Lufkin

College Football: National Signing Day 2013, A Decade Of Cautionary Tales

Beginning bright and early Wednesday morning, 18-year-old football players far and wide will finalize in writing their plans on where they will ply their trade for the next three to five years, causing high blood pressure in adults three times their age coast to coast and dragging the fax machine in ... More >>

Sashoun Denicholas Brown: Tries to Avoid Arrest by Hiding in a Plastic Children's Playhouse

When you are on the run from police, you have to think fast. There isn't time to sit around and make plans. First, you need to run. Second, you need to hide. It's a lot like hide and seek, but instead of being forced to be the seeker if caught, you go to jail where you play an altogether different v ... More >>

Texas Crimes of the Year, 2012

As it turns out, Texans indulged in all seven of the deadly sins.

Krystal Cook, East Texas Firebomber, Given Ten Years Probation

A 21-year-old Diboll woman arrested late last year in connection with the firebombing of a rural home was convicted and given ten years probation on Wednesday. Cook acted as the lookout and getaway driver for 24-year-old Justin Benson who filled a bottle with flammable liquid, lit a fuse, and tosse ... More >>

Billy Fred Wray Jr.: East Texas Joker / Satan Lookalike Pleads Guilty to Beating Ex-Fiancee

Unless you have a thing for ex-cons who look exactly like a combination of the Joker and Satan, it's hard to understand why someone would want to tie the knot with Billy Fred Wray Jr. Especially when you read that this Henderson County Hellion has a history of associating with meth-heads, fighting w ... More >>

''Unpremeditated Natures: Russ Havard and David McClain''

In Memoriam: The Daily New Orleans Times-Picayune

And so it has come to pass: an venerable and award-winning major metropolitan daily has ceased publishing every day. Last week, Newhouse Newspapers announced that this fall, their new acquisition, the 175-year-old New Orleans Times-Picayune, would only hit the streets in print form three days a we ... More >>

Destiny Adams and Kimberly Pierce: Two East Texas Women On Cutting Edge Of "Keying Men's Trucks" Epidemic?

As the furrow-browed detectives say in all those bad cop dramas, "Looks like we've got a pattern here." Criminal mischief. Lots of it. And of the felony kind. Two East Texas women have been arrested on that charge in the last week, both of them for damaging the paint jobs of trucks with keys. We' ... More >>

Justin McDonald and Zachary Bridges: Bad Fake Cops, Including Guyliner & Faux-Hawk

There has been a rash of fake cops in the Lufkin area of late, with two men finding lodgings in the Angelina County Jail after run-ins with their authentic counterparts. Per KTRE, Justin McDonald was jailed for violating the terms of his probation stemming from an incident 14 months ago. In Februar ... More >>

Troy Allison: Reward Upped for the Sporting Sex Offender

Troy Allison, a sex offender whose mug shot features a slight smile and a sporty shirt, is still on Texas's Top 10 Most Wanted Sex Offenders list, and the reward for helping to find him has increased. Tips, anonymous or not, that lead to his arrest can be worth up to $12,000 now. Allison began his ... More >>

Vanessa Clark: Second SIDS Death in a Year Leads To Child Endangerment Conviction

A Lufkin woman has been convicted of felony child endangerment after an infant died in her bed for the second time in a span of two calendar years. Yesterday afternoon an Angelina County jury handed down a guilty verdict against Vanessa Clark, 33, for her role in the death of her two-month-old son ... More >>

Supreme Cinderella-Like Dysfunction Reigns in Gay-Related Lufkin Sibling Steak-Knife Stabbing

Family dysfunction and domestic disharmony are kind of our stocks-in-trade, but this sick twist on a Cinderella story out of Lufkin shocks even us in its callousness. According to KTRE, on Friday evening 18-year-old Xavier Walker was berating his 17-year-old sister Shakira Walker because of her s ... More >>

George Mitchell: Huge Bond for Man Accused of Stealing 11 Pregnancy Tests from CVS

At first blush, even for East Texas, land of high bail, $404,277 seems like an exorbitant bond for a guy who was initially arrested for stealing 11 pregnancy tests from a Lufkin CVS. However, that odd theft is not all 26-year-old George Melvin Mitchell is on the hook for. Far from it. But let's be ... More >>

Justin Delane Nash: Accused of Second Sick Crime Against a Child in 17 Months

Phots by Angelina Count ySOJustin Nash's most recent mugshot...​A girl's school journal entry has led to an arrest for an alleged sex crime. On September 23, a Lufkin schoolgirl handed in a journal to her teacher in which she had written, "I wish I had a better life. I got raped by Justin and ... More >>

To Quote: The Scientist: Ask a Stupid Question, Get a Band Name

It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off were working hard t find meaning in the oddest monikers. ​Your humble narrator does a lot of writing for the Houston Press, the editors of which are very keen to publish our work in return for us k ... More >>

Michael Wayne Turner: Drunk, Crack-Addled, and Dogbit Is No Way to Drive Through Lufkin, Son

Angelina County SOMichael Turner had a rough day.​When you see a young man with a bloody mess of a face driving a PT Cruiser around your neighborhood, it's probably a good idea to go ahead and call the police. That's just what some concerned Lufkin citizens did early Monday evening when just t ... More >>

Blake Broadway: Fear And Loathing in Lufkin Vegas

Blake Broadway probably doesn't look like Johnny Depp, either​"The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab," wrote Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a ... More >>

Lufkin Couple Heads To Jail After Pregnant Woman Smokes Cig

Not the Lufkin woman, who we're sure doesn't have tats​According to a police report summarized in the Lufkin Daily News, 33-year-old Roosevelt Lee Williams III called police out to discuss a Mother's Day altercation with 26-year-old mama-to-be Dominique Bryan that had just ended. He told pol ... More >>

Another Alleged East Texas Trailer Park Gang Rape, This One Near Lufkin

Angelina CountyClinton "Bubba" Johnson Jr.: Friend says he bragged about inserting beer bottle into victim.​While the nation and the world are recoiling in horror from the alleged Cleveland trailer park gang rape, a similarly depraved tale in the town of Hudson (just outside of Lufkin) has yet ... More >>

Mom And Grandma Busted After Doughnut-Spinning Truck Almost Leads To Trailer Park Tragedy Near Lufkin

Jeff Foxworthy has another entry​Keeping the kids happy while you're tying one on in the old trailer park can be a challenge. You can't run 'em down to Chuck E. Cheese because drunk driving with the kids in the car is a felony, so you have to give Lufkin-area mother-and-daughter Tammy Kay Bur ... More >>

Scott Stewart: Front Porch Fracas Over Crack Cash Lands Lufkin Man in Jail

Scott Stewart: The pepper balls did him in​While Scott Stewart might not charge much in rent, the 38-year-old East Texas landlord definitely does prove that adage that you get what you pay for. And there's another old chestnut his alleged actions would seem to buttress, one first uttered by fu ... More >>

Robert Raymond Jones Goes All Smokey and the Bandit in East Texas

Where's Buford T. Pusser when you need him?​Robert Raymond Jones of Houston, you know how to cause a stir. You get into a hit-and-run accident early Sunday morning, and apparently you take the "run" part of that very, very seriously. Soon cops from several jurisdictions are trailing you. It ... More >>

Useless Report

Study of Teach For America's worth says little.

Victor Ray Wortham: Loud Gum-Smacking Spurs Domestic Violence Complaint

Angelina County SOVictor Ray Wortham: Vicious attack over not much​Let's face it: sharing space with someone who smacks their gum can be damned annoying. Still, we think Lufkin's Victor Ray Wortham might have slightly overreacted when his wife's gum-popping allegedly spurred him on to a viciou ... More >>

Ernest Goes to Jail: Accused Trailer Park Child Molestor Gets In Trouble Before Trial

This Ernest: a lot less funny than the movie character​Back in July of last year, an 8-year-old girl who lived near 43-year-old Ernest May in a trailer park on the outskirts of Lufkin told her father that May had molested her. She later said that May had showed her his "wrong spot," and when she r ... More >>

Houston Slammed By European Travel Blog: We're Boooorrring

But...but...there's the Kemah Boardwalk!!​Among world cities, in which category does Houston rank second only to Brussels, the capital of the European Union? Tedium, at least according to the European Union-funded wiki blog OpenTravel. According to "Chili," an English-language challenged scr ... More >>

Lawn Mower Man

Kenneth Page followed his peculiar dream from Texas to Florida.

Purple Drank Goes Pro, Thanks To ESPN

​ESPN's Outside the Lines, the Emmy Award-winning investigative series that examines topical issues off the playing field, aired a feature over the weekend on Houston's very own rap mascot - purple drank - the dangerous mix of prescription codeine cough syrup and any range of mixers from Sprit ... More >>

Piney Woods Penis Parade: Two Pervs In Court On Same Day For Public Masturbation

Courtesy of Angelina County JailClifton Earl Chessher​What in tarnation is going on up in the Piney Woods? On the very same day this week, one fortysomething East Texas man was arrested after a woman said he masturbated at her car from the side of the highway, while not far from there, after ... More >>

Romance Blooms Out Of The Ashes Of A Lufkin Crime Of Passion

​Paraphrasing Larry McMurtry, a woman's love is like the spring dew. It's just as likely to descend on a cowpie as an April wildflower.In the East Texas romance of Jennifer Doss and Christopher Guffey, we're leaning towards cowpie. You see, Guffey, an alleged member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison ... More >>

Was Chris Brown Shopping For A Birthday Party Spot At The Galleria?

celebrityevil.com (Warning: Some NSFW content on site)​ Channel 39 recently posted a short video of Chris Brown as the embattled R&B singer visited the Galleria over the weekend. The video is about a minute of Brown, a small entourage and a phalanx of security guards leaving a shoe store and h ... More >>

Aftermath: U2 at Reliant Stadium - One Love, We Get to Share It

Photos by Groovehouse/ Click here for a slideshow​A day or two before U2 (and love) came to town, a friend emailed us a joke. At least we think it's a joke. It really doesn't have anything to do with U2, except that it has everything to do with U2. "I was so depressed last night thinking about the ... More >>

Another Texas Arrest In That A-Hole Prankster Ring

The Smoking GunNewly arrested prankster​The Smoking Gun continues to stay on top of the effort to out and punish the juvenile a-holes (some of them sex offenders, some of them merely Mom's-basement types) who go around ruining property and people's days with "pranks."The hilarity involves calling ... More >>

Move Over, Ron Paul: There's A New Nut In The Texas Congressional Delegation

​Be proud, Lufkin: Your Congressman is a nut.We're not talking even Ron Paul nuttiness; U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert has left even that far behind.Gohmert appeared on the Alex Jones radio show last week. That sentence should be enough to prove nuttiness; Jones (a native Texan! He's appeared in Richard ... More >>

A Chat with Trey Lindberg of Benjy's

Photo by Sarah RufkaIf you want to chat up Benjy's barkeep Trey Lindberg -- and why wouldn't you? He's cute and makes a seriously decent mojito -- then bring up football. Trey, a former high school player, Texans season ticket holder and aspiring coach, is obsessed. He's on a flag league out in Katy ... More >>

Idol Beat, Part 1: More Hollywood Week

Photos courtesy FoxYou thought the funeral was over? You thought all those tears were dried up? You were wrong, my friends - so very, very wrong. Aye, verily, the bloodletting continued unabated as Hollywood Week wound down. Hey, Ryan Seacrest warned us at the outset: "The stakes are as high ... More >>

Charlie Wilson's War -- Over A UT Chair

A Modest Proposal: Train the Homeless to Be Better at Being Homeless

This Just In: Conviction Upheld in Case of Man Who Stomped on Pregnant Girlfriend’s Belly

Charlie Wilson's War

All aboard the '80s way-back machine for Mike Nichols's good time Charlie

Forget the Food

Go to La Strada for Sunday brunch, and the fiesta will leave you wanting more

Stomped Out

A teenage mom-to-be decides she doesn't want her babies after all

Tree's Company

The tannenbaum gets a makeover at Buffalo Bayou ArtPark

No Mo' Pogo

Time to say "ska-dios" to the Suspects; also, the Music Awards jinx strikes again

Rocksteady Ska-lawags

Austin's Stingers put the buzz back in a tired genre by revisiting its roots

Fish Tales

Rayburn's bass diminish as debates continue over pollution discharges

Letters

Bad Cash Investments

No Mercy

A law of good intent goes unused, and proponents say that's left victims further victimized