BACK As the two girls, who had both just turned 17, ran out of the store, they dropped a carton of Marlboros at the door. What struck Houston Police Detective Billy Stephens as most unique about the five holdups was not that the alleged perpetrators were female.
Women rob stores all the time.
It was, instead, that the robberies were so well planned and executed. Had the girls resisted the urge to brag about what they had done, had they stopped themselves from giving away cigarettes at parties in a show of gangster-style largesse, they might have gotten away with it. But in Kingwood, getting away with things gets a little old. It is possible that they're right, that the glare of publicity Kingwood suffers when one of their good kids goes bad is unfair in light of how many stay good. But it really is a place where moms and dads and their kids go out on the soccer field on Saturdays.