Word: houston
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...against that frame of mind that Houston's citizens were up in arms last week. For Houston (pop. 901,922), with its booming pace and blooming wealth, has a blemish on its shiny pride: in 1957 it had the highest per capita murder rate in the whole country-about 15 per 100,000, or a total of 136 for the year.* What makes Houston so special? Says one cop simply: "Houston is a city of murder without motive...
...forget the region's colorful, gun-smoking past, anybody may own a pistol without a license (but it is illegal to tote it). All that the most conscientious pawnbroker will demand of a prospective gun-buyer is a "certificate of good character." But the fact is, as Houston Post Reporter John Davis once wrote sardonically: "All you need...
Furthermore, Texas juries are traditionally soft on women murderers, even the one who was convicted in 1955 after she cut up her children, packaged them and stored the pieces in her refrigerator; she got a life sentence. Says Houston Criminal Lawyer Percy Foreman, who in one year defended 13 women charged with murdering their husbands, got twelve off free and the 13th a five-year suspended sentence: "I like to defend women in murder cases. Juries will turn a woman loose on evidence that they'd convict...
...began in rural Illinois. He went to work as a bellhop when he was 13. By 21, he had been a painter, freight-train fireman, brakeman, baseball pitcher and manager of an opera company. Then, educating himself as he went along, he worked on newspapers in St. Louis, Galveston, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. In Austin, his first attempt to run his own paper foundered...
...Professor Pancho" of the University of Texas, has sounded off on everything from the writing of Ph.D. theses ("transferring bones from one graveyard to another") to a onetime U. of T. president ("a flunky of the Laval pattern"). Last week he was off again when a reporter from the Houston Post asked him to say a few words about U.S. education...