In a residential neighborhood on the other side of the city from where the three bombings had struck, a young man parks his truck and strings a wire across the sidewalk. The wire is connected to an explosive device, and the trap is set for random...
On the day investigators work the scene of the bomb that struck Draylen Mason’s home, 75-year-old Hope Herrera spends the morning caring for her 93-year-old mother. Hope picks up a package from her porch, and it explodes. Six hundred federal agents...
Teenager Draylen Mason dreams of being a neurosurgeon, and he also excels in music, which draws an offer to study the double bass under world-renowned professors at the University of Texas. Ten days after the first bomb exploded in an Austin suburb...
On a quiet suburban street in northeast Austin, 39-year-old father and husband Stephan House prepares to go to work. He spots a package on his porch. The box explodes in his hands. His neighbor runs to his porch and tries to help the bleeding man as...
During my first semester here at the University of Texas campus, I took a class with Professor Robert Quigley, who mentioned creating the Drag Audio Production House and its series called “Darkness.” At the time, audio journalism wasn’t...
In December 2021, Sara Kinney sat across from me and Robert Quigley, the founder of The Drag, and pitched us a six-episode series about the University of Texas Tower shootings in 1966. She told us that she, a sophomore journalism student at UT at...
My name is Jackie Ibarra, and I’m the host of season 3 of “Darkness.” It’s a true crime podcast about the life and death of Mark Kilroy, a University of Texas pre-med student with a bright future. In 1989, Mark took a trip down to South...
It’s the spring of 2018, and the city of Austin gears up for the annual South by Southwest Festival, which draws tens of thousands of people from across the world for a few weeks of film, music, tech and more. While the venues rush to prepare the...
Ana Goodwin was drawn to the empathetic way The Drag told stories rooted in journalistic integrity. She never wanted to lose the humanity in her storytelling. Goodwin, a rising journalism senior at the University of Texas at Austin, always listened...
Imagine the pressure attached to producing a new true crime podcast on the heels of the success of “The Orange Tree.” But when you have a partner who has your back, it’s not so bad. Ashley Miznazi and Kenny Jones, co-hosts of The Drag’s next true...