With a Bullet

Last September, Bruce Udolf and his wife, Sheryl, were in the living room of their Southwest Ranches home watching the news. A report came on about disgraced Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne, who had just resigned after entering a guilty plea to mail fraud and tax evasion based on pocketing some $86,000 in illegal payments.

In the annals of Broward County politics, Jenne's was an epic collapse. Before taking over as sheriff in 1998, he'd represented the region for 18 years in the state legislature. His career in public service had started in the '70s — as a state... full story >>

Fighting Fire With Fire

His nightly transformation began with a twinge. Then, gnawing and relentless, it consumed him.

At 45, "Steve" was a hard-charging sales manager who'd snagged two promotions in three years. After work one spring day in 2006, he picked up his infant and toddler from day care, had dinner with his family and retired to his office in their spacious Plano home.

His wife assumed he was wrapping up the day's projects. As he thought about her lying in bed downstairs, trying to calm the agonizing headaches that had plagued her since she'd delivered their second daughter the year... full story >>

Gone to Hell: Mental Illness and Harris County Jail

On December 19, 2006, Alexander Hatcher received about $15,000 in disability payments from Social Security. Diagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic, Hatcher was off his meds and homeless, and the money was a dangerous windfall.

He took two friends, female prostitutes, to buy cigarettes, clothes, booze and drugs. The trio traveled to the Downtowner Inn, a motel on the southwest side of downtown. One of the women took cash and was supposed to pay for a week.

Sometime after sunrise, after a night of smoking crack, Hatcher and his friends left the room to resupply. According... full story >>

Morrison’s Mistress

Linda Carter summoned her inner circle to her fifth-floor office in the Johnson County Courthouse. It was fall 2006, and Carter was the director of administration for then-District Attorney Paul Morrison. She wanted to play show and tell with her girlfriends — Brenda Albright, Shawna Chambless, Shelly Hartman and Stacey Trumbly. They all reported to Carter. They were also supervisors in the District Attorney's Office.

Carter named her group of gossip girls the Doll Club. She came up with the name after seeing a production of Valley of the Dolls in December 2005 during a... full story >>

Clifton Childree's Craziness

Since learning he won the Hilger Artist Project Award last December, Clifton Childree has been hoarding discarded wood, ornate headboards, piles of fabric, and sundry cast-off junk from the curbs that line the homes on the outskirts of Miami's Design District.

"I live a few blocks from Churchill's," he says, referring to the legendary Second Avenue bar, "and every Monday I drive my truck around the neighborhood, looking for old wood and stuff in the bulk trash people put out for pickup."

The 37-year-old visual artist and filmmaker has become a celebrity among the... full story >>

Minnesota's largest shelter killed more than 14,000 animals last year. How many were unnecessary?

When Amber was a little girl she would save her allowance to buy cat food for the strays roaming her neighborhood behind the Animal Humane Society's St. Paul location, a place still plagued by feral cats today. As a child, Amber made friends with the cats, begging neighbors and friends to take them in. Every once in a while she would go inside the shelter to watch the dogs in their cages. "I loved the dogs," says Amber, who is now a 28-year-old kindergarten teacher.

When Amber was in college at Concordia University, she and a friend decided to volunteer at the humane society.... full story >>

Artist Betsy Schneider takes pictures of her children naked and shows them to the world

These days, a mom can scrapbook the remnants of her baby's umbilical cord or blog about her teenager's period, and no one will bat an eye. But there's still one place where maternal (or paternal) documentation is sometimes considered an over-share: nude photos of the kids.

Particularly when they're hanging on the walls of a gallery.

From the day her daughter Madeleine was born, Betsy Schneider has performed a ritual that would inspire jealousy in any mom who lost the baby book when her own kid was 3 months old. Schneider's taken what she calls a "Photo of the Day." Two,... full story >>

Room with a Few

It wasn't meant to be one of those damned open houses.

They — the innumerable aspiring Tiger House roommates — were supposed to come for their appointments at 30-minute intervals. During his years in the coveted seven-bedroom Cole Valley party house, Dan Nazarian, aka the Danlord, had been able to keep auditions under control. But this time, some folks showed up late and some early and then some imbecile sewed his ass to the couch and everybody refused to leave.

It's a symptom of a rampant strategy known as be-the-new-housemate. If you can look as though you... full story >>

Out-of-control shoplifting at the St. Louis Galleria. Violent attacks in the Delmar Loop. Is MetroLink a vehicle for crime?

St. Peters alderman Don Aytes remembers well the fears some of his constituents expressed back in 1998, the year MetroLink supporters tried to bring light rail into suburban St. Charles County.

"I thought for sure it would pass, and then someone on the MetroLink campaign made the decision to advertise that the train would connect Mid Rivers Mall with East St. Louis," Aytes recalls. "That pretty much killed it right there. Soon you had people saying MetroLink riders would come to St. Charles by train and leave by car — stolen car."

Ten years later and a growing... full story >>