Crime Time

Famous Crimes: Widow recalls slaying of constable husband

Editor's Note: In 1975 the killing of Earl "Andy" Andrews, the popular constable from Mansfield, made headlines. His wife, Dortha, survived the shooting that killed him and she recently spoke with Staff Writer Bill Miller about those events 33 years ago today for this latest installment of Famous Crimes.

Dortha Andrews sleeps a little better these days, now that 33 years have passed since her husband, Mansfield Constable Earl "Andy" Andrews, was killed in the line of duty.

But the pain resurfaces on June 7, the anniversary of that day in 1975 when Dortha watched from the couple's car as her husband approached a stolen van south of Hallettsville, far from home in Lavaca County.

Andy, a popular public servant and former Mansfield police chief, was hit by two shotgun blasts.

And then the shooter fired at Dortha.

"It happened on a Saturday," she recalled during a recent interview from the Mansfield home she made with her husband. “This year, the anniversary is Saturday -- the same day.

“So all this week, it's all I've had on my mind."

MARRIED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT

Dortha, 81, said she and Andy married in 1965. He was a former marine who would serve nearly 25 years in law enforcement as an officer, police chief, deputy constable and constable.

Both had been married before; she didn’t have kids, but Andy had three sons, and two of them, George and James, are still very close to her. “I couldn’t ask for better kids if they were my own,” she said.

Dortha didn’t know anything about law enforcement when she met Andy, but he taught her.

“I became a matron-dispatcher,” she said. “I had to take care of all the women prisoners who came in. And then I worked the radio for Mansfield police and the fire department.

“He taught me how to do it all. It was easy and I liked it then, but I wouldn’t want no part of it now.”

Dortha said her husband’s experience and personality made him a good candidate for constable.

“Everybody thought he was the grandest person ever,” she said. “Not one person ever had a bad thing to say about him.”

But like a lot of career cops, Andy was on patrol whenever he got behind the wheel of a car -- always watching for trouble, or someone needing help.

That was his mindset on June 7, 1975 as he and Dortha were returning home after vacationing in Port Aransas.

“He always said he never wanted to stop another car when I was riding with him,” Dortha told a Star-Telegram reporter 33 years ago. “But he did it this time.”

IN THE LINE OF DUTY

Dortha and Andy were northbound on U.S. 77 when they heard a report come over their police radio about a van that had been in a hit-and-run accident earlier in Jackson County.

Andy spotted the van south of Hallettsville and radioed the information to the Lavaca County Sheriff’s Office.

“They asked if he could stop the van and he said he could,” Dortha said in a 1975 Star-Telegram article.

Andy’s white car was unmarked, but he did have a red light and siren, which he used to stop the van 17 miles south of Hallettsville. Armed with a pistol, he got out and approached the van.

“The side door of the van slid open and a man came out with a shotgun,” Dortha said in the 1975 article. “I heard my husband say ‘drop that thing,’ and then I heard a shot.”

The blast knocked Andy backward, Dortha said, and then he was shot again while he was on the ground.

She remembered screaming “Oh, no … oh, no …” and then the gunman fired at her.

“The pellets sprayed and broke the window, broke my glasses, and I was hit in the arm,” she said.

'I BEGGED HIM NOT TO DIE'

The van sped away and she fumbled with the police radio’s mike, screaming for help.

Officers and emergency crews converged on the scene, and Dortha went with Andy in the ambulance to a hospital in nearby Yoakum.

“I begged him not to die … and he tried to come around,” she said.

But Andy was dead on arrival. He was 49 years old.

Two suspects were arrested about 20 minutes later just outside Hallettsville. The van had been reported stolen the previous night in Dallas.

Ironically, the suspects also were from Tarrant County.

And up until then, Theodore Collins, 24, and Kenneth Dunlap, 26, both of Fort Worth, had no criminal records in their hometown, according to the 1975 news article.

“They admitted what they done,” Dortha said during the recent interview, and they received 99-year sentences.

Texas prison records show that Dunlap was paroled in 2000, but no records were available on Collins. Dunlap is shown in a photo courtesy of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

“I figured they were out,” she said recently. “When I think about it, it bothers me, but I try not to think about it.”

Dortha recovered from her physical wounds. A few weeks after the shooting, Andy was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor from the American Federation of Police.

Dortha accepted the award for him and then tried to succeed him as constable, but the precinct’s county commissioner believed it was a job for a man. He declined to support her candidacy; the job went to someone else.

“At the time I thought I was doing the right thing,” she said of her candidacy. “But I’m glad I’m out of it now. Crime in general has gotten so bad.”

'I JUST WENT ON …'

Dortha stayed on as matron-dispatcher for another three years, and then worked 12 years for Wal-Mart. Now she’s retired.

“I just went on and tried to do the best I could,” she said. “I still have nightmares about what happened, but not like I used to.”

Dortha’s memories of Andy, however, are undiminished.

“He was just a mighty good man,” she said. “He was as friendly to one person as he was to another -- just a great guy.

“Of course in my book, he was the best.”

Star-Telegram researcher Marcia Melton contributed to this report.

-- Bill Miller

Famous Crimes: A teenager kills her grandmother

Editor's Note: For this installment of Famous Crimes Staff writer Domingo Ramirez Jr. recently had the opportunity to sit down and have a conversation with Courtney Dunkin at the Hobby Unit in Marlin, Texas. She was convicted of killing her grandmother on May 26, 1994 at their Grapevine home.  Her case received a great deal of attention at the time. This is the first time she has spoken with a Metroplex reporter about her life.

MARLIN -- The young woman sat poised, her long dark brown hair on her shoulders as her soft voice filled a room at the Hobby Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice where she’s serving a life  sentence.

Tears came as Courtney Dunkin talked about her grandmother — the 63-year-old woman Dunkin was convicted of fatally shooting in the head in 1994 at their Grapevine home.

“I’d give anything to turn back time. I just wish it hadn’t happened.” Dunkin leaned forward as she held the telephone tighter in the interview room where glass separates visitors and inmates.

“I wasn’t angry at her. I don’t know why it happened."

Of the 1,293 female inmates at the Hobby Unit, Dunkin is one of the  youngest killers. She was 15 when she shot the woman who raised her and whom she called Mom. She’s now 29 and spoke out for the first time one recent morning about the events leading up to the killing of Betty Dunkin. She declined to talk about details of the slaying.

A Tarrant County jury convicted Dunkin in October 1995 of capital murder and she’s been in custody for 14 years. She will be eligible for parole  on May 26, 2034. She's shown at right in the courtroom shortly after her conviction.

Childhood

Her story is one of a little girl who went to live with her paternal grandparents, John and Betty Dunkin, when she was 5. Her parents had divorced, her father was an alcoholic and relatives didn’t talk about her mother.

It is the story of a girl living in a loving home, but one where grief, depression and running with the wrong crowd became her routine as a teenager.

Shortly after moving to Grapevine, she attended Dove Elementary and was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. School friends would occasionally visit for overnights, but she spent many hours with her grandfather, who owned a construction company and had flexible time for her. Her grandmother worked days at General Motor and prepared dinner when she got home.

In 1989, John Dunkin died of cancer, leaving then 11-year-old Courtney Dunkin shattered.

“I knew he was sick, but no one told me he might die,” she said. “I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it. I would try to talk to Mom about it, but she would just cry.”

Teenage problems

As her grief lingered, Courtney Dunkin entered Grapevine Middle School. She started to wear black clothing and decorated her room in black. Troubles — sassing, tardiness and detention — at school started to mount. Arguments with Betty Dunkin increased and police began to know who the teen-ager was.

“It seems that when we would be questioning some suspects at an apartment or at a house, there was Courtney,” recently retired Grapevine Police Detective Bob Murphy said. “We got to know her name.”

Betty Dunkin’s answer to her granddaughter’s problems was counseling: at school, at hospitals and with family therapists, Courtney Dunkin said.

Betty Dunkin also joined ToughLove, a family support group that seeks to help parents with out-of-control children.

About that time, Courtney Dunkin said, she was prescribed Paxil, an anti-depressant on which she would intentionally overdose on a few occasions. The Food and Drug Administration in 2003 recommended that
Paxil not be used in children because of an increase in suicidal and violent behavior.

Dunkin now describes herself as suicidal at the time of her grandmother’s death and irrational because of the drug and the death of her grandfather.

Before the shooting: Police reports indicate that the Grapevine teen ran away several times in the weeks before the shooting; Dunkin says it was only once.

“I’d miss my curfew and Mom called the police,” Dunkin said. “Many times I’d be home in an hour but police still listed me as a runaway.”

Two months before the slaying, Dunkin was arrested for theft after stealing jewelry from her grandmother, she said. She was sentenced to a year’s probation. A few weeks later, authorities fitted her with an ankle monitor after she was driving illegally and became involved in a traffic accident.

The shooting

On the night of May 26, 1994, Dunkin and her then-best friend, Jamie Hatfield, 16, talked on the telephone about killing Hatfield’s boyfriend, police said.

But the focus shifted to grandma and finding a way to get her car so they could run away, according to court records. Dunkin got off the phone and took two gas credit cards and all the money in her grandmother’s purse.

Then she took a key from her grandfather’s gun case, removed a .38-caliber pistol and took it to her room. Dunkin phoned Hatfield, who suggested chopping up pills and putting them into her grandmother’s food so she would go to sleep and they could take the car.

Dunkin hung up and walked into her grandmother’s bedroom, according to court records.

She gave this statement to then-Detective Bob Murphy: “I hid the gun behind my back and walked into my mom’s room and we talked for a minute and I shot her. When I shot the gun, I saw sparks and it was so loud that my ears were ringing and I felt deaf. The smell was really bad and followed me into the car and it made me sick.”

Dunkin spent the rest of the night at Hatfield’s home, but the next morning Hatfield’s mother sensed something was wrong, according to court documents.

The three of them went to the Dunkin home and found the body, police said. The girls were arrested hours later.

“It all happened so fast,” Courtney Dunkin said on the shooting. “I didn’t realize what I’d done. They (police) wanted a motive and I didn’t know why. I didn’t want to tell them that I was suicidal.”
But Murphy in a recent interview said: Dunkin still “managed to pull the trigger and shoot her grandmother.”

After the slaying

Hatfield was convicted of aggravated robbery in July 1996 and sentenced to five years in prison. She was released July 16, 1999, according to prison records. Hatfield could not be reached for
comment.

Dunkin said she and Hatfield initially wrote letters to each other when they were in the Tarrant County Jail awaiting trial, but they quit after their lawyers advised against it.

When she learned about Hatfield’s pending release, Courtney Dunkin wrote her a letter, but it was returned.

While in prison, Courtney Dunkin -- shown at right during her trial -- has participated for the last 10 years in Jail Babes, an Internet Web pen pal site. The site gave a brief biography, but it didn’t mention the crime. She described herself as
“outgoing, honest, sincere and very open-minded.”

She also has been involved in a prison program for at-risk kids, who spend a day at prison in hopes that they will be discouraged from crime.

Old school friends still visit Dunkin in prison; her father hasn’t been there in years. Her mother, whom she almost never saw as a child, stopped writing to her a few years ago when Dunkin learned she had half-siblings and wanted to get into touch with them.

Dunkin said faith in God has kept her going in prison. She said she keeps a photo of her grandparents, in her prison cell. She takes responsibility for the shooting.

“There was no justification for it,” she said. “I was depicted as cold and unremorseful, but that wasn’t the case. I loved her.”

The 29-year-old killer offered one bit of advice for parents with troubled kids.

“Even if they (kids) roll their eyes, communicate with them,” she said.  “Just don’t listen and then walk away. Talk to them.”

-- Domingo Ramirez Jr.

Famous Crimes: Bonnie and Clyde -- The End

Editor’s note: The two-year crime spree of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow resulted in their notoriety and the deaths of a dozen people. But they would never know the extent of their fame. They were fatally ambushed on this date, May 23, 1934. Staff Writer Bill Miller recounts their demise.

Spring 1934: The Great Depression was in full swing.

Dust storms in May stole 300 million tons topsoil from the Great Plains, including Texas, forcing thousands of farmers to migrate west to California.

Popular songs written that year included the Beer Barrel Polka, I Only Have Eyes for You and What a Difference a Day Makes.

The first launderette opened April 18 in Fort Worth.

But sales of men's caps had declined, and not because people had less money in their pockets, but because the headgear was associated with unsavory characters in gangster movies.

Indeed, the image of the Clyde Barrow Gang had plummeted from Robin Hoods to cop-killing hoods. It wasn’t always that way.

Since 1932, the gang cut a romantic image among economically depressed people who longed to see their own lives get better.

Barrow and his girlfriend, the petite blonde Bonnie Parker, seemed to have a thrilling prescription: rob small stores and banks with blazing guns and fast getaway cars.

The masses remained law abiding, but they stayed enthralled by the gang's daring heists and occasional acts of charity, like how they would take hostages, but then release them with enough money to get back home.

The media eagerly fueled the sensation by publishing Bonnie and Clyde pictures (like the one above) taken from rolls of undeveloped film found by police in one of the gang's abandoned hideouts.

But the gang, blamed for a dozen killings, couldn't maintain its popular image, especially since nine of the victims were cops. Included was Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis in 1933.

On April 1, 1934 -- Easter Sunday -- Highway Patrolmen Ed Wheeler and H.D. Murphy happened upon the gang on Highway Texas 114 and Dove Road, in present-day Southlake. (See Famous Crimes installment, April 1, 2008.) The lawmen were gunned down and the gang fled.

Five days later, the gang would kill one more officer: Constable Cal Campbell in Commerce, Oklahoma.

But Bonnie and Clyde's days were already numbered in early 1934.

That January, the gang orchestrated the bloody escape of prisoners from the Eastham Prison near Weldon in East Texas.

Officials for the Texas Department of Corrections, fuming over the death of a prison guard, wanted more than justice -- they wanted blood.

They turned to Frank Hamer, a retired Texas Ranger captain and renowned man hunter, to put an end to the gang. (He's pictured left in this photo from the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum.)

To do that Hamer knew he had to match the gang's firepower, which included numerous handguns, several shotguns and rifles, and a few Browning Automatic Rifles.

Hamer recruited a posse and procured his own supply of automatic rifles and lots of .30-06 armor-piercing ammo. Then he tracked the gang to northern Louisiana.

But he needed inside information, so he contacted the family of Henry Methvin, one of the escapees from Eastham who also participated in the killings at Southlake. (Methvin would later testify that he was the sole killer of the highway patrolmen.)

Hamer struck a deal with Methvin’s father that if he would give the gang’s general whereabouts, his son’s prison sentence would be commuted.

On May 23, the posse members set up an ambush site on Highway 154, between Gibsland and Sailes after learning Bonnie and Clyde were expected to pass through the area.

They were about to give up that morning when they heard the gang’s Ford speeding down the highway. Methvin’s father was planted on the roadside, and the people in the car stopped to visit with him.

The posse immediately identified Bonnie and Clyde and opened fire, unleashing some 130 rounds that filled the Ford, killing the bandits. The car was well-stocked with guns and ammo, but Bonnie and Clyde were dead before they could return fire, having been shot an estimated 50 times each.

Famous or infamous? Either way, the couple went on to inspire songs, books and a popular movie.

Historians in recent years, however, have uncovered information indicating that Bonnie never squeezed a trigger, which is another topic for Famous Crimes. Be watching Crime time for another installment.

-- Bill Miller

Famous Crimes: J. Loyd Parker Jr., a family tragedy

It was a family tragedy, heaped upon a series of tragedies.

On this date, May 2, 1963, J. Loyd Parker, left, was fatally shot at his fashionable Rivercrest home. A gardener discovered the body in the kitchen of the three-story house.

According to news accounts, there were three bullet wounds in the back of the 74-year-old retired businessman, and one in his neck.

But this was not a burglary gone awry.

Parker, whose family made a fortune in ranching, oil and other businesses, was shot by his son, 44-year-old J. Loyd Parker Jr.

Prosecutors, during the son's trial, characterized Parker as "a man with a black, evil heart who shot his own father in the back."

He would eventually stand trial for killing his father, but not before numerous court hearings and a six-year stay at Rusk State Hospital, where he was committed after being declared insane and incompetent to stand trial.

But the son's military records indicated he was gripped by mental illness 20 years before the shooting.

The information, which was released during pre-trial proceedings, showed that Parker was discharged from the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943 at Marfa, Texas.

According to the records, Parker, who was a private, could not serve because he displayed "brooding, suicidal tendencies and periods of melancholy."

Authorities at first indicated that Parker, in sunglasses at right, quarreled with his father over his mother's million-dollar estate.

Later, however, they said Parker blamed his father for the death of his mother, Clay Parker, in a November 1962 wreck near Glen Rose.

J. Loyd Parker Sr. was driving the car.

The family also endured other tragedies. A granddaughter of the elder Parkers also died in the Glen Rose wreck. Their great-niece was murdered near Phoenix about two months before the shooting, and another niece was convicted of murder without malice in the 1960 slaying of an estranged husband in Houston.

The son admitted to shooting his father in a signed statement to then-District Attorney Doug Crouch.

"I just went by my father's house on Wednesday morning and I went in the kitchen and we had another argument and during the argument I shot him with a pistol I had purchased ... the previous day."

Parker went on to describe how he left the home, made brief eye contact with the gardener and then drove away. He later threw the pistol from a bridge and then drove to the offices of his attorneys, who went with him to the police department.

D.A. Crouch would agree with defense lawyers that Parker was emotionally ill at the time of the shooting and that he should go to Rusk. He pledged, however, to prosecute Parker for murder if he was ever released.

Hospital officials certified in 1969 that Parker was sane; the murder case was unshelved, but with a different crew of prosecutors.

Frank Coffey, who became district attorney in Tarrant County, disqualified himself because he had once served as a defense attorney for Parker.

Criminal District Judge Byron Matthews turned to Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade who loaned assistant D.A. Doug Mulder as a special prosecutor. (Mulder has since gone on to become a prominent defense attorney, whose clients have included Darlie Routier.)

Parker's defense team included one of Wade's former prosecutors, William F. Alexander, who was a classmate of Parker in the 1930s at the New Mexico Military Institute.

According to news accounts of the trial, Alexander did not call witnesses, but instead tried to convince the jury that prosecutors failed to prove their case against Parker.

It didn't work; the jury deliberated less than two hours before they convicted Parker.

But prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

Parker instead got 10 years in prison. He launched vigorous appeals of the conviction up until 1975 when he finally began serving the sentence.

He was paroled two years later.

Parker would return to court in 1980, but this time on a civil matter. A judge ruled in September of that year that Parker was entitled to share in a huge family estate that was left behind by his mother's half sister.

He died in 1985.

But Parker's wife, Ruthie Young Parker, made sure that there wouldn't be just turmoil in the family.

When she died in 2006, her family lovingly recalled how she stood by her husband, even during the most difficult times.

In her obituary, the family wrote: "She was a compassionate and generous woman who gave to everyone in need and loved all unconditionally. We all enjoyed her wonderful stories, her laughter and her love of Jesus."

-- Bill Miller

-- Star-Telegram researcher Marcia Melton contributed to this report. Photos are from the Star-Telegram/UTA Special Collections.

Famous Crimes: The killing of Mae Goto

After answering her front door, Mae Goto was herded into the kitchen of her Bedford home by three teens one of whom was armed with a butcher knife, then ordered to lie face down with her hands behind her back.

Within minutes, then-16-year-old Charles Lamont Duncan pulled the 57-year-old woman’s head back a little and slit her throat. He then held her head back so that she would bleed to death.

It was April. 2, 1992, but Bedford Police Chief David Flory said he remembers it like it was yesterday.

“For me, it was the most brutal killing,” Flory said who was a lieutenant at that time. He was in charge of the investigators on the Goto case that day. He has been in law enforcement for 28 years. “It was one that didn’t make any sense. It started out as a burglary and it ended up an initiation into a gang.”

Sixteen years ago, Bedford and the surrounding Northeast Tarrant County cities were somewhat quiet bedroom communities. Burglaries and thefts were the main problems for patrol officers, but gangs began to make their way into the suburbs.

They jarred the suburbs with the Goto slaying.

Days after Goto was killed, then-15-year-old Joseph Botts and 17-year-old Gerald Kowalk were arrested by police in connection with her murder.

Duncan was found already in jail for an assault in North Richland Hills. They were members of the Hoova Crips, a loosely organized, mostly high school-age Northeast Tarrant County gang.

According to their statements to police, the teens considered several plans to get money for marijuana on that evening: sell jewelry belonging to Kowalk’s mother, rob a pizza delivery driver or someone in nearby Brookhollow Park, or burglarize a home in Euless’ Morrisdale Estate.

The quest for quick cash, police said, led Duncan and his two accomplices to Goto’s home in the 800 block of Rankin Drive in Bedford. It was just blocks away from Kowalk’s home.

Takashi Goto left the couple’s Bedford home that evening after finishing dinner. He went to an Irving health club. He returned about 10 p.m. to find his wife lying face down on the kitchen floor.

The three teens took about $240 and a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey.

Duncan and Botts were certified to stand trial as adults on capital murder charges. Kowalk also was charged with capital murder.

A Tarrant County jury convicted Duncan of capital murder and sentenced him to life in prison in July 1993. A few months later, Kowalk and Botts also were sentenced to life in prison on charges of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon in the Goto case. Kowalk also was sentenced to five years in prison for retaliation. He tried to intimidate witnesses in the Goto case.

Duncan, 32, remains in the McConnell Unit in Beeville while Kowalk, 33, is at the Coffield Unit in Tennesse Colony. Botts, 31, is at the Daniel Unit in Rosharon.

-- Domingo Ramirez Jr.

Famous Crimes: Bonnie & Clyde's days numbered when officers killed

April 1, 1934 -- Easter Sunday -- a fateful day for two highway patrolmen who stopped to check a car in rural Tarrant County.

But instead of helping a stranded motorist, they rode their motorcycles into a barrage of gunfire unleashed by the Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow gang.

There were different witness accounts of what happened that day on Highway Texas 114 and Dove Road, in present-day Southlake.

One states that gang member Henry Methvin did all the shooting, and another account says Bonnie wanted to help the fatally wounded officers.

Still another says she stepped out of the car and shot the two men again.

What is clear is that patrolmen Ed Wheeler (below) and H.D. Murphy were added to the gang's grim legacy of violence.

The gang was known for its stockpile of weapons: numerous handguns, several shotguns and rifles, and even a couple of Browning automatic rifles.

They robbed banks and other businesses with reckless abandon and fast getaways.

Clyde had already been arrested and jailed for a series of robberies before he met Bonnie in 1930. They fell in love, and a blazing legacy ensued.

The media got hold of pictures of the couple after police recovered rolls of undeveloped camera film left by gang members after one of their escapes.

The photos (like the one above) added to the romantic image of the young bandits, but that gradually faded as the body count grew.

Twelve people are known to have been killed by the gang in Texas and other states, and nine of them were law enforcement officers. Included was Tarrant County Deputy Malcolm Davis in 1933.

Five days after the shootings of Murphy and Wheeler, the gang would kill one more officer: Constable Cal Campbell in Commerce, Oklahoma.

But 1934 would also be a fateful year for the lover bandits.

In February, Frank Hamer, a retired Texas Ranger captain and renowned man hunter, was tasked with stopping the gang.

That's what happened on May 23, 1934 when Hamer's posse ambushed Bonnie and Clyde near Gibsland, La.

There are many other important dates in the Bonnie and Clyde time line. Be watching "Famous Crimes" for another installment.

-- Bill Miller

Famous Crimes: The killing of Caren Koslow

Hard to believe it's been 16 years since one of the most-covered, most-talked-about homicides of the 1990s in Tarrant County. Staff writer Jack Douglas was a member of the original team of reporters that covered the killing of Caren Koslow in an affluent west Fort Worth neighborhood and the ensuing investigation. In this installment of Famous Crimes, Douglas recounts the crime and what has happened to those involved.

-- Lance Murray

It has been 16 years since two young men, clumsily wielding a crowbar, broke into a house near Rivercrest Country Club, beat and slashed a woman to death, severely injured her husband and made off into the night, beginning the saga of one of the most notorious crimes in Fort Worth history.

At first, Jack Koslow, right, was the suspect -- in the eyes of the law, the press and the public -- only because he was fortunate enough to survive such brutality during the early morning hours of March 12, 1992, while his wife Caren, also at the right, did not.

But as pieces fell together, it became clear Koslow’s then 17-year-old daughter, Kristi, at left, was the mastermind of the attack, driven by a desire to get what she thought would be a $1 million inheritance if her father and stepmother were gone.

Kristi dispatched her boyfriend, Brian Salter, and friend Jeffery Dillingham, both 19, to do the dirty work.

The public was riveted to the case, featured by true-crime shows across the country, all drawn by the affluence of the victims, the early suspicions about Jack Koslow and the bewilderment that people that young — simple teen-agers before that night — could perpetrate such a crime.

Dillingham, right, an honors student who had never before been in serious trouble, was the only one among the trio to decline a plea bargain. He went to trial, was convicted of murder and executed on Nov. 1, 2000.

In a jail house interview in 2002, Kristi Koslow conceded to the Star-Telegram that she “wasn’t the most likable person at the age of 17. I wasn’t the most wonderful person.”

She and Salter, left, are each serving life prison terms in minimum-security units in Gatesville, neither eligible for parole until 2027. Kristi works as a stock clerk; Salter as a computer equipment operator. He is taking a college course.

Kristi’s mother, Paula Haffke, who so staunchly defended her only child, died of cancer on Aug. 9, 2005.

Jack Koslow, now 64 and the owner of a building supply business in Fort Worth, has never talked publicly about the case. He has played golf with Fort Worth homicide Det. Curt Brannan, the lead investigator who once wondered whether Koslow might be a killer.

Now, Brannan said this week, “I consider him a friend of mine ...”

-- Jack Douglas Jr.

Famous Crimes: The tortured death of Amy Robinson

It was a crime that shocked all of north Texas. A young, trusting, mentally challenged woman tortured and killed by a pair of men who used her kind nature against her. Staff writer Nathaniel Jones takes us back 10 years to the killing of Amy Robinson.

-- Lance Murray

Amy Robinson,the mentally challenged 19-year-old who was slain a decade ago by her fired co-workers, was targeted because she was “easy,” a trusting person who couldn’t fight back.

Robinson, left, who had Turner’s syndrome, was out to make it on her own. She moved out her grandmother’s home and worked as a bagger at a Kroger grocery store on South Bowen Road in Arlington.

She was known for having a friendly face and her killers, Robert Neville and Michael Hall, used her kindness to lure her to a remote area north of Arlington.

On Sunday, Feb. 15, 1998, while she was riding her bike down Division Street, the men found Amy and offered her a ride to work.

They put her bike in back of Neville’s Chevrolet El Camino and drove to Mosier Valley Road, near the Fort Worth-Euless border, just outside Arlington.

There, they shot her with a pellet gun to tortured her. They later laughed during post-capture interviews as they described how she begged for her life.

Neville, who said they did it "just for the adrenaline rush," ended her life with a shot to the head from a .22-caliber rifle.

Neville was executed in 2006.

A reporter who covered his execution wrote that Neville trembled as he apologized to Robinson’s family.

Hall, now 28, does not have an execution date.

-- Nathaniel Jones

Famous crimes: 'Last Great Gunfight'

Timothy Isaiah Courtright strolled through Fort Worth in the late 1800s, sporting two revolvers with the butts turned outward and flowing shoulder-length hair.

Hence, the former marshal-turned private detective got the nickname "Longhaired Jim."

But Courtright (portrayed at left by re-enactor Ron Marshall) also enjoyed the reputation of a top gambler in the city, drawing the rivalry of Luke Short, another renowned professional gamer.

The mild-mannered Short (below) was small of stature, a dapper dresser but a swift gunman.

He honed his gambling and shooting skills in Dodge City, Kan., where his reputation matched those of his good friends, Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson.

But Short moved to Fort Worth in 1883 after city fathers in Dodge City decided to crack down on gambling.

He set up at White Elephant saloon, and later invested his own money in the popular gambling house.

Eventually he ran afoul of Courtright who, as a private detective, was hired by the Fort Worth Businessmen's Association to battle what was considered unfair gambling losses of young working men.

Longhaired Jim asserted that his clients were getting fleeced in a game of keno that was run by Short, and he accused the newcomer of violating the city's anti-gambling ordinances.

Other accounts say Courtright was running a "protection" scheme on local gambling houses, and Short refused to cooperate.

Whatever the reasons, a feud simmered.

Then on the wintry night of Feb. 8, 1887, the two rivals faced each other outside the White Elephant. They walked down Main Street for about a block, exchanged more words, and then went for their guns.

But only Short managed to shoot, and he pumped five rounds into the popular Courtright.

Short was arrested, but never indicted. The killing of Longhaired Jim was ultimately ruled "self defense."

The surviving gambler moved back to Kansas in 1892. He died a year later and his body was returned to Fort Worth where he was buried a short distance from Courtright's grave at Oakwood Cemetery.

The White Elephant was moved to the Stockyards.

The annual re-enactment of the "Last Great Gunfight," as it has become known, was Friday night in front of the historic saloon, 106 E. Exchange Ave.

This report contains information from the Star-Telegram archives.

-- Bill Miller

Famous Crimes: Amber Hagerman's lasting legacy

Amber Hagerman's abduction on this date in 1996 became one of the most sensational, most-covered crimes in the annals of Tarrant County after her body was found four days later. It also likely has had more national impact than any other Tarrant County crime in modern history. In this installment of Famous Crimes, staff writer Nathaniel Jones takes a look at the case and its legacy of child protection.

-- Lance Murray

It’s been 12 years since the disappearance and death of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman in Arlington, but her name continues to draw headlines.

Just last July, Arlington police received what they thought could have been the biggest break in the case.

Authorities in Washington state contacted Arlington police about similarities between the unsolved Amber Hagerman slaying to the investigation of Terapon Adhahn, 42, who is accused of violently raping two girls and killing at least one other.

Though Adhahn had family in the Fort Worth area, police have been unable to link him to Hagerman’s death. Hagerman’s case remains unsolved.

The Crime

On Jan. 13, 1996, Amber rode off on her bike from her grandparents’ central Arlington home.

At some point, a man took the 9-year-old from the bike and into what police believe was a black pickup truck. Hagerman was found dead four days later on the bank of a north Arlington creek east of Texas 360 and north of Green Oaks Boulevard Northeast.

Her throat had been slashed. She wore only a sock on her right foot.

Arlington police Sgt. Mark Simpson, right, who retired last year, lead the Amber Hagerman Task Force, which conducted one of the city’s most intensely scrutinized murder investigations that included thousands of leads searching for a suspect.

Police continue to search for her killer.

The Amber plan

Hagerman’s abduction and death led to the nationwide Amber Alert broadcast system, which authorities say has resulted in more than 200 children being returned to their families.

The Association of Radio Mangaers in 1997 created the program in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in memory of Hagerman.

The thought behind the Amber plan was that a search would begin before an abductor could hurt the child.

The program went national when President Bush signed it into law in 2003.

When to use the Amber Alert

The Amber plan, which initially was to aid children in danger, has been used cases that were not emergency incidents. That has sparked debate about when to use Amber Alert. Under the current criteria, police must answer five questions before they can call for an Amber Alert:

Is this child 17 or younger?

Does the law enforcement agency believe that the child has been abducted?

Is there reason to believe that the victim is in danger of serious bodily harm or death?

Has an investigation eliminated alternative explanations for the missing child?

Is there sufficient information to disseminate to the public that could assist in locating the child, the suspect or the vehicle used in the abduction?

-- Nathaniel Jones