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Authorities think a man scheduled to die next year may be responsible for other deaths, including a 1991 double homicide in Fort Worth.
Staff writer Deanna Boyd reports on how police connected 53-year-old Reginald Perkins (right) to the slayings and how they think he's involved in other deaths in Ohio in the 1980s.
Read her report here and check back tomorrow for more details.
Timeline
-- Andrew Chavez; photo courtesy of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice
'Panchito' dragged 3 blocks to his death
"Panchito" was a fixture his north Fort Worth neighborhood, known to stop at the Stockyards Tavern, where a friendly customer would usually buy him a Busch beer.
But the quiet 70-year-old man lived an anonymous life, and little more was known about him Thursday, one day after he was run down in the street.
Police said an Oldsmobile Bravada struck the man as he crossed the 700 block of Northwest 25th Street about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The driver of the Bravada stopped, but a gray pickup behind it hit the man again, dragging him for three blocks. The driver of the pickup did not stop, and police were still searching for the truck Thursday.
Police are looking for the gray Chevrolet low-rider pickup with an extended cab and flare sides. It has tinted windows and large chrome wheels. Anyone with information about the pickup is asked to call the police traffic investigation unit at 817-871-7110.
Read more in this report by Staff Writer Alex Branch.
Boy spared severe injury in road rage
A 7-year-old boy escaped serious injuries Thursday when he was hit by a bullet that had passed through a car door during a road rage incident on a residential street, police said.
The bullet did not penetrate the boy’s skin, police said.
After picking up his son from Midway Elementary, the boy’s father told police that he was driving on Milam Drive when an older-model brown Cadillac drove up behind him with two men in it.
According to police reports, the boy’s father said the driver of the Cadillac became upset because he did not move out of the way fast enough.
The driver blew his horn twice, the father said Friday morning. He spoke on the condition that his name not be used for fear of retaliation.
“They pulled up beside me and said ‘What’s up?’, and then I saw the pistol,” the father said.
Read more in this report from Staff Writer Domingo Ramirez Jr.
Ex-officer accused of giving alcohol to girl
A former Grapevine patrol officer served beer and alcoholic "slushy" drinks to a 14-year-old girl and showed her and other girls a pornographic video while they were at his Roanoke home for a sleepover this summer with his daughter, according to search warrant affidavits released Thursday.
Billy Wayne Bradford, 47, surrendered to Denton County sheriff’s deputies Wednesday evening after Roanoke police obtained an arrest warrant.
Bradford was free Thursday after posting $5,000 bail. He could not be reached for comment Thursday.
According to the affidavits, Bradford denied providing alcohol to the girls, saying he doesn’t even drink much.
He is accused of furnishing alcohol to a minor and displaying harmful material to a minor.
Staff Writer Domingo Ramirez Jr. reports.
NRH woman convicted of injury to elderly
A 44-year-old North Richland Hills woman was convicted Thursday of injury to the elderly in the case of an elderly, disabled man who died last year of malnutrition, dehydration and pneumonia.
A Tarrant County jury deliberated less than two hours before convicting Lowesta Halliburton of injuring 78-year-old Richard Hoye, who died May 20, 2007.
She was convicted of injury to the elderly for failing to provide food and water to Hoye, a man she said was her common-law husband.
She was convicted of injury to the disabled for failing to provide adequate medical care for the bedridden man.
Halliburton will be sentenced following a pre-sentencing investigation. The penalty range is from five years to 99 years or life in prison on each conviction.
Staff Writer Martha Deller reports.
Two men wounded in altercation
Gunfire resulted from an altercation early Friday between an ex-boyfriend and the current boyfriend of a woman in south Fort Worth, which sent two men to the hospital, police said.
The disturbance was reported shortly before 5 a.m. at a home in the 7000 block of Lara Court, according to reports.
The woman who lived there was attending to a sick child at a hospital while her current boyfriend was staying at the home, said Lt. Paul Henderson, police spokesman.
Two men, including the ex-boyfriend, knocked on the door and asked to talk to the woman, according to what the current boyfriend told police.
"When they were told she was not there, they attempted to enter the house," Henderson said. "That's when an altercation ensued, escalating to the point where the ex-boyfriend and the current boyfriend began shooting at each other."
Staff Writer Bill Miller reports.
Guilty of first-degree murder.
Jurors in N
ew York City have returned that verdict against Steven Armento, 51, who was accused along with Sopranos actor Lilo Brancato Jr. of killing an off-duty police officer during a burglary.
Brancato, left, who also starred with Robert De Niro in "A Bronx Tale," will go on trial next month on second-degree murder charges.
Armento, who was the trigger man during the shootout, could get life in prison without parole when he is sentenced.
-- Lance Murray
Two North Texas men arrested last week while passing through Denton County with a bunch of guns may be involved in a larger ring smuggling weapons into Mexico, authorities said Wednesday.
Staff Writer Alex Branch reports that Victor Manuel Villalpando of Burleson (right) and Norberto Estrada of Fort Worth (below) were stopped on Oct. 23 by a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper.
The trooper stopped their vehicle because of a missing front license plate. Villalpando, the trooper said, seemed nervous.
In the back the trooper found "numerous assault-type rifles, ammunition, loaded rifle magazines, body armor, 20 ski masks and three loaded handguns."
Authorities later learned that the men were part of an active investigation into a ring suspected of smuggling weapons into Mexico.
"Drugs are being smuggled up here north from Mexico, and guns are going back down there in return," said special agent Tom Crowley of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "It’s a big problem."
Meanwhile, an FBI intelligence report states that the Mexican Gulf Cartel is stockpiling high-powered weapons and recruiting local gang members on both sides of the border to prepare for possible confrontations with U.S. law enforcement.
The regional leader of the cartel’s enforcer group, the Zetas, Jaime "El Hummer" Gonzalez Duran, has ordered dozens of reinforcements to Reynosa, Mexico, across the river from McAllen, the report stated.
"These replacements are believed to be armed with assault rifles, bulletproof vests and grenades and are occupying safe houses throughout the McAllen area," according to the report, which was obtained by The McAllen Monitor.
-- Bill Miller
Can the case of Josef Fritzl get any weirder and more awful?
Now it's been revealed that Fritz confessed to a psychologist that he kept his mother bricked up in a locked room for years until she died. The mother died in 1980, according to reports. You'll recall that Fritzl, 74, is the Austrian man who is accused of keeping his daughter, Elisabeth, locked in a cellar dungeon for decades and fathering seven children with her.
The whole sordid mess was revealed when Elisabeth, now 42, became ill and required hospitalization.
Fritzl told the psychologist that his mother never showed him love and he has blamed her abuse for his past behaviors.
-- Lance Murray
