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.

Thailand’s criminal justice system is plauged by an accepted double standard, where corruption prevails.

The way schools choose to redesign themselves to protect students from shootings will determine how schools look, and how well students can learn in them, for decades to come.

Rachel Monroe talks about the pitfalls of the true crime genre. “I had this feeling like I can see the whole thing and nobody else understands… That’s a real trap that we as reporters can fall in.”

Sady Doyle discusses the connection she draws between society’s monstrous treatment of women and woman’s archetypal monstrosity.

Siri Hustvedt’s “Memories of the Future” is a fitting book for the #MeToo moment, which is as much about justice and reparations as it is about understanding the logic of memory.

The Kingdom of Heaven, borne out of blood

If America collapses, some see that as an opportunity to reboot society. They say they have God on their side.

When LaVoy Finicum was shot by law enforcement, the anti-government movement called him a martyr. That message is spreading.

When a bomb exploded in a tiny desert town, there was no doubt who did it. But no one could understand why.

What a 19th-century scammer can teach us about women, lying, and economic boom-and-bust cycles

Dead bodies, shots fired at passing cars, rumors of a survivalist carrying a rifle — what is happening around Malibu Creek State Park, and did police capture the right suspect?

‘Everything that Manson did with his women was exactly what the CIA was trying to do with people without their knowledge, in the exact same time, at the exact same place.’

“Staying quiet seemed a reasonable choice.”

Filipinos are reckoning with their presidents’ violent approach to the drug trade.

One hundred summers ago, black Chicagoans were terrorized by whites during the Red Summer. Poet Eve Ewing talks about reaching out to her neighbors across time in “1919.”

A journalist who reported on the accusations long before they went viral wonders, “What kind of profession am I in, where stories have no logical reason for unfolding?”

For one woman, holding her employer accountable meant painting the story of her rape on a billboard above a busy LA freeway.