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4 posts tagged with texas by mudpuppie.
Displaying 1 through 4 of 4.
In 2006, Hannah Overton was charged with the death of her 4-year-old foster son, Andrew Burd.
Media accounts at the time claimed that Overton had force-fed her misbehaving son a mixture of water and creole seasoning, leading to death by salt poisoning. Convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life without parole in 2008, Overton's case led angry bloggers to call her
"the ultimate evil," part of a cult of
"child abuse groupies," a murderer that
"church cronies" are working to free.
This month's issue of
Texas Monthly paints a fuller picture of the short life of Andrew Burd and the conviction of the mother who was working towards adopting him.
posted by mudpuppie
on Dec 20, 2011 -
79 comments
"On March 18 [1937] students prepared for the next day's Inter-scholastic Meet in Henderson. At the gymnasium, the PTA met. At 3:05 P.M. Lemmie R. Butler, instructor of manual training, turned on a sanding machine in an area which, unknown to him, was filled with a mixture of gas and air. The switch ignited the mixture and carried the flame into a nearly closed space beneath the building, 253 feet long and fifty-six feet wide. Immediately the building seemed to lift in the air and then smashed to the ground. Walls collapsed. The roof fell in and buried its victims in a mass of brick, steel, and concrete debris. The explosion was heard four miles away, and it hurled a two-ton concrete slab 200 feet away, where it crushed a 1936 Chevrolet. Of the 500 students and forty teachers in the building, approximately 298 died. Some rescuers, students, and teachers needed psychiatric attention, and only about 130 students escaped serious injury. -- From the Handbook of Texas Online. (
Other accounts,
personal recollections, and
photos .)
It was one of the worst disasters in Texas history. With Texans' love of superlatives,
why is this a story no one tells? [more...]
posted by mudpuppie
on Mar 18, 2005 -
35 comments
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