But you never know, I guess, that you are living next to a sunken murder weapon. It seems that the suspect arrested in Tribble’s death, Gary Wayne Pettigrew, tossed something in that pond/lake after he committed the murder. My neighbors who live on the lake tell me it was a gun and the DPD S.C.U.B.A. team was so good they found it the very first day. They kept on diving for more evidence, and kept on finding more junk in the pond.

Pettigrew was arrested Friday morning for shooting Tribble in front of his home in1983 after the 38 year old police officer and father of two dropped off medicine for his sick child. Police hunted for his killers for decades.

Weird to think the smoking gun that solved this murder was in our little lake all that time.

Thanks to Eric Nicholson for the tip.

A friend called DPS today (214-670-3438) and learned that her alarm permit number has indeed been changed – found it rather comical that the clerk asked for her old number to find the new one — then realized it was no longer in the system.  If you’ve just moved into a home or are considering a home with an alarm system, be sure you check on the permit number which you may want to change anyhow when the house changes ownership.

‘Course, as my son says, the very best alarm system is made by Smith & Wesson!

My husband likes Scotch whiskey. My future son-in-law also likes Scotch whiskey. We were in Mexico this weekend, and Dr. V was intrigued by the value of the Scotch at the duty-free shops. (Get the connection? He’s part Scottish; not only does he like bargains on his liquor, he saves ketchup packets and will squirt them into the fridge ketchup container annually.) Told we could legally take home 4 liters of Scotch whiskey, he snagged 4 liters at the duty-free store in Cabo and hauled ‘em home on the plane. Imagine our surprise when we passed through customs, our purchases clearly marked on the travel forms, to learn that the state of Texas will not allow more than 2 liters of liquor into this state from Mexico — one liter per person. As the customs agent told us, if we were connecting on to another flight to another state, we would have paid a small tariff and gone on our merry. The agents further told me that TABC recently cracked down on them for not being tough enough on Texas liquor law violations. “Do you see any TABC officials here?” asked the customs agent. His message: Texas was asking the feds to do their work, and they did not like it. Well yes, I agreed, I’d certainly rather have you guys checking for drugs and bombs, the really bad stuff, not two liters of Glen Livet.  (So, um, can I have my booze and go home now?) Frustrated as they were, no shirking their jobs: $100 worth of Glen Livet was confiscated and poured down a sink at DFW. And we were not the only alcoholics dumb dumbs. Walking into the “serious” customs area, I saw piles of neatly packaged liquor bottles and knew we were in for it.

So I ask: why is Texas so weird about limiting liters of liquor? Why isn’t TABC policing throngs of tourists bringing home bargain booze from Mexico? Why force the U.S. Customs agents to diddle with dumping confiscated liquor down the drain at DFW and let them focus on TRUE contraband. And where do the drain lines at D/FW end up?

My best line during the fiasco: could you at least give it to a homeless person?

On the morning of December 13, the attackers broke into the home and beat both Mr. and Mrs. Geis — the children were staying with their grandparents.

“They came to the house in the morning, viciously beat him and took out all his teeth with a mallet,” says one source. Mrs. Geis was also sexally assaulted. She was home alone the following day, in her driveway, when the attackers returned to sexually harass and beat her again — a neighbor helped scare them away.

Mrs. Geis’ father, the late Mark Stenson Tolle, was a prominent local state district judge who presided over the Darlie Routier case. There is speculation that this brutal, vicious attack was somehow in retaliation for a sentence her father handed down during his career.

UPDATE: I am now told that the sequence of attacks went like this: Dec. 6, Mrs. Geis robbed in the Virginia Cook parking lot; Dec. 13, both Mr. and Mrs. Geis attacked in their home on Blairview; Dec. 14, Mrs. Geis attacked while in the driveway of her mothers’ home (her father, Judge Tolle, died in September of 2007); the murder this morning. I am also told that during one of the attacks, Mrs. Geis was told: “Your family made my family’s life a living hell, now I’m going to do the same to your’s.”