding the state needle. So he writes Mrs. Blount: I realize I am the last person on Earth you want to hear from, but I am begging you to please contact me.

She will have none of it. "He's going to pay in the next life," Mrs. Blount says. "He's going to be tormented terribly. He's going to live in darkness and suffer greatly. I don't know what the Heavenly Father has planned for him. I just know it's going to be worse than anyone can do to him here."
This thought brings her some comfort.

Like waves of others, the Blounts came to North Texas seeking a fresh start and a respite from tough times. They had driven from the Seattle area in July 1985, four of them in a 7-year-old, rust-colored Ford Fairmont station wagon without air conditioning. Their clothes, dishes, blankets and assorted personal effects bounced behind them in a jampacked U-Haul trailer.

Joe Blount, 44, did most of the driving. He was a big guy – 6-2 and 200 pounds – who liked to watch John Wayne Westerns on TV. An amiable man and a skilled mechanic, he had trouble holding a steady job. He drank too much beer.

Angela Blount, 15, and her 13-year-old brother, Robert, rode in the back seat. She was the happy, talkative one, with long brown hair and light freckles. He was quiet and withdrawn, slow to warm to others. His sister was his best friend.

Susan Blount – devout Mormon, precise, strict with her kids – sat in the front passenger seat, watching the flat landscape fly by, not certain at all about this move to Texas. The marriage had its rough spots. She and her husband were trying to patch it together after a yearlong separation.

The Blounts rented a trailer at the Hilltop Mobile Home Park, just up Jacksboro Highway from Lake Worth. They had no furniture, so they slept on the floor in their bedrolls. Mr. Blount got work at a nearby auto transmission shop.

"He said, 'I've finally found a home. I want to work for these guys forever,' " Mrs. Blount recalls now. "This was the most wonderful sound I had ever heard."

She desired only one thing, she says: "I just wanted life to be stable."

Thanksgiving Day dinner, she hoped, would help create some of that stability. One of the guests was Mr. Blount's brother, Carl "Ray" Blount, whom Mrs. Blount strongly disliked. "Ray had been a sore spot in the marriage for a long time," she says.

But he was family, she says, so she vowed to make the best of it for the holiday.

Another Thanksgiving guest was Ray's long-estranged son, Michael Columbus, an 18-year-old studying airplane mechanics in Tulsa, Okla. He was dark-eyed and handsome and wanted to be a pilot.

His mother had worried about him making the trip to North Texas. Mrs. Blount promised her that nothing bad would happen.

The Blounts had managed to rent some furniture but still didn't have enough for a big gathering, so Joe Blount borrowed some chairs from the transmission shop waiting room. They ate turkey and dressing off plates balanced on their knees.

The day passed pleasantly. Ray Blount and his son even had a reconciliation. Mr. Columbus was so pleased about it that after dinner, he called his mother from a pay phone to tell her how happy he was.

Ray Blount left to go home about 5 p.m. Around 9 p.m., Mrs. Blount went to her bedroom and lay down for a nap.

Robert, Angela and Mr. Columbus piled into the station wagon, and Joe Blount drove them to a convenience store about half a mile away. They bought candy, and he got beer.

While they were gone, Mrs. Blount heard a knock at the front door. "I got up and looked out the window and saw no one," she says. It was the last act of her normal life.

After about 20 minutes, the rest of the family returned. On the top step of the trailer, just outside the front door, they found a black leather briefcase. It hadn't been there when they left.

Angela said it might have jewels in it. Robert thought that maybe someone had left some money sitting on the stairs.

They brought it inside. The three teenagers bubbled with excitement. Not Joe, who had been around long enough to know that you didn't just come home one night and find a treasure chest on your porch. But he went along with the fun.

Angela sat on the couch and placed the briefcase on her lap. With both hands, she tripped the latches. What happened next took milliseconds.

As she opened the lid, she sprang a Victor mousetrap hidden in the briefcase. That completed a connection to two 9-volt Radio Shack batteries.

The battery current traveled through wires to a model rocket igniter, which set off a model rocket motor. That ignited smokeless powder – of the kind taken from shotgun shells – packed inside two 8-inch lengths of capped galvanized pipe.

Pressure built within the pipe until it blew apart – hot shrapnel flying at 2,000 feet per second, about twice as fast as the bullet from a handgun. The same blast simultaneously ignited a small jar of gasoline in the briefcase, creating a fireball.

One neighbor said it sounded like a cannon.

It was, a government explosives expert would later testify, an "extremely violent weapon designed to kill human beings." And it worked to perfection.

The noise startled Mrs. Blount from her sleep in the back bedroom. She thought it was another B-52 making a low approach for nearby Carswell Air Force Base. Sometimes they roared overhead all night long.

She opened the bedroom door and was met with smoke. She walked down the hallway, the floor so hot it burned her feet. She heard screaming. She peered toward the living room. "I could see Joe's body," she recalls now. "It was lying on the floor in front of the TV, burning."

The heat drove her back. She escaped through the trailer's back door.

The night was bitterly cold. She struggled to the front yard in her underwear and found neighbors watching in horror as fire consumed the trailer.

"I begged them to go inside and help," Mrs. Blount says. No one could do anything.

At a neighbor's house, Mrs. Blount phoned her other daughter, Sheri Godwin, in Washington. "Everybody's dead," she said into the phone. "Joe and Angela and Robert and Michael. They're all dead."

She wasn't entirely correct. Fire crews arrived, and an officer directed Mrs. Blount to an ambulance. There, she found Robert lying on a stretcher. His hair was burned off, his flesh scorched, his clothes and shoes melted to his skin. But he was alive.

The blast had blown him out a door of the trailer. The other three never had a chance.

•

Why, investigators wanted to know, would someone bomb a family? The first place they searched for answers was the family itself.

Federal agents pored over Joe Blount's background. Their conclusion, a memo reported: "He made no enemies and was considered to be more or less harmless."

His brother, who had been at the Thanksgiving dinner, was another story.

"Carl Blount is considered no good, a narcotic user, a cheat and a liar," said one investigative report by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "Many people who knew him have stated that they thought the device was meant for him."

Agents scoured Carl Blount's past. They found plenty of unseemly behavior but nothing that would link him to the bombing.

Detectives also took a hard look at Mrs. Blount. "Every time I turned around, they were pointing fingers at me," she says. "I had every kind of question thrown at me. Had I made the bomb? Did I help anyone make the bomb? They always taped everything I said to see if I changed my story."

A sheriff's detective asked her whether she had life insurance policies on her daughter and husband.

"I said, yes, I had," Mrs. Blount recalls. "He looks at me with a look that says, 'I have you dead to rights, lady.' He says, 'How much was this policy?' He just knows, 'Now we've got the murderer.' "

The policy on her husband was for $2,000, and for her daughter, $1,000. "I told him it won't even pay to bury them," she says.

Investigators traced the family's phone calls in the days before the bombing. The records showed calls to friends and relatives but little else.

The Fort Worth office of the ATF sent a query to the agency's Seattle office: "Does any evidence exist regarding possible extramarital affairs on the part of Susan Maureen Blount?"

The Seattle office wrote back: "No known evidence exists in the Seattle area of any indiscretions."

Still, Mrs. Blount believed that she remained the prime suspect.

"Every night, I thought, 'They're going to take you in and lock you up.' I thought, 'What is your defense going to be?' I thought, 'I have no defense. I have no defense whatsoever.' "

Only after she passed a polygraph did the investigative pressure seem to ease. That left her with grief and fear to manage.

"Robert was the sole purpose of me keeping on," she says.

Mrs. Blount and her son moved into an apartment in Azle.

They put their beds next to each other's. "We were afraid of every sound," she recalls. Robert, still recovering from skin grafts for his burns, had continual nightmares.

They were sure that the bomber, whoever he was, would come back to finish the job. If a car followed her for more than two blocks, Mrs. Blount pulled over and let it pass, then made a U-turn.

That Christmas, less than a month after the bombing, she and Robert came home to find a box outside their front door. Just like the briefcase, they thought. They phoned the police.

It was fudge from church.

Detectives also considered another theory about the bomb: that it had been intended for someone other than the Blounts.

Maybe the killer simply got the wrong address. Maybe the bomber was really after Wayland Tim Tortella, who lived two trailers down.

Though he worked as a jeweler, Mr. Tortella, 29, also operated a thriving methamphetamine business from home. He sold automatic weapons to drug dealers. And he was having an affair with a married woman.

Because of that, Mr. Tortella later testified, he believed the bomb was meant for him. Much later, he would write in a letter: "For 14 years I've felt that it was my fault that thoughs [sic] 3 people died. There is a possibility that if I wasn't doing what I was doing back then they would still be alive."

It might have looked intriguing to investigators, but it went nowhere.

Federal and state agents could not establish a solid motive. Nor could they find a promising suspect in the assortment of felons, bomb makers, misfits, Satanists and narcotics peddlers whom they interviewed.

They raided, for example, the Bowie, Texas, residence of man with a history of trading in explosives. They found grenades, gunpowder and electronic devices used in bomb making. "Among these items was a roll of gray and white seven-strand copper wire, similar to that used in the construction of the device used in the Blount bombing," an ATF report said.

But agents could find no connection between the man and the Blounts. He was dismissed as a suspect after he passed a polygraph.

One neighbor of the Blounts, an admitted drug dealer named Darrin Ervin, appeared on the detectives' radar early on. ATF agents picked him up at a biker bar in Lake Worth less than a month after the bombing. Mr. Ervin, then 22, had rented a trailer at Lot Two of Hilltop – six spaces from the Blounts – where he sold methamphetamine.

What's more, he had had a fight with his wife the afternoon of the Blount bombing and had fled the scene. "She done knocked the windshield out of my truck," Mr. Ervin recalls now.

That's when he decided to leave, he says, but not without his guns. "I grabbed a couple of pistols and a box of bullets when I left. I dropped the bullets, and they went all over," he says.

"So there's bullets all over the yard. The front door of my trailer was wide open. You look in the house, and it's ransacked. No wonder they wanted to talk to me."

Agents took him to the ATF office in downtown Fort Worth and showed him crime-scene photos of the burned corpses.

"They were hard-asses at first. They really thought I had something to do with it," he says. "They told me they didn't care if I did it or not, they needed to arrest somebody."

He was released, he says, after passing a polygraph.

If he wasn't the killer, had his drug business made him a bombing target? "I can't see why," says Mr. Ervin, who is now in prison for theft. "I did have a connection that I was doing business with in Arkansas. But the last time I seen him, he gave me a sack of dope. I didn't owe him any money."

Perhaps the most promising suspect, at least for a while, was 15-year-old Mikey Huff of Azle, who had been a classmate of Angela's. There were rumors that Angela had angered him by spurning his advances. Friends said he was a violent hothead who boasted of worshipping Satan. He was a burglar and an LSD user.

Anonymous callers told agents that Mr. Huff had bragged of making and detonating the bomb. His stepfather had found pieces of a pipe bomb in his bedroom. The stepfather also said that two Victor mousetraps – the same kind as the one that triggered the Blount bomb – had been stolen from his kitchen.

But once again, investigators could not make a case. "After an extensive interview," an ATF investigative memo says, agents "concluded Huff was not involved in the bombing."

The trail went cold.

Eleven years passed. Susan and Robert Blount left Texas for the Pacific Northwest, believing that the murders would never be solved.

Federal authorities weren't admitting it in public, but their private reports showed that the case was, for all practical purposes, dead. Each quarterly ATF memo on the Blount bombing said the same thing: "No further progress has been made in this investigation."

In 1996, officials decided to make another try at what was one of the biggest unsolved bombings in the country. A task force of federal, state and local authorities was assembled.

They structured a classic cold-case investigation in which every piece of evidence was examined as if for the first time.

"I thought it would go nowhere," says Mike Parrish, a Tarrant County prosecutor assigned to the task force. "Most of these cold cases do."

A $25,000 reward offer triggered some tipsters. Many of them told investigators to take another look at Mr. Huff.

Task force members questioned him repeatedly. He denied any role in the bombing, he says, but they didn't seem to believe him.

"It was looking pretty bad there at the end," Mr. Huff says now. "They told me I needed to be spending a lot of time with my kids because I wouldn't be seeing them for a while."

In 1997, the ATF, saying Mr. Huff had "emerged as a primary suspect," tapped his phone. The FBI's criminal profiling experts were asked to assemble a "personality assessment" of Mr. Huff.

A grand jury heard testimony from his friends that came close to implicating him.

"I just considered him a psycho," one woman told the grand jury. "He said he had a friend that knew how to make homemade bombs. ... He said, 'It blew the [Blount] house up.' "

Despite a lengthy investigation, the grand jury never indicted Mr. Huff, who today lives in North Texas with his wife and children and has "a regular 9-to-5 job just like everybody else."

But back in 1985, says Mr. Parrish, the prosecutor, Mr. Huff "just wanted to be a badass. He was doing his best to strike a James Dean pose."

That didn't make him a bomber, though, and once again the investigation stalled.

While the Blounts prayed for a miracle, the task force hoped for a lucky break.

They got it when a prison inmate nobody had ever heard of, a thief and a con man named Michael Roy Toney, started running his mouth – the biggest mistake of his life.

[TexasStooge]

Boy's hardship leads him to start blanket drive

By REBECCA RODRIGUEZ / WFAA ABC 8

DALLAS, Texas - Phillip Bunch loves to play as much as any other 8-year-old child, but there's a freedom in his laughter that belies what the boy has endured at such a young age.

Three years ago, the life Phillip knew disappeared with his father's descent into mental illness. A successful engineer, he lost it all to schizophrenia.

"What do you tell a 5-year-old child?" said Cyndi Bunch, Phillip's mother. "What do you tell him?"

After his father delved deeper and deeper into his illness, he walked away from his family and onto the streets.

"We would go looking for him at night to try and find him, and I would take my son to the shelters and tell him daddy could be here," Bunch said.

Phillip asked a lot of questions, and then came the one his mother will never forget.

"I asked my mommy if she was warm," Phillip said.

"And I said, yeah sweetie I'm alright," Bunch said. "And he said, 'Do you think my daddy's warm? And he goes, probably the hardest question I've ever had to answer in my life, 'Mommy, do you think everybody is warm tonight?'"

She hadn't shielded him from the harsh realities of the world before and she said she wasn't going to start now. However, his response to her answer surprised the mother.

"And he said, 'Well, we need to get blankets, lots and lots and lots of blankets so we can warm them all up," Bunch said.

After that conversation, finding blankets for those who need them became Phillip's mission. He and his mother were hoping to collect 5,000 blankets to deliver to the homeless on Christmas Eve. The mother and son have collected 500 so far, and Phillip hopes one will somehow find its way to his father.

"The doggie one, because I think he likes dogs," he said.

Phillip's blanket drive event will be held December 10, but blankets are being collected at any time. Market Street is a grocery store in Colleyville. The collection point is at Market Street, a grocery store, at 5605 Colleyville Blvd. Colleyville, TX 76034 or you can call (817)-577-5040.

[TexasStooge]

Dallas High Five fully opens

By BERT LOZANO / WFAA ABC 8

DALLAS, Texas - There was no big ceremony to mark the removal of the final barricade at the Dallas High Five Interchange.

However, the sound of traffic moving quickly along the interchange was music to the ears of Bert Norton who travels through the High Five at least twice a day.

"It was really bad for awhile, but it's great now," Norton said. "You can just fly through there now. [You] don't even have to slow down."

Construction began in the summer of 2001. The State of Texas spent about $350 million on land, moving utilities and construction.

TxDOT estimated it would take five years to transform the interchange at Central Expresswat and LBJ freeway. But crews finished the project a year in advance to earn an $11 million bonus.

For those who work at the nearby Cafe China, the finished project was a relief. Despite constuction, the restaurant managed to keep the buffet line open and customers happy.

"Must be the food over here," said Harvey Chou, Cafe China's general manager. "I got regulars coming in over here."

But, the four years of road blocks, detours and traffic forced a number of businesses around the area to close or relocate.

"Hopefully a lot of people will move back over here because a lot of business buildings are empty," Chou said.

[TexasStooge]

North Texas holiday travels on the rise

By CAROL CAVAZOS / WFAA ABC 8

North Texans holiday travel plans have begun.

More than 4 million plan to travel by air, 2 million plan to travel by train or bus and more than 37 million plan to travel 50 miles or more this Thanksgiving.

Peak airfare prices for Thanksgiving week took off 15 percent over the same time period last year according to consulting firm Sabre Airline Solutions.

However for many North Texans, travel plans will depend on prices at the pump and fares for air travel.

"We're actually from Austin," said Bruce Jerpseth, a holiday traveler. "We noticed flying out of D/FW was much cheaper, so we drove up from Austin and we're heading to Minneapolis. [We will] be there in 2 hours and saved $400."

Many travelers shopping for good fares said finding the right price is as simple as searching at the right time, and grabbing it while it's low.

"...A deal one day may fly away the next," said traveler Cindy Fojo.

Sabre said airlines scheduled 3 percent fewer domestic flights this year.

With fewer seats, planes fill up fast and give airlines power to limit discount airfares.

And for those who are driving, gas prices have dropped but there are still many hunting for bargain gas prices.

"That one cent, if you look at it in a year's time, it means X amount of dollars," said traveler Alcy Jackson.

AAA said gas prices are still 32 cents higher than this time last year, which may halt some who want to travel.

But AAA predicts 290,000 more travelers this year, which is less than a 1 percent increase over last year. Consumers have spoken, and the falling gas prices have many of them in the air and on the road once again.

"I've got a 360 engine, it needs a lot of gas," said one traveler. "If it hadn't been for gas prices going down, I wouldn't be traveling this holiday.

[TexasStooge]

KERA's Glenn Mitchell dies at 55

DENTON, Texas (WFAA ABC 8) - KERA's Glenn Mitchell died early Sunday morning at the age of 55 at his home.

Mitchell hosted the popular KERA 90.1 FM's The Glenn Mitchell Show for the past 10 years and had won 19 Katie Awards from the Dallas Press Club.

"We are shocked and saddened at the news of Glenn's passing," said Jeff Luchsinger, VP and Station Manager for KERA 90.1. "Glenn was a daily companion for so many in our community. He had a curious mind, a rare talent and was deeply committed to his work. We will miss him."

There was no word on the cause of Mitchell's death, but he had a history of heart-related issues.

KERA will air a radio memorial Monday during the first hour of The Glenn Mitchell Show.

Listeners are encouraged to call in.

[TexasStooge]

Report: Executed man may have been innocent

HOUSTON, Texas (WFAA ABC 8) - Doubts are being cast on the guilt of a San Antonio man executed more than a dozen years ago after the crime's lone witness recanted and a co-defendant said he allowed his friend to be falsely accused under police pressure, the Houston Chronicle reported Sunday.

Ruben Cantu was 17 in 1984 when he was charged with capital murder in the fatal shooting a man during an attempted robbery. The victim was shot nine times with a rifle before the gunman unloaded more rounds into the only eyewitness.

The eyewitness, Juan Moreno, told the Chronicle that it wasn't Cantu who shot him. Moreno said he identified Cantu as the killer during his 1985 trial because he felt pressured and was afraid of authorities.

Meanwhile, Cantu's co-defendant, David Garza, recently signed a sworn affidavit saying he allowed his friend to be accused, even though Cantu wasn't with him the night of the killing.

Cantu was executed at age 26. He had long professed his innocence.

"Part of me died when he died," said Garza, who was 15 at the time of the murder. "You've got a 17-year-old who went to his grave for something he did not do. Texas murdered an innocent person."

Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu, said the panel's decision was the best they could do based on the information presented during the trial.

"With a little extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we'd have gotten the right information," Ward said. "The bottom line

is, an innocent person was put to death for it. We all have our finger in that."

Sam D. Millsap Jr., then the Bexar County district attorney who decided to charge Cantu with capital murder, told the newspaper he never should have sought the death penalty in a case based on testimony from an eyewitness who identified a suspect only after police showed him Cantu's photo three separate times.

On the night of the attack, 19-year-old Moreno and his friend, 25-year-old Pedro Gomez were sleeping in a house they were helping build for Moreno's brother. Burglars had recently struck, so they were guarding the home, located across the street from the trailer where Cantu lived.

Both were awoken by a pair of teenagers demanding money. The older of the two carried a .22-caliber rifle. Gomez was killed; Moreno was shot but survived.

Afterward, Moreno described his attackers as two Mexican-Americans he thought lived nearby.

After a South San Antonio High School teacher mentioned that students were saying Cantu had done the killing, police showed Moreno photos of five Hispanic men, including Cantu. Moreno, however, did not identify Cantu as his attacker and the case appeared closed.

About four months later, Cantu was involved in a bar shooting that injured an off-duty police officer. Cantu claimed the shooting erupted over a pool game and that he fired only when the officer flashed a gun and threatened him. The officer later claimed Cantu shot him four times in an unprovoked attack.

That case against Cantu was dropped.

"There was an overreaction, and some of the evidence may have been tainted. It could not be prosecuted," said former homicide Sgt. Bill Ewell, who oversaw the investigation.

Ewell, a friend of the officer, said the bar shooting prompted him to reopen the Gomez murder case. He sent a bilingual homicide detective to show Cantu's photo to

Moreno for the second time. Moreno still did not identify Cantu.

The next day, Ewell sent out a different bilingual detective who brought Moreno, then an illegal immigrant, back to the police station. Moreno was again shown Cantu's photo along with four others. The officer's report indicates that Moreno picked out Cantu, then signed and dated the back of the photo.

But the photo submitted into evidence at trial was not dated on the back, according to trial transcripts. Moreno said he felt compelled to do what police wanted, even though he knew it was wrong.

"The police were sure it was (Cantu) because he had hurt a police officer," Moreno said in a recent interview. "They told me they were certain it was him, and that's why I testified."

Ewell, now retired, told the Chronicle, "I'm confident the right people were prosecuted."

[TexasStooge]

Death-row bomber maintains innocence (Part 2 of 3)

By DOUG J. SWANSON / The Dallas Morning News

Many women loved Michael Roy Toney, and he brutally beat them in return.

He pummeled a pregnant girlfriend because her new hairstyle, a perm, displeased him. Angered by the screams of one woman – she shrieked as he hit her – he tried to suffocate her with a pillow. He punched his wife for watching a TV show that featured too many good-looking men.

From his lost childhood to the wreckage of his adult years, Mr. Toney's life was one of waste and cruelty. This he admits.

"Anybody can crucify me on my record," he says.

Mr. Toney, 39, now finds himself at the end of the line: death row in Texas. He was convicted of using a briefcase bomb in 1985 to murder Joe Blount, Angela Blount and Michael Columbus.

"I'm not a bomber," he insists from behind the thick protective glass in a prison visiting room. He has an unlined face and neatly combed brown hair. He is small and trim. His prison whites cover the swastika tattoo on his right thigh.

"I've been a bad person," he says, "but I've never murdered anyone."

Is he lying? He has done so many times before. A psychiatric evaluation, in fact, found him to be a pathological liar.

But if he is not truthful about the Blount case, he's not alone. Two witnesses crucial to his conviction now admit they lied as well.

One of them has changed his story many times. Another says he implicated Mr. Toney simply to save his own life.

Despite an extensive investigation, prosecutors never found any connection between Mr. Toney and the victims of the bombing. They found not one piece of physical evidence. No one saw Mr. Toney deliver a bomb.

Mr. Toney says deception sent him to death row. Certainly coincidence and stupidity played a central role, too. The string of battered women didn't help him much, either.

Especially bad for him was his wife, now ex-wife, whom he beat repeatedly. Mike Parrish, the Tarrant County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Mr. Toney, smiles at the mention of her.

"Exes," he says, "they never forget a mean thing you've done."

The Blount bombing, northwest of Fort Worth, had stymied investigators for 11 years when a special Blount Task Force was formed in 1996. Composed of federal, state and local agents, the force labored for more than a year without bringing charges against anyone.

The cold case seemed destined to remain so. But in 1997, a break came out of the blue.

An inmate in the Parker County Jail informed police that Mr. Toney "told me he blew some people up ... by putting a briefcase on the front porch of a trailer house."

Initially, this information failed to excite prosecutor Parrish, who had been assigned to the task force. It looked like another entry in a long line of Blount bombing suspects who didn't pan out.

"I said, you know, 'Whoop-de-do, we got another guy," he recalls now. "I said, 'Who the hell is this Toney?' "

Mr. Toney learned as a child to be violent, and it stayed with him the rest of his life.

He grew up in Cottonwood, Calif., a small town about 80 miles south of Mount Shasta. His father deserted the family early on, and his mother hit the local taverns.

Relatives recall Mr. Toney as a pre-teen wandering the streets of the town with his younger brother, begging for food. Other times they would sleep in their mother's car outside the bars where she drank.

She brought home a succession of men who beat her sons. Young Michael escaped by bedding down in a shed.

One of his mother's boyfriends made him sit in a lawn chair and duct-taped his wrists to the armrests, Mr. Toney recalls. Then the man sprayed lighter fluid on the boy's hands and lit them.

"I must have been 9 or 10 at that time," he says. "It didn't burn but a second before he put it out with a towel, but it still hurt like hell. He went back and forth on my hands, lighting them and putting it out. The whole time I was screaming and trying to get out of the chair, and he was laughing like the devil."

When he was 15, Mr. Toney says, another of his mother's boyfriends attacked him with a fishing gaff, gouging a huge hole in his hip. It was time to get away, he decided. He quit school before 10th grade and left California for Texas.

Eventually, Mr. Toney settled in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford area, working construction and living in a series of apartments with a revolving cast of women. He was handsome, the women say now, and the sex was great.

But the slightest provocation would send him into violent rages. Tammy Reil says he played Russian roulette with her. She was terrified, she says, but he – like his mother's boyfriend with the lighter fluid – was laughing.

Once, she says, he beat her for eating chicken with her fingers. Another time, she recalls, he broke a bone in her chin and shoved her mother around.

"I loved him for whatever sick reason; I don't know why," she says.

Mr. Toney left her for the woman he later married. Kim Toney, 38, lives now in Wisconsin.

"He beat me with chairs and busted my nose," she says. "He broke my foot. ... He was jumping on me with boots."

They had a daughter. He spent the food and diaper money on other women, Ms. Toney says. She finally left him, she says, when she found a welt in the shape of his hand on the back of their daughter, then a toddler. They later divorced.

"Once you've experienced Michael Toney, you can't trust anybody," she says. "His life was crime and deceit and manipulation."

From 1989 through 1997, he was in and out of jail and prison for burglary and theft. He had nine felony convictions in all, one of which was for injury to a child.

Mr. Toney fancied himself a jailhouse scam artist, helping others to concoct schemes for special privileges or early release. For example, he showed one inmate how to fake a suicide attempt by hanging. It got the inmate out of jail, he says.

In June 1997, Mr. Toney – in jail awaiting a hearing on burglary charges – chatted with Charles "Jack" Ferris in the Parker County lockup in Weatherford.

Mr. Ferris, now 52, had been jailed for driving with a suspended license. He and Mr. Toney got to talking about the Blount bombing. They talked in great detail.

Mr. Ferris won his release from jail by telling Parker County authorities that Mr. Toney had confessed the murders to him.

"I did my best to make the story seem impressive," Mr. Ferris later said in an affidavit.

It was impressive enough to launch the task force investigation into Mr. Toney. The trail eventually led them to his ex-wife. Initially, questions about a bombing made no sense to her.

"She told us, 'Michael killing people in a bombing? You're nuts,' " recalls prosecutor Parrish.

But Ms. Toney decided to do some research.

"I'm not dumb – I ran for the library," she says. She looked up newspaper accounts of the Blount bombing. It was then, she says, that she knew she had been there that night.

"When I realized what took place," she says, "it's almost like death to yourself."

Ms. Toney called federal agents and told her story. Her ex-husband was soon under indictment for capital murder.

"God," she says, "has a way of getting even."

Within months, however, Mr. Ferris recanted his account of the jailhouse confession. He and Mr. Toney had come up with a story about the Blount bombing, he said, as a ruse to get Mr. Ferris out of jail.

"Toney and I," Mr. Ferris told investigators, "made up the entire thing."

The trial started in May 1999 in Fort Worth.

Susan Blount testified, telling her story of escaping from her burning trailer out the back door. Her son, Robert Blount, told of finding the briefcase on the front porch, and of his 15-year-old sister taking it inside.

"Angela flipped the latches and it exploded, and that's the last I remember," Mr. Blount testified.

The blast killed his father, sister and cousin and blew him out the front door.

"There isn't a day that goes by," Mr. Blount said in court, "that I don't think about that day."

For Mr. Toney, some of the most damaging testimony came from his ex-wife, his best friend and another cellmate.

Ms. Toney said that on Thanksgiving night 1985, she went with Mr. Toney and the best friend, Chris Meeks, to the parking lot of a propane supply shop on Jacksboro Highway near Lake Worth. The propane shop was adjacent to the Hilltop Mobile Home Park, where the Blounts lived.

Mr. Toney got out of his truck, took a brown briefcase from the truck bed and disappeared into the darkness, Ms. Toney said. Several minutes later, she said, he returned without the briefcase.

They then went to a nature center a few miles away, she said, where they stayed for several hours. While there, she said, Mr. Toney shot a beaver with a rifle.

Mr. Meeks also testified that the three of them were near the trailer park that night and generally matched Ms. Toney's account about Mr. Toney disappearing with the briefcase.

He also said Mr. Toney had shown him a bomb in the briefcase several days before.

Finis Blankenship, a cellmate, testified that Mr. Toney told him he was to be paid $5,000 for the murders. Mr. Blankenship said Mr. Toney told him that they were part of a drug-related hit but that he had put the explosives on the wrong doorstep.

Mr. Toney took the stand and described himself as the victim of a conspiracy. He had learned details of the Blount bombing in prison, he said, from an inmate named Bennie Joe Toole. Mr. Toole, of Azle, had at one time been a suspect but had passed a polygraph. (Mr. Toole confirmed this account.)

As for his former best friend and his ex-wife, Mr. Toney testified, "I believe Chris is lying, and I believe Kim is mistaken."

Many of Mr. Toney's former girlfriends also testified, telling of savage beatings at his hands. Ms. Reil, the girlfriend who said Mr. Toney tried to suffocate her, said she wanted him to die.

The jury agreed, convicting him of capital murder and sentencing him to death.

Television shows to the contrary, no criminal trial answers every question and solves every mystery. The Toney case has its share of puzzles, contradictions and repudiations.

Prosecutors say Ms. Toney was the most important witness. "The person the jury really had to buy to make the case was Kim Toney," prosecutor Parrish says.

Ms. Toney has since remarried, though she still sometimes uses her former name. Now studying to be an accountant, she says she stands completely by her trial testimony.

"If I had any doubt in my mind, I would have contacted somebody," she says. "You hate the thought that he [Mr. Toney] is going to die. I don't wish death upon anybody. But I can't change what he did. He has to pay for what he did."

Ms. Toney, an Army veteran, served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. She says exposure to toxic chemicals in Kuwait caused her to suffer memory loss. "Your long-term memory is very good," she says, "but your short-term memory is bad."

Mr. Meeks provided important corroboration of some of her testimony. But his and Ms. Toney's accounts of Thanksgiving night differed markedly. Ms. Toney had said they went to the nature center after Mr. Toney delivered the briefcase, but Mr. Meeks testified that they actually had gone to the center several days before.

Even prosecutors acknowledge that Mr. Meeks was not much of a witness, in large part because of drinking.

"His Budweiser intake was 18 to 24 cans a day," Mr. Parrish says.

Perhaps most important, Mr. Meeks has now changed his story for the fourth time.

He originally told investigators he knew nothing about the bombing. Then, after failing a polygraph, he implicated Mr. Toney.

In 2001, after a visit from an investigator working for Mr. Toney's appeal, he signed an affidavit recanting his trial testimony. "My testimony about the events that happened on Thanksgiving Day, 1985, may not have happened on that day," the affidavit said. He added that "to my knowledge," Mr. Toney's briefcase "never had any bombing material inside."

Mr. Meeks, 38, lives in the New Mexico desert south of Roswell. He has resisted all attempts by supporters of Mr. Toney to talk more about the case.

But he said in a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News that he has changed his account once again. "What I told in my testimony is what happened," he says.

The affidavit he signed for the private detective in 2001 was false, he says. "I told him whatever he wanted to hear."

The reason, Mr. Meeks says: He was in prison at the time on a drunken-driving conviction – his fifth – and if other prisoners learned that he had testified against someone, his life would be in danger.

Finally, there is former cellmate Blankenship's story regarding the $5,000 contract hit. It came in the second phase of the trial, in which the jury had to decide whether Mr. Toney deserved to be executed.

Prosecutor Parrish said Mr. Blankenship's testimony was crucial to the death penalty because it showed jurors the motive for the crime.

"If they don't know the motive, that bothers them like hell," Mr. Parrish says. "I thought that [testimony] removed any potential residual doubt that anyone might have."

Mr. Blankenship, a convicted robber, had a long history of criminal involvement and of acting as a police informant. A Dallas fire marshal wrote of him in a 1967 testimonial letter: "Due to his helping us, he has had an attempted castration on him by four men. He has had three sticks of dynamite put in his car and had been shot at."

When he met Mr. Toney in jail, Mr. Blankenship was facing two counts of indecency with a child and habitual-criminal charges. He believed that if he went to prison, he would die there. So in exchange for having those charges against him dropped, Mr. Blankenship says, he agreed to testify against Mr. Toney.

Prosecutor Parrish denies that he made any such deal. If he had, he says, "the jury would have thrown rocks at me."

Nonetheless, Mr. Blankenship told his story about Mr. Toney to the court. The charges against him were later reduced to misdemeanor assault. Prosecutors say that was unrelated to his testimony in this case.

Mr. Blankenship now says this about his story implicating Mr. Toney: "It was a lie."

At 73, he lives in a shabby three-room house north of the Fort Worth Stockyards. Skinny chickens peck the dirt out front. On the walls of his living room hang framed photos of Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy.

He uses a walker to move around. He is missing most of his teeth. He stutters.

"I've had a stroke and a heart attack," he says. "If I go back to prison, I'll die there."

He takes out a black leather-bound Bible and opens it to his favorite verse, Luke 11:52: Woe unto you, lawyers.

The lawyers had him in a corner, Mr. Blankenship says, and he had no choice but to fabricate a story about Mr. Toney.

"I'm an old man," he says. "I'd hate to see an innocent man die. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?"

He begins to sob, the tears dropping into the open Bible in his lap.

"I only done it because I was scared I was gonna die," he says. "I can't tell you the things you will do if you think you're going to die."

[TexasStooge]

Sweet! Skateboarders get more spots to grind

Cities building parks instead of chasing teens from public property

By ERIC AASEN / The Dallas Morning News

IRVING, Texas – Bobby Wilson goes through skateboards like some guys go through girlfriends.

The 15-year-old estimates he's blown through 15 boards in the past few years while skating in his neighborhood, down random streets, even at the mall. But he longs for a place in Irving where he and his skateboard won't be shooed away.

Skateboarders like Bobby have been hounding Irving officials for years. In response, the city plans to open a $425,000 skate park by next fall.

Irving follows scores of cities throughout the country that have joined the skate park craze.

In North Texas, skate parks have been built recently in Allen, Denton and Rockwall. Other groups – including malls and churches – are also jumping on the bandwagon.

Bobby can't wait to use Irving's 15,000-square-foot park, which will include features that could make skateboarders drool, such as steps and rails.

"It's about time," Bobby said.

A new state rule that limits a city's liability helped speed the process, said Casey Tate, the city's park planning superintendent.

Irving officials have met with skateboarders to get feedback on the proposed park, which Mr. Tate said is critical. Another meeting is scheduled for tonight. At a gathering earlier this year, one skateboarder said the park "can't be lame." Another said he wanted plenty of space for girls to watch the action.

Nationwide, skate park construction has exploded in the past five years, said Heidi Lemmon, executive director of California-based Skate Park Association USA. About 2,000 skate parks are open; most are city-operated and also get used by BMX bikers and inline skaters. An additional 1,500 parks are in the works. A decade ago, Ms. Lemmon was aware of only a handful in the country.

Leading the way

In North Texas, Allen is among the cities leading the charge. The Collin County city opened its 37,000-square-foot skate park in June. The Edge at Allen Station Park includes bowls, rails, ramps, stairs and a BMX track.

Word spread about the park before it even opened. On the first day, some skaters stayed all day to use the facility, said Tim Dentler, Allen's parks and recreation director.

"It has a reputation that it must be one of the best around," he said.

Lewisville has been discussing a skate park for years and plans to build one starting in 2007, said Fred Herring, the city's director of parks and leisure services.

City Council member Tim Blair said Lewisville needs to provide skateboarders a place where they can skate and hang out. A park will allow the city to keep an eye on skateboarders' behavior. In some cities without skate parks, skateboarders use city halls, schools and other public facilities as makeshift parks.

"Cities in general keep saying, 'You can't skate here, you can't do this,' " Mr. Blair said. "When are we going to quit telling them what they can't do and start helping them with what they can do?"

In Keller, a skate park is on hold because bids came in over budget, said Dona Roth Kinney, parks and recreation director.

An ideal skate park, said Ms. Lemmon of the national skate park group, has 30,000 square feet, caters to beginners, experts and spectators ,and has a combination of bowls, rails and flat surfaces.

Cities are building skate parks because they're trying to meet the growing demand, said Doug Vaira, new media manager for the Virginia-based National Recreation and Park Association.

"Parks and recreation departments are really aware of the fact that they need to" cater to up-and-coming activities like skateboarding, he said. "That's simply what the kids want."

There are about 12 million skateboarders in the U.S., Ms. Lemmon estimates. Many are boys younger than 18, but some fans are in their 40s, and the field is attracting more girls.

Churches, too

The skate park craze extends beyond cities to YMCAs, malls and even churches.

A park opened at Grapevine Mills mall a few years ago and includes ramps, railings, bowls and vertical ramps.

"Pretty much everything known to man is in there," said Bob Cesare, the mall's general manager.

The park has helped increase foot traffic in the mall. Skateboarders are generally well-behaved and haven't created any problems, Mr. Cesare said.

The park reopened in the past few weeks under new ownership after being closed for about a month. The mall fielded a number of complaints from people upset about the closing.

In Burleson, St. Matthew Cumberland Presbyterian Church opened an 8,000-square-foot slab last week. The church built a park after the city shut down its own facility because of complaints about noise, said Melissa Hagler, the church's minister of recreation. She hopes the park fills a void in the community.

Back in Irving, Bobby stood near the future home of his city's skate park one afternoon after school. Skateboarding gets the Irving High School freshman out of the house and keeps him out of trouble. He likes skateboarding because it allows people to be individuals.

"You want to do something that's challenging," Bobby said. "With basketball, you bounce a ball. Woop-dee-do. With football, you throw a ball. Woop-dee-do."

Classmate Brittani Darlington rides her skateboard to get mail. She also skateboards with friends at the mall and at skate parks.

"I'm an adrenaline junkie," the 14-year-old said.

She used to skateboard more often – until her brother's friend threw her board out of a car.

"Now," she said, "I'm just stealing my brother's."

[TexasStooge]

Police arrest Deep Ellum shooting suspect

By DAN RONAN / WFAA ABC 8

DALLAS, Texas - Police have arrested a suspect they think was involved in a fatal shooting in Deep Ellum on the weekend.

J.T. Nelson, 20, was shot dead in Deep Ellum near the Club Hush on Main Street on Saturday.

Before the suspect was taken into custody, two Garland schools were put on temporary lock-down.

Police have described the 18-year-old as a "person of interest" in the case.

The arrest took place at about 9:00 a.m. this morning.

[TexasStooge]

Texas sues Sony over anti-piracy software

AUSTIN, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) — Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott sued Sony BMG Music Entertainment on Monday over anti-piracy technology on music compact discs that can leave computers vulnerable to hackers.

The lawsuit, filed under Texas' new anti-spyware law, alleges the world's second-largest music label surreptitiously included spyware on millions of CDs through technology known as XCP.

It's the first lawsuit filed by a state over XCP, Abbott said. Attorneys in California and New York also have filed class-action suits against the company.

"People buy these CDs to listen to music," Abbott said. "What they don't bargain for is the consumer invasion that is unleashed by Sony BMG."

After a storm of criticism, Sony BMG recalled the 52 affected albums last week. Some 4.7 million had been made and 2.1 million had been sold. But Abbott said some of the CDs remained in Texas stores as of Monday morning.

When the discs were put into a computer—a necessary step for transferring music to Apple Computer Inc.'s iPods and other portable music players—the CD automatically installed a program that restricted how many times the discs' tracks could be copied and made it extremely inconvenient to transfer songs into the format used by iPods.

That anti-piracy software—which works only on Windows PCs— came with a file cloaking feature that could be exploited by hackers, allowing them to enter computers undetected to steal personal information, launch attacks on other computers or send spam.

Security researchers have described Sony's technology as spyware, saying it is difficult to remove, transmits without warning details about what music is playing, and that Sony's notice to consumers about the technology was inadequate.

Sony executives have rejected the spyware description. A spokesman for the New York-based label declined to comment early Friday afternoon but said he planned to release a statement later that day.

After researchers said the label's suggested method for removing the program widened the security hole the original software created, Sony BMG said Friday it would let customers who had already purchased CDs to mail them back, postage-free, for a replacement. Sony BMG also agreed to send customers a link to download digital versions of the tunes.

The spyware law that the Texas Legislature passed earlier this year makes it illegal to change the name or location of computer software to prevent the owner from locating and removing it. It also is illegal to create randomized or intentionally deceptive file names or director folders.

The law allows the state to recover up to $100,000 in damages for each violation. Abbott said there were at least thousands of violations, and that any money recovered would go to the state's general revenue fund.

Tom Kelley, a spokesman for the attorney general, said Abbott also is preparing to amend the lawsuit to accuse Sony of violating the state's deceptive trade practices law, which would allow individual consumers to receive restitution. Kelley did not know when the new version would be filed.

"Sony BMG has every right to protect its copyrighted music," Abbott said. "I also believe, however, that Sony doesn't have a right to invade your computer and invade your privacy by hiding secret files on your computer."

[TexasStooge]

War protesters sue over camping ban

WACO, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) -- Three war protesters today sued McLennan County over traffic-restricting ordinances near President Bush's ranch.

The federal suit filed in Waco claims two new ordinances banning roadside parking and camping infringe on their right to protest by the ranch near Crawford.

The suit seeks unspecified damages and an injunction to block the laws.

County leaders say the ordinances are meant to prevent another traffic nightmare.

The plaintiffs are veterans Richard Underhill and Benjamin Hart Viges, and Sherry Glover, whose son-in-law is serving in Iraq.

All three participated in last summer's protest near Bush's ranch led by Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son died in Iraq in 2004.

Later, county commissioners approved two ordinances that ban parking on parts of 14 roads near the ranch -- roughly a seven-mile radius -- and bar camping in any county ditch.

[TexasStooge]

Texas horses get MRIs

By JANET ST. JAMES / WFAA ABC 8

IRVING, Texas - They're high profile athletes worth a ton of money.

But two weeks ago, one eight-year-old thoroughbred jumper came up lame.

Beau is about to have a cutting edge procedure, before only available to people.

"We can't see a tendon with an x-ray, but we can see it with an MRI," says veterinarian, Dr. Jake Hersman.

But maneuvering this 1,000 pound equine patient into that tiny MRI tunnel is a colossal task that takes all hands on deck.

"He's so long, we have to put the hobbles down here so he can clear the table," added Dr. Hersman.

Animal Imaging in Las Colinas is the only veterinary clinic in Texas with a MRI machine fit for a horse.

The scan costs $1,500 - money well spent for owners of these expensive jocks.

"It's not any different from a high-profile human athlete that has an injury. There's no limit to the diagnostic efforts they would do to understand when that athlete can perform again and that's what we think we can do here," said Dr. Hersman.

Hundreds of images pinpointed Beau's problem in seconds.

"That tendon is ripped. And so is this one," he added.

These answers that can help get him back on his hooves and jumping again.

[TexasStooge]

Authorities on holiday watch for ID thieves

By KARIN KELLY / WFAA ABC 8

GRAPEVINE, Texas - The year's busiest shopping day is coming up Friday and some shoppers are worrying about more than spending too much money.

It's estimated that one out of seven Americans has had a credit card stolen, and ten percent of identity theft victims said it happened in the weeks leading up to the Christmas holiday.

The Grapevine Police Department hopes to protect consumers during the holiday season after the department bought a second SkyWatch, which is a mobile lift that allows officers to zoom in on thieves out to steal identities as well as packages.

Most shoppers at the Grapevine Wal-Mart don't know they are under surveillance.

"I can see people from here very clearly," said a Grapevine official.

"It's sitting right there," "It would take someone half a second to grab that and go."

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States.

While many consumers believe they are more vulnerable to identity theft online, the Tarrant County District Attorney reports an increase in retail identity theft.

Grapevine merchant Sally Bultmann is careful with her customers' receipts.

"I shred them all," Bultmann said.

However, the District Attorney's office said it is handling more cases where store clerks and restaurant waiters have stolen or skimmed credit or debit numbers.

"Is it a worry, absolutely," said Mike Easley, a Grapevine restaurant owner. "...The people we try to hire here are the people I try to personally know."

Identity theft experts urge consumers to take a moment before shopping and clean their wallets, taking only the credit or debit cards they need for that trip and leaving others at home. Also, check statements as soon as they arrive for fraudulent purchases.

If you're a victim of identity theft, call the police immediately. Contact the police department in the city where you live or where the offense occurred.

[TexasStooge]

Deputies punished in prison escape

HOUSTON, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) - One deputy has been fired and eight others disciplined for allowing a death row inmate to stroll out the front door of a jail in downtown Houston this month, an official said Monday.

Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said Monday he doesn't think Charles V. Thompson had any outside help and blames employee error for allowing the 35-year-old murderer to escape Nov. 3. He was caught three days later in Shreveport, La.

"It was our error. It has nothing to do with policies and procedures," Thomas said. "If the correct procedures had been followed, this wouldn't have happened."

One deputy retired rather than face discipline, Thomas said. Punishment for the others ranged from a letter of reprimand to 10 days suspension without pay.

Thompson escaped a week after he was resentenced to death for the 1998 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.

Thompson told investigators he had been planning his escape for up to two years, the sheriff said.

He smuggled a key from the state prison system to slip out of his handcuffs, ditched his orange prison jumpsuit for the clothes he wore to court, then waved a fake ID badge as he talked his way past at least four deputies and walked out the front door, Thomas said.

"He was a very cunning individual," the sheriff said.

[rainstorm]

Plano student chosen as Rhodes Scholar

PLANO, Texas (WFAA ABC 8/AP) - Two Texans were among the 32 college students selected Sunday as Rhodes Scholars for 2006.

The scholars, chosen from 903 applicants who were endorsed by 333 colleges and universities across the country, will enter Oxford University in England next October. The scholarships, the oldest of the international study awards available to American students, provide two or three years of study at Oxford.

Jeffrey A. Miller of Plano attends Princeton University, where he is majoring in English and pursuing a certificate in creative writing. Miller also is working on a novel and plans to pursue a career as a writer and a professor.

Lakshmi Krishnan, of Sugar Land, is currently writing her honors thesis on vampires and blood contagion in the 19th century novel at Wake Forest University, the scholarship trust said.

The senior, who enjoys karaoke and swimming, was president of her campus Amnesty International chapter and recently interned in the Health Action AIDS Campaign at Physicians for Human Rights.

A student at Rice University was also selected. Noorain F. Kahn, a senior from Grand Rapids, Mich., is writing her thesis on issues relating to the veiling of Muslim women and is an active campus leader, the trust said.

Rhodes Scholarships were created in 1902 by the will of British philanthropist Cecil Rhodes. Winners are selected on the basis of high academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership potential and physical vigor, among other attributes.

The American students will join an international group of scholars selected from 13 other nations around the world. Approximately 85 scholars are selected each year.

With the elections announced Sunday, 3,078 Americans have won Rhodes Scholarships, representing 307 colleges and universities.

The value of the Rhodes Scholarship varies depending on the field of study. The total value averages about $40,000 per year.

congratulations

[TexasStooge]

On the front line at Parkland

New exhibit goes behind the scenes at hospital that JFK changed forever

By DAVID FLICK / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS, Texas - With an efficiency that comes from 42 years of practice, Ronald Jones patiently recites the story of his role on Nov. 22, 1963.

How, as chief surgery resident at Parkland Memorial Hospital's emergency room, he was one of four doctors who worked on a stricken President John F. Kennedy.

How the small emergency room was so crowded with doctors, nurses and security personnel that he couldn't get to the glove tray and had to work with his bare hands.

How, six minutes after the arrival of the president, Kennedy was hooked up to an EKG machine. The reading was flat, and the doctors knew then that there was no hope of recovery.

"I don't mind retelling the story," said Dr. Jones, 73, now chief of surgery at Baylor University Medical Center. "The only time I don't like it is when you're having dinner out somewhere and someone asks you to tell them about it, and they go on asking you questions for an hour."

Requests to retell his story become more frequent in November, and this year more than most. The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the presidential assassination with a special exhibit on Parkland's role in the drama.

The remembrance includes an exhibit in the museum's lobby that will feature photos, oral-history tapes and artifacts of the scene at Parkland, where the president was taken after the shooting. The exhibit officially opens to the public today and will be on display for up to a year.

Though the scene at Parkland was among the most dramatic moments of that long-ago weekend, it is one of the least remembered. That's one reason museum officials picked the topic.

In part, the obscurity may be that much of the drama took place outside public view, and – though the details were tragic – they were not sensational.

"I don't know that there was ever any controversy about the treatment of either the president or Gov. [John] Connally," who was wounded in the shooting, said Gary Mack, the museum's curator. "I think everyone agrees the doctors did their job quite well."

Enough so that Parkland has gained a national reputation as a trauma center.

"I think it gave Parkland some notoriety it never had before," said Dr. Phillip Williams Jr., a neurosurgeon who was an intern at Parkland in November 1963. "Several of the most prominent doctors were given national honors."

The experience also changed some hospital procedures, Dr. Jones said.

News of the assassination overwhelmed the Parkland phone lines. Now emergency rooms have red hot lines that ensure doctors can always call out. Procedures for handling the media were put in place, and planning for VIP visits now routinely includes preparing for medical emergencies, he said.

Mr. Mack said former Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry once told him that moments after the 1963 assassination, the driver of the presidential limousine asked the chief, whose car had pulled alongside the presidential limousine, for directions to Parkland.

"Curry started to give directions and then – and years later, I could still hear the frustration in his voice – he said he told them, 'Just follow me,' and off they went," Mr. Mack said.

Dr. Williams said the emergency room was not chaotic after the arrival of the president and Mr. Connally. The medical personnel pursued their jobs calmly and professionally.

Such was not the case in the adjacent hallways, he said.

"The Secret Service didn't know who the FBI people were, and the FBI didn't know who the Secret Service was," Dr. Williams recalled.

Staff members and local officials were challenged by both. When the Dallas county medical examiner insisted that the law required that the bodies of all homicide victims – including that of the president – be autopsied, he was quickly surrounded by federal security officers, and the president's body was whisked to Dallas Love Field, Dr. Williams recalled.

Two days later, Dr. Williams and Dr. Jones were on duty early Sunday morning when they received another emergency call. Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been accused of killing the president, had been shot and was on his way to the Parkland emergency room.

This time, there was more security than there had been when the president was brought to the hospital, Dr. Williams said. It was a historic moment, but for a hospital with long experience in treating victims of violence, the medical procedures were routine.

"It was a gunshot wound to the abdomen," Dr. Williams said. "We see these all the time."

[TexasStooge]

Cities hope to gobble up used fryer oil

By JAKE BATSELL / The Dallas Morning News

They induce naps, expand waistlines and provide weeks of leftover sandwiches.

And this year, Thanksgiving turkeys also can help power diesel trucks as part of a new regionwide recycling program.

Plano, Lewisville and Allen are among the North Texas cities looking to keep residents' turkey fryer oil out of drains and sewer systems. The cities are collecting used cooking grease and donating it to a new Denton plant that converts such oil into biodiesel fuel.

"This is the time of year when everybody's using it," said Shannon Unruh of Plano's household chemical reuse program. "So it's just providing an opportunity for them to discard it properly."

Cities routinely dispose of residents' used cooking oil by turning it over to collection centers that charge a fee. But Biodiesel Industries Inc. – which in March opened a renewable fuel plant with the city of Denton – has offered to pick up cities' used fry oil for free.

The company needs used cooking oil, virgin vegetable oil and animal fat to produce biodiesel, a biodegradable alternative to petroleum diesel. Its plant produces fuel for Denton's fleet of garbage trucks, buses and other city vehicles.

Biodiesel Industries gathers used oils and grease from about 60 area restaurants. Earlier this year, in anticipation of the holiday season, the company approached the North Central Texas Council of Governments and offered free pickup for member cities.

"Grease is one of the biggest culprits of clogging up our municipal sewage systems, and it's one of the hardest things to get unclogged," said Biodiesel Industries spokesman Blake Morgan.

Fried turkeys produce a glut of household cooking grease during the holidays. In Allen, where residents recycled 59 gallons of used cooking oil last year, more than half – 31 gallons – came in December, said Donna Kliewer, the city's waste services manager.

In Plano and Allen, residents can call their cities to schedule a curbside pickup. Other participating cities, such as Lewisville, Denton and Fort Worth, provide collection sites where residents can drop off grease at designated times.

Pouring cooking oil into sinks or storm drains can cause plumbing problems as well as pollute creeks and streams. Household grease can be recycled year-round via most cities' programs, and Mr. Morgan said organizers hope the holiday turkey program will "make it a norm" for those who participate.

It's also another boost in visibility for biodiesel, which drew attention this year when Carl's Corner truck stop south of Dallas began selling "BioWillie" fuel in a venture with singer Willie Nelson.

Lisa Weaver, Lewisville's environmental programs coordinator, said that when most people recycle, they put their bags on the curb and have no idea where the contents wind up.

But with this program, Ms. Weaver said, "they can actually know that in a matter of weeks, it will be fueling a vehicle right here in Denton County."
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HOW IT OCCURS:

Some North Texas cities are collecting residents' used turkey fryer oil during the holidays and donating it to Biodiesel Industries Inc., which makes biodiesel fuel at its Denton plant. Here's how the company converts cooking grease into fuel:

A screening system removes large chunks from used vegetable oil.

The oil is heated in holding tanks to remove water and particulates.

In other tanks, a catalyst is added to the oil that breaks it up over a few hours into 10 percent glycerin and 90 percent biodiesel fuel.

The biodiesel is moved to holding tanks for more polishing, and additives are introduced.

The fuel is distributed to fleets and filling stations around the region.
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WHAT TO DO AFTER MEAL:

Several dozen North Texas cities take part in regional collection programs through the Fort Worth Environmental Collection Center (817-871-5257) and the Dallas Area Household Hazardous Waste Network (214-553-1765). Used cooking oil should be stored in a plastic container with a screw-top lid:

In Plano, call 972-769-4150 to schedule a pickup appointment.

In Allen, call 214-509-4500 to schedule a pickup appointment.

Lewisville will collect used cooking oil from 9 a.m. to noon Dec. 10 at the Kealy Operations Center, 1100 N. Kealy St. Call 972-219-3503 for more information.

Denton collects used fry oil at the city landfill during regular business hours. Call 940-349-8420 for more information.