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Dallas, TX
Rena Pederson’s ‘King of Diamonds’ follows jewel thief who terrorized Dallas’ uber-rich
It was a warm night downtown on April 4, and the sold-out audience inside the Dallas Museum of Art leaned in as Rena Pederson talked about her true-crime tour-de-force, King of Diamonds.
“An extremely talented jewel thief – Houdini-like – stole millions from the richest people in Dallas and got away with it,” she told the crowd in her West Texas accent, as she sat in an armchair under a giant overhead screen, her silver hair catching the light. “So who was he? How did he do it? And why couldn’t they catch him?”
I’d seen many literary bigwigs cast their spell at Arts & Letters Live – Chuck Klosterman, David Grann, Lauren Groff – but I’d never seen an audience slip inside the palm of a speaker so snugly. Like the author herself, a spry 76, many attendees lived on the AARP side of things. Gray hair and tortoise-shell glasses, silk wraps and pressed slacks.
Maybe it was because the drama of the book hit so close to home. The real-life King of Diamonds plagued Dallas high society from the late 1950s to 1970, grabbing headlines and confounding police as he rummaged through the drawers and private boudoirs of the city’s untouchable families on exclusive streets with names like Strait, Park and Beverly. The Murchisons, the Hunts, the Richardsons – families whose names are emblazoned on bridges and buildings – fell victim to the cunning cat burglar who moved to the beat of the city’s social calendar, slipping in side windows and back doors after debutante balls or charity galas to snatch rare diamond rings and showstopping necklaces worn to dazzle.
King of Diamonds, released earlier this month, unfolds this gripping saga, interspersed with Pederson’s own dogged quest to crack the 50-year cold case, but it was more than a local connection that ensnared the crowd. Drawing on 200 interviews conducted over six years, the former Dallas journalist ropes in some of the most legendary characters in Dallas’ pre-Kennedy glory days: Jack Ruby, Candy Barr, Carlos Campisi, the Dixie Mafia. Some names were unfamiliar to me but shouldn’t be, like Nancy Hamon, the society maven who once rode into one of her outré parties on an elephant.
Vivid photos flashed on the giant screen behind Pederson, though few elicited a gasp like the stunning interior of the Graf House, an early target of the jewel thief. A modernist mansion in Preston Hollow designed by Edward Durell Stone (the man behind New York’s Museum of Modern Art), the house boasted an only-in-Dallas opulence that included a dining table improbably situated on a circular slab in the middle of an indoor swimming pool, a dinner party on the world’s smallest island.
But as Pederson grew closer to the story, she also began touching the seedy underbelly of a city that still holds many secrets. Mafia, spies, celebrities, gambling dens, sex trafficking – all of it wrapped up in the glittering bow of high society.
“This is one of the best books about Dallas I’ve ever read,” bestselling author Bryan Burrough told me by email, and he’s quite the authority, since his 2009 book The Big Rich covers similar territory. Burrough, a longtime Vanity Fair contributor who lives in Austin, was the first person to tell me about Pederson’s new book, which sat in PDF form on my laptop until a journalist friend texted me about it. “I can’t tell you the last time I gobbled up a book like this,” she wrote, thus kickstarting my own obsession.
I was still on chapter 11 (of 41) when I stepped into a crowded elevator in the DMA’s parking garage earlier this month, where well-heeled ticket holders theorized about who did it, and I was so eager to avoid any spoilers that I literally covered my ears like a child around too much cussing.
Rumor had it, Pederson named the real-life King of Diamonds in the book. She cracked the case! Inside the bustling theater, stragglers heading to their seats, I passed true-crime great Skip Hollandsworth, arm draped casually over the wooden armrest of his chair.
“Why is this book so good?” I asked, and the author of more Texas Monthly barn burners than I care to name – at least of two of which, Bernie and the upcoming Hit Man, have been adapted for film – blinked a few times as though I’d asked a very simple question, and then said, “Because it was only her story to tell.”
I met Pederson inside the Statler, the mid-century hotel that features in her book and abuts The Dallas Morning News offices. These days, Pederson lives in Austin, closer to her grandchildren (the book is dedicated to them), but she spent much of her career in Dallas, where she was the first female editorial page director and then vice president of The News. I walked into Overeasy, an upscale diner on the first floor, to find her tapping on her phone.
“Isn’t that the great thing about email?” she asked me, as the hostess led us to a long booth. “You always have a friend.”
In person, Pederson is 5′1″ and casually stylish. As she writes in King of Diamonds, “I was as unassuming as Agatha Christie’s rumpled Miss Marple, but without the hat and knitting.” Rumpled, no, but unassuming, yes. I couldn’t help thinking of Joan Didion’s line in Slouching Towards Bethlehem: “My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: Writers are always selling somebody out.”
Pederson wasn’t inarticulate either. (I doubt Didion was, for that matter, but we never met for breakfast.) As Pederson and I chatted over lattes, she struck me exactly as she had in print: Texas-friendly and whip-smart. A copy of the hardback sat at the table’s edge, and the striking orange cover caught the eye of a random guy who stopped at the table.
“She wrote that,” I told him, and he did a double take at the little white-haired lady before saying, “Oh, snap.”
Rena Pederson first met the King of Diamonds the way most people did back then: through the headlines. She was 23 when she moved to Dallas in 1970, straight from grad school in New York to work for United Press International, better known as UPI. Back then, journalism was all teletype machines and chain-smoking at the desk, and Pederson was working the overnight shift when she read about the unsolved mystery of the burglar who, like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, had committed the perfect crime.
Whoever the King of Diamonds turned out to be – an architect, a society writer, the wayward son of a Las Vegas casino owner, there were theories aplenty – the trail went dead over the next decades as Pederson’s career caught fire. She became a heavyweight at The News and interviewed Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro and Princess Grace. During the Bush administration, she worked as a senior speechwriter and advisor at the U.S. Department of State. In 2001, she wrote her first book, What’s Next?, about women who reinvent themselves in midlife, and she landed on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
“Should I send her a note saying I finally followed my own advice?” Pederson wrote me later by email. “I think I will.”
Pederson had technically retired by the time she cracked her knuckles on King of Diamonds six years ago. But she was still a writer in her bones and had been ever since she was a teenager working at the San Angelo Standard-Times. She was too young to drive, so the cops stopped by the paper to pick her up if a crime hit. Hard to beat that kind of adventure, although the discovery at the heart of King of Diamonds might come close.
It’s bizarre the cops had never tracked down the culprit, though they got close. The book details the enormous lengths detectives went to catch the guy, but November 1963 did leave them with other mysteries to solve: the assassination of a president, for instance.
Half a century later, as the epic jewel thief’s story threatened to fade from memory, Pederson couldn’t stop tugging on the thread. “Since 1970, I had endured five publishers, one husband, two rambunctious sons, and a lifetime of newspaper deadlines,” she wrote in the book’s introduction. “I could look for the thief with seasoned eyes.”
And did she ever. King of Diamonds is a how-to-manual for aspiring gumshoe reporters. Strangers hang up on Pederson, sometimes angrily, she plumbs records and court transcripts, she sends flowers to subjects reluctant to speak with her (doesn’t work) and eats fried okra at the Golden Corral with reticent cops (does work). In other words, she displays the nimble fingers and sly entrées of the jewel thief himself, whose identity she reveals at the end of the book, and I would never dare spoil that. (Reasonable questions: Did he act alone? Was he even a he?)
It wasn’t all catch-me-if-you-can good times, however. The underbelly of Dallas has stayed unlit for decades, and there’s a reason. Pederson was nosing around mob ties when strange things started happening. “Look somewhere else,” said a message sent to her house. Her computer got mysteriously hacked. She decided to get a tattoo of a dagger on her right ankle. A talisman, a warning to anyone who underestimated her, though she also got a better alarm system.
“I may be short, but I’m a tough ol’ boot,” she told the crowd at the DMA while speaking with fellow Dallas media pioneer Lee Cullum in the interview portion of her Arts & Letters Live event.
“These women are so inspiring,” Arts & Letters Live director Michelle Witcher whispered to me as the show began. Tough, beautiful, brilliant, funny: Who could be scared of getting older when aging looked like this?
There was one question everyone wanted to know. “Any plans for a movie?” an audience member asked.
“God, I hope so,” Pederson said, never skipping a beat. “Know anyone?”
Among the many surprises in Tuesday’s primaries, one of the most shocking took place in the Democratic primary for Dallas County district attorney. Amber Givens, a former district court judge with a history of injudicious behavior on the bench, handily beat incumbent John Creuzot, whose leadership and experience in office earned the respect of a wide array of legal and community leaders.
We had expected that Democratic voters would want to retain a public servant who performed his job with diligence and integrity. Creuzot championed innovative, evidence-based programs to address the needs of suspects with mental illness and substance abuse problems.
Instead they elevated someone whose ability to do the job is an open question.
So what happened? We don’t know.
Were primary voters just uninformed about the vast difference in experience and qualifications? Were they most concerned with the races at the top of the ticket, while ignoring lower ballot races? Judicial and county races often get short shrift.
Maybe voters viewed Givens as the more progressive of the two candidates, and preferred her politics. Long ago, Creuzot did run for judge as a Republican.
But as a Democratic district attorney, he’s been a favorite target of Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Early in his first term, Creuzot announced his office wouldn’t prosecute low-level theft of basic necessities, partly to keep impoverished, nonviolent offenders out of jail. He later dropped the policy when he found it had little impact on the crime rate. Creuzot also joined several other big-city DAs and sued Paxton after his office tried to impose onerous reporting requirements on local jurisdictions. The DAs won.
Meanwhile, before her victory, Givens was in the news for all the wrong reasons.
In June, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct publicly admonished her for “failing to comply with and maintain professional competence in the law,” in regards to due process and for failing to treat a defendant with “patience, dignity and courtesy.” Givens was also publicly reprimanded for allegedly allowing a court staff member to substitute for her during a virtual bond hearing and for mistreating attorneys in her courtroom. She appealed the rulings and a three-judge panel in Austin re-tried the case late last month but has not yet issued its verdict.
Givens’ campaign website said the incumbent DA’s office denied evidence was missing for some felony cases. In fact, the Dallas Police Department had lost track of or deleted digital files that the DA’s office didn’t know existed. Even highly professional prosecutors and judges can be stymied by failures in other parts of the criminal justice system.
Her first news conference as DA-elect (there is no opposition in November) revealed few specifics about how she plans to run her new office. Givens emphasized that she was vastly outspent by Creuzot, which is true. She wants to establish community justice councils and set strict deadlines to decide whether to seek an indictment in cases of all types. Neither sounds realistic.
We have to hope for the best, but the record here convinces us Dallas County Democratic voters got this race as wrong as any we can recall.
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DALLAS – Dallas City Council members approved a measure to explore options for leaving Dallas City Hall while, but left the door open to staying in the iconic building.
Resolution to explore leaving City Hall passes
What we know:
The resolution approved will explore options to buy or lease a new City Hall building. It was amended to include a plan to pay for repairs to the current building that would be compared side by side to the options to leave.
Dallas City Council approved the resolution by a 9-6 vote. The vote came around 1 a.m. Thursday morning after 14 hours of debate.
Councilman Chad West told FOX 4’s Lori Brown that if the city decides to stay or leave City Hall, the resolution includes proposals to redevelop the land around the building.
“We still should be looking at redevelopment options to tie it into the convention center later on, because otherwise it just equals ghost town, which is what we have now,” West said. “And of course, if we decide to move and City Hall itself gets repurposed or demolished and something gets built there, we need to have a projected plan for what that could look like as well.”
Debate on City Hall’s future
Local perspective:
Around 100 residents spoke about their desire to keep the current Dallas City Hall, the historic structure designed by architect I.M. Pei.
“The thought of losing this land to private hands is disheartening. A paid-off asset, unfair to taxpayers, built on what is here,” Meredith Jones, a Dallas resident, said.
“The decision belongs to the people, not the city council,” David Boss, the former manager of Dallas City Hall, said.
Several questioned why the price tag for a repair is public knowledge, but the cost for a move isn’t.
“The public deserves to know the value of the land we are giving up. Dallas deserves a careful decision, not a rushed one,” resident Azael Alvarez said.
Future Mavs arena looms large
Dallas City Council went back and forth on the resolution, amending it before it finally passed. Much of the conversation revolved around the Dallas Mavericks’ potential interest in the site for a new arena.
Mayor Eric Johnson lamented that conversation revolved around the Mavs’ future and not City Hall itself.
“A conversation about a particular sports team and where you want them should never have been part of the conversation because that was not what was infront of us,” Johnson said. “I’ve never seen such vehement opposition to gathering more information.”
Councilwoman Cara Mendelsohn wore a Mavericks T-shirt to a recent hearing due to the continued conversation around them.
“We’re talking a lot about the Mavs. They’re the elephant in the room, but they’re actually not here, so let’s at least let them have a seat at the horseshoe,” Mendelsohn said on Monday.
Residents were also upset at the idea of City Hall being bulldozed to make way for a new Mavs arena.
“The Mavericks were ridiculed nationally, and still are. Worst trade in the history of the NBA,” one resident said Monday. “The decision to knock this building down without all the facts and allowing the people to make the decision is your Luka Dončić trade.”
A potential 10-digit repair cost
The backstory:
Experts who assessed Dallas City Hall said the 47-year-old building’s mechanical, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, and electrical systems don’t meet modern standards.
It put a $906 million to $1.4 billion price tag on keeping the iconic building, which was designed by the famous Chinese architect I.M. Pei, for another 20 years.
Downtown Dallas Inc., an advocacy group for Downtown Dallas, said last week they support leaving the current City Hall site.
“We believe Dallas City Hall is no longer serving its intended purpose. The important functions that happen and must continue to be evolved and innovated within our city government are inefficient and truly stymied in that space,” said Jennifer Scripps, President and CEO of Downtown Dallas Inc. told the crowd. “Our board called a special called meeting and voted unanimously in support of pursuing options to relocate City Hall and redevelop the site. We were we feel that the opportunity is huge.”
The Source: Information in this story came from FOX 4 reporting.
How much do you earn? And how far does that paycheck really go?
In Dallas, a $100,000 salary is a figure that’s more than double the area’s individual median income, but nevertheless a useful benchmark for the region’s burgeoning business community. However — once taxes and the local cost of living is factored in — it has the effective purchasing power of around $80,000 according to a new financial report.
Consumer-focused fintech site SmartAsset worked the numbers on the country’s 69 largest cities, determining the “estimated true value of $100,000 in annual income” in each location by measuring federal, state and local taxes as well as local cost of living data, including on housing, groceries and utilities.
It used its own proprietary figures, as well as information from the Council for Community and Economic Research.
Despite recent research suggesting North Texas has lately been losing some of its famous economic advantage — a major factor behind the region’s explosive growth — Dallas actually fared relatively well in SmartAsset’s analysis. Of the 69 cities, Dallas’ effective purchasing power, of $80,103 on the $100,000 salary, tied with Nashville to rank 22nd highest.
Like many cities in the report, Dallas also actually saw a year-over-year effective salary bump, likely because of slightly lower effective tax rates and living costs that have hewed closer to the national average. In 2024, the value of a $100,000 salary in Dallas came out to $77,197.
Other large Texas cities fared even better than Dallas. El Paso, where SmartAsset calculated the effective value of the $100,000 salary at nearly $90,300, ranked third highest overall.
San Antonio, where the effective value was around $86,400, ranked eighth. Houston, where the figure was around $84,800, ranked 10th, and Austin, where the figure was $82,400, ranked 17th.
Oklahoma City topped SmartAsset’s value ranking, with an effective salary of around $91,900, and Manhattan, which the website considered as its own city, came in with the lowest value, at around $29,400.
Dallas’ relatively strong effective value score won’t necessarily translate to the good life: Another financial report, published in November by the website Upgraded Points, determined that even a single adult with no kids needs a pre-tax salary of at least $107,000 to live “comfortably” in the Metroplex.
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