A headline-grabbing murder-for-hire plot helped expose the dark side of exotic animal ownership in the U.S. Is there now enough momentum to reform the industry?

“Weiss…a subtle, under-the-radar bureaucrat who fought his country’s adversaries with red tape and a headful of contrarian ideas. I understood him as a man whose entire life was secrets. “

By bringing new dimensions to an unjust process, a well-told story has the power to impact some of our most flawed systems.

New York midwife Elizabeth Catlin faces 95 individual felony counts at her upcoming trial. For what? For doing her job. Politics and patriarchy make the work of many credentialed, experienced midwives illegal — to the detriment of women and underserved communities.

How youth in Rochester, New York, are working to save their neighborhood — and themselves — by forging pathways away from violent street crime.

What’s in the hold, captain? Oh nothing, just tonnes upon tonnes of illegal Chilean bass — nothing to see here!

Can Fitbit data help to convict the alleged perpetrator of a brutal murder?

“Even with a preponderance of evidence and testimonies, every man on trial got away with murder. This fact was not front-page news but tucked beneath odd stories called ‘Flashes of Life.'”

He faked an insanity defense, got out, and immediately committed another crime, and this time people are dead. He’s going to plead insanity again.

“We were interested in dead girls, but so interested in them that we were trying to do the opposite of what had been done before.” 

Seven years ago, a young woman from Tache, British Columbia, went out for the evening and never came back. Her family won’t stop looking for her, and they deserve answers.

The “United States and its allies exploited other nations’ gullibility for years, taking their money and stealing their secrets.”

Archie Moretti believed he could steal and get away with it. It’d just take a little nepotism.

“…these emails paint a portrait of a platform whose creators are fundamentally unable to track what goes on within it, and point to easily exploitable loopholes that scammers have steamed their way through by the truckload.”

LSS: Because Trump wants to be pals with Saudi crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman.

‘“A bagel,” the newspaper of record explained in 1960, “is an unsweetened doughnut with rigor mortis.”’

“At least 442 service members across almost every branch of the armed forces had been conned—by prisoners—out of a total of more than half a million dollars.”

We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year. Here is the best in crime reporting.

Cody Dalton Eyre, a 20-year-old Alaskan Native, was having a mental health crisis on Christmas Eve, 2017 when his mother called 911 for help. So why did police officers end up shooting and killing him?

Diligent reporters revisit the histories of two conmen, and how their actions have risked others’ lives in the balance.

Trying to keep a mouthy Russian oligarch safe from Vladimir Putin is harder than it looks. Especially when the oligarch has a penchant for publicly poking the bear.

“When you lay down to go to sleep, you better be prayed up, because there’s no guarantee you’re waking up.”

Oh by the way, Airbnb makes money on cancellations, too.

When a hospice takes a man off life support in a case of mistaken identity, who is responsible?

Michael Gillespie has automated a way to decrypt ransomeware, and he gives his code away for free just to help people in need.

When troopers finally do arrive, violent offenders just hide until they leave.

How a criminal-turned-crime-blogger got the notice of the most notorious drug trafficking duo in Scotland.

It was Russia, in the cybertubes, using stolen passwords, a secret backdoor, and layers upon layers of false flag cloak work meant to stump security analysts.

If traumatic brain injuries can impact the parts of the brain responsible for personality, judgment, and impulse control, maybe injury should be a mitigating factor in criminal trials — but one neuroscientist discovers that assigning crime a biological basis creates more issues than it solves.

To this day, only Elizabeth Pierce knows why she defrauded partners and investors by forging contract signatures.