Making bank

Fort Worth billionaire Alice Walton crowned world's richest woman

The world's wealthiest woman walks among us in Fort Worth.

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Walmart heiress Alice Walton has taken back the title of world's wealthiest woman. According toForbes, Walton has toppled L’Oreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers of France to become the richest woman on the planet for the first time since 2022.

Walton’s estimated fortune is now $89.1 billion and Meyers’ is $88.4 billion, Forbes says.

The two billionaires have battled for richest-woman supremacy for years. Meyers knocked Walton off her perch in 2019, then Walton climbed back on top in 2020. Also in the mix has been American Julia Koch of Koch Industries, who booted Walton down to No. 3 in 2023.

But with Walmart stock up 47 percent and L’Oreal's down 13 percent, Forbes says, Walton wins in 2024.

According to Forbes’real-time tracker on September 5, Walton is the 21st richest person in the world, a few places behind her brothers Rob and Jim Walton.

Alice Walton, 74, is the only daughter of late Walmart founder Sam Walton. While she devotes most of her time and energy now to her Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (from which she retired as chairman in 2021) and the new Alice L. Walton School of Medicine - both in her native Bentonville, Arkansas - Forbes still lists her residence as Fort Worth. She has owned homes and ranches in the Fort Worth area and sits on the board of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.

“Alice Walton has ramped up her personal philanthropy over the last decade, pouring more than $5.7 billion into five family charitable foundations that have doled out more than $1.1 billion of her funds to date,” Forbes says, “including more than $377 million her Art Bridges Foundation has spent acquiring and loaning out works of American art to more than 230 museums across the country since its founding in 2016.”

Walton is not, however, the richest person in Texas. For the last few years, she's duked it out with Elon Musk for the top spot in the Lone Star State. The Austin-based founder of Tesla and Space-X and owner of social media platform X continues his reign as the wealthiest Texan in 2024 and the second-richest person in the world.

The richest human being on Planet Earth is Frenchman Bernard Arnault, head of the LVMH empire of 75 fashion and cosmetics brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora. His estimated real-time fortune is $176 billion.

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Death Penalty

Tarrant County man gets death for murder of convenience store owner

Tarrant County Sheriff's Office

Christopher Turner

A man received the death penalty for his 2020 cold-blooded execution of a convenience store owner.

According to a release from the office of Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Phil Sorrells, a Tarrant County jury sentenced Christopher Karon Turner, 48, to death on November 20 for executing convenience store owner Anwar Ali during a robbery. Tarrant County Assistant District Attorneys Charles Boulware and Allenna Bangs represented the state.

On March 27, 2020, at around 6:15 am, Turner, a convicted felon, wore a surgical mask and a glove and entered the Super Big Country Mart in an unincorporated area of Tarrant County south of Fort Worth. There, he held a gun to the back of Anwar Ali, the 62-year-old store owner, and walked him through the store.

Ali did everything Turner demanded, including opening the cash register to give him money. And yet Turner forced Ali into the bathroom and onto his knees, and shot him in the neck. Ali was discovered, dead in the bathroom, about an hour later.

Turner fled the store in Ali's Toyota minivan with the money from the register and Ali's wallet. In the van, he found more than $50,000 cash in a black bag. Over the next few days, Turner went on a shopping spree, buying cars, jewelry, drugs, clothes, and more. He and others used cash and a credit card that belonged to Ali.

Turner fled to Colorado where U.S. Marshals arrested him. On his body they found a firearm which was determined to be the murder weapon.

"This was a premeditated, cold-blooded murder," Boulware told the jury. "From the moment he was charged with this crime, he has tried to escape responsibility."

Bangs noted that before this trial began, Turner obtained the names of jurors and their telephone numbers, and gave them to an inmate charged with murder. At the trial on November 20, as Bangs addressed the jury, Turner tried to hold up a sign to the jury but was handcuffed by Sheriff's deputies who removed him from the courtroom, while he yelled out "she lied."

Ali came to the United States from Pakistan decades ago to pursue the American dream. Ali's son, Hussein, spoke in the courtroom after the death penalty was announced. "Thank you for giving us justice," Ali said. "I hope there are no more devils like this person."