True Crime Stories

  As the mother of two boys this case particularly hits a spot with me. We used to have a joke with one of my sons that he has a tendency to find girls who have “crazy” mothers and while it was true and was a joke, this case proves that it is not always a joke. On the morning of March 5, 1993 eighteen year old high school senior Albert Joseph “Joey” Fischer Jr. was in his driveway in Brownsville Texas washing his car before school. His mom would find him laying in a pool of blood. He had been shot once in the head and once in the chest. The water hose was still in his hand. At the scene of the crime police found a card to a fortune teller and Mexican faith healer named Maria Martinez. Investigators talked to Maria and it seems she just spilled her guts, although I cannot say I understand her train of thinking. According to Maria, Dora Cisneros was a frequent client of hers and had asked her to put a curse on Joey Fischer. Joey had dated Dora's youngest daughter, Chr...

The only thing that this case has in common with the last two blogs that I have done is that the accused was a woman, oh and they were convicted for a crime. The difference here is that Susie Mowbray was retried after serving nearly nine years in prison and acquitted. There are some that think she should have never been charged and others who believe she got away with murder. In the end, whether you believe she was guilty or innocent even the second jury admitted it came down to the investigation conducted by law enforcement and the behavior of the prosecution. Several years later Cameron County Texas, where this case took place, would be rocked with a scandal involving corruption that most say was so deep and outrageous only a fiction writer could talk about it. It was not clear just how long the corruption went back but more than a dozen people were involved including a judge, a State Representative and several current and former members of the DA office. Some of th...