Crime Time

Kwame Kilpatrick faces new indictment

Grand Prairie's most famous resident may be former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, in the news earlier this week for his move to a 5,000-square-foot home while claiming he cannot make his $150 month restitution payments. He has bigger issues to think about now. A new, 100-page indictment accuses Kilpatrick
of kickbacks, shakedowns and witness tampering, a Detroit TV station reports. 

2nd man executed in torture killing of Arlington teenager

The second man convicted in the 1998 torture killing of 19-year-old Amy Robinson in Arlington has been executed.

Michael Wayne Hall, 31, was pronounced dead at 6:23 p.m. Tuesday at the Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Associated Press reported. Robert Neville, the other man convicted in the murder of the mentally challenged teen, was executed in 2006.

Before he was executed Tuesday, Hall apologized for what he'd done and repeatedly asked for forgiveness, the AP reported.

-- Lance Murray

Manson follower denied parole after 4 decades in prison

Charles Manson follower Patricia Krenwinkel, 63, was denied parole on Thursday in California after parole officials said the viciousness and notoriety of the Manson killings outweighed any efforts of rehabilitation in prison.

The two-member panel said that the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969 are "relevant" event today.

Krenwinkel -- who won't be eligible for parole again for seven years -- is the longest incacerated woman in the California penal system, having been imprisoned for four decades, the Associated Press reported.

-- Lance Murray

Life of violent crime reaches back to late 1950s

Lucky or cursed.

Both descriptions have been applied to Michael Joseph Paprskar's life of crime going back to the 1950s in Fort Worth.

Now at age 69, Paprskar (shown right in 1958) is expected to stand trial this year for shooting a man in the back in 2005 inside his former San Antonio motorcycle shop.

It's the latest episode in a half-century trail of blood that includes four deaths.

In a 1970 case (left), authorities say, Paprskar was angry about being sold some bad dope, so he instigated the slaying of two brothers, then ordered the fatal shooting of one of the men's 4-year-old son who was waiting in a car.

Paprskar was sentenced to death in 1970 for ordering the child's death, but an appeals court overturned the conviction two years later on grounds that evidence had been seized unlawfully.

The '80s, '90s and 2000s brought an a stabbing and two more shootings -- all of which the victims survived. Paprskar is awaiting trial on the most recent shooting in San Antonio.

Given his violent past, some call Paprskar lucky, but he thinks he's cursed.

"I'm not claiming I've been an angel all my life," said Paprskar (shown right in a recent photo). "But all this violent stuff -- I never once went and started any fight with anyone. ... Almost everything that happened was in my car, in my house or in my businesses ... I never instigated any trouble.

"I suffered my whole life for it. I paid for all that stuff -- what I didn't do, what I did do and what other people did."

Deanna Boyd reports.

Mother angrily awaits execution of man who murdered her pregnant daughter, grandson

On Feb. 19, 2005, Stephen Barbee killed Lisa Underwood, 34, (at right, with son, Jayden) because he believed that she was seven months pregnant with his baby and feared that she would ruin his new marriage.

After Jayden, clad in pajamas, walked in on the attack, Barbee killed him, too.

Barbee, 42, admitted to all of this and was convicted of capital murder. He now sits on Death Row.

And now, five years later, Underwood's mother, Sheila, angrily awaits his execution.

"I have absolute rage toward him," she said. "I would kill him. I would hurt him as badly as I could, and that is not a secret to anybody.

"People talk about this closure business. I don't understand what that is. I don't think there is such a thing as closure. It is acceptance. You have to finally accept."

Staff writer Melody McDonald reports.

Famous Crimes: 3 young girls now missing 35 years

 FORT WORTH — Mary Rachel Trlica, Lisa Renee Wilson and Julie Moseley went Christmas shopping with a promise to their parents that they would return home before dark.

They never came back.

Today, it's been 35 years since their families last saw the young girls and there are still no leads on them.

But this week the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va. and Fort Worth police again appealed for the public's help in locating the girls who were last seen on Dec. 23, 1974 at the Seminary South shopping center.

Witnesses told police that they saw the 17-year-old Trlica, Trlica’s 14-year-old friend, Wilson, and  Moseley, 9, at businesses in the shopping center. Police even found the girl's car at the shopping center parking lot.   

The morning after the girls disappeared, a letter arrived at the Trlicas’ residence, addressed to Thomas A. Trlica, Rachel’s husband.

The name Rachel was written in the upper left corner of the envelope.

The letter stated that the girls had gone to Houston and would return in about a week. It also give directions to the Trlicas’ car in the shopping center parking lot.

Authorities have never determined who wrote the letter.

Staff Writer Domingo Ramirez Jr. reports.

Toney freed, but he could see the inside of a courtroom again

Michael Toney became a free man Wednesday night after serving nearly a decade on death row for the 1985 bombing of a Lake Worth trailer.

But Toney (above) could see the inside of a courtroom yet again.

The story begins on Thanksgiving Day 1985, when Angela Blount, 15, found a briefcase outside the door to her family’s trailer in Lake Worth.

After she brought it inside and opened it, a bomb exploded, killing her; her father, Joe Blount, 44; and her cousin, Michael Columbus, 18.

Authorities later theorized that the bomb was left outside the wrong trailer.

The case was unsolved for 12 years until a prisoner in the Parker County Jail told authorities that Michael Toney had boasted about the bombing (the aftermath of it shown below).

That prisoner has since recanted.

The case was supposed to be retried because, last December, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Toney’s conviction. The high court determined that prosecutors withheld evidence favorable to his defense during the trial.

The Texas Attorney General’s office got the case in January after the Tarrant County district attorney’s office recused itself.

A November trial date was set.

But the AG's office said it is reviewing "voluminous records" in the case and, "that review cannot be completed under the Court’s trial schedule," according to court documents.

So, the AG's office dropped the case.

But in its decision, the state reserved the right to prosecute Toney later, and there is no statute of limitations for murder.

Read more in this report by Staff Writer Alex Branch.

Famous Crimes: 'Machine Gun' Kelly's final caper

Editor's note: On this date, July 22, 1933, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, who was living in Fort Worth, embarked on the caper that would be his undoing -- the kidnapping of Oklahoma City oilman Charles F. Urschel. This report on Kelly's criminal career was compiled by Staff Writer Bill Miller from the archives of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In 1958, Kathryn Kelly, formerly of Fort Worth, wife of 1930s outlaw George "Machine Gun" Kelly, was released from a Cincinnati women's prison.

That same year, Hollywood released Machine-Gun Kelly, and in the title role was Charles Bronson (right), whose scowling mug cut a striking image of Depression-era thuggery. Check out the film's original trailer on YouTube.

You'll see the main character -- billed as "a savage ... sadistic ... leader of killers!" -- kicking in a door and hosing down a room with a signature Thompson sub-machine gun.

Victims crumple and fall in what the trailer calls a "masterpiece of murderous violence."

But by all accounts, George Kelly Barnes never killed anyone. And the Memphis native -- who later went by the last name Kelly -- didn't have a menacing Bronson-esque disposition.

Photos of the real Kelly (left) show what appears to be a good-natured fellow with an easy smile and wide, expressive eyes. But people who knew him said he wasn't very bright, including his very critical father.

Kelly dropped out of college, and when it became harder for him to make a living, he turned to crime. Many others had the same idea and soon the Midwest of the 1930s became a bloody landscape.

"Public enemies" -- the likes of John Dillinger, the Ma Barker gang, and Bonnie and Clyde -- traded gunfire with police, posses and agents from the fledgling FBI. The violence claimed most of the criminals along with a lot of cops and innocent bystanders.

Kelly joined the roster of infamy as a bootlegger and then a bank robber in the company of some real outlaws like Vern Miller, who collected a pretty high body count of his own. In April 1931 their gang robbed the Central State Bank in Sherman.

But even though Kelly had no blood on his hands when he came to Fort Worth, his wild stories impressed a manicurist named Kathryn Brooks, herself a shoplifter and part-time bootlegger.

They married and quietly made a home on Mulkey Street in Fort Worth, although they did not go unnoticed by neighbors who recalled how the well-dressed couple (below) got around in a big 16-cylinder car.

Meanwhile, Kathryn was spreading the word among her bootlegging customers and associates that her man was a brutal, but efficient robber of banks.

To seal the image, she went down to a Fort Worth pawn shop and bought him a "Tommy" gun.

Kelly may not have fired a shot in anger, but he practiced religiously with his subgun. Historians believe it was Kathryn who came up with the nickname "Machine Gun Kelly." Ever the promoter, she handed out his spent shell casings as souvenirs.

At that time, the typical modus operandi on banks was a quick assault with lots of guns and fast getaway cars. The Sherman bank job, for example, netted $40,000, but Kelly and wife sought even more loot and turned to kidnapping.

On July 22, 1933, Kelly and an accomplice, Albert Bates, barged in on a card game at the Oklahoma City home of oilman Charles F. Urschel. They drove him down to a ranch near Paradise in Wise County where he was kept blindfolded until his family paid a $200,000 ransom.

Urschel was released unharmed near Norman, Okla., and the Kellys took a trip to Memphis. But the FBI was hot in pursuit and achieved one of its first victories by leveraging Urschel's amazing memory to crack the case.

Agents located the farm near Paradise after Urschel told them that he had heard aircraft flying overhead. Air travel was relatively rare back then, so it didn't take long for the agents to figure out that the farm was along a flight path between Fort Worth and Amarillo.

On Aug. 12, 1933, FBI agents, joined by police from Fort Worth and Dallas, approached the farm owned by Boss Shannon, Kathryn's stepfather. Shannon surrendered quickly and he, along with Kathryn's mother, Ora, admitted to guarding Urschel.

Kelly then became the prime suspect.

Agents searched for him in Fort Worth, then shifted their search to Memphis where, on Sept. 26, 1933, they got their man. Busting down doors, they found Kelly with pistol in hand.

Kelly is credited for another FBI first by shouting something like, "Don't shoot, G-Men!" There are different accounts about what was actually said, and one has Kathryn saying it, but since that encounter, FBI agents were frequently called "G-Men," short for "government men."

Kelly and his wife were tried and convicted under the new "Lindbergh Law,” which made kidnapping a federal offense if the victim was taken across state lines. Congress passed the law after the 1932 abduction and death of aviator Charles Lindbergh's toddler son.

A life sentence was Kelly's penalty; he served part of it at Alcatraz but he later was transferred to the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kan. He vowed to escape, but there is no record of him ever trying.

Instead, the easy-going crook earned a new moniker, "Pop Gun Kelly," for being a model prisoner. He died of a heart attack on July 18, 1954, at Leavenworth. It was his 54th birthday. He's buried at the cemetery in the Wise County community of Cottondale. The plot was donated by Boss Shannon.

It's not known if Kathryn ever saw Bronson's portrayal of her husband. She sought no more publicity after her release from prison at age 54, and quietly slipped into obscurity.

 -- Bill Miller

Man recalls boyhood encounter with Bonnie and Clyde

Staff writer David Casstevens has a great piece today in the Star-Telegram about Ray Cavender's recollections of meeting Bonnie and Clyde as a young man.

Cavender, an 89-year-old resident of Midlothian, remembered them as plain-spoken people who he had met and talked with as a youth in rural Ellis County. Bonnie was totin' a Tommy Gun and Clyde was asleep in their car.

The young Cavender offered Bonnie one of the rabbits he had just shot.

To find out more about Cavender's recollections of the famous criminal duo, just click here.

-- Lance Murray

Woman tells police her dad was the Zodiac killer

Daddy was the Zodiac killer.

That's what a Southern California woman is claiming, the Associated Press reports.

The Zodiac terrorized the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s and was the subject of several recent movies, one of them starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gylenhall.

Deborah Perez said her father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, killed at least two of the known victims some 40 years ago, the paper reported.

Perez told police she naively tagged along with her father during the killings. She said she had has given a pair of sunglasses to police that she said belonged to a cab driver killed by the Zodiac in 1969.

The Zodiac was known for the taunting letters that he wrote to a San Francisco newspaper daring the police to catch him. She's given police some letters she said she wrote on her father's behalf.

The Zodiac was never caught.

-- Lance Murray