Despite what “Law & Order: CSI” tells us, blood spatter patterns don’t necessarily hold all the keys to a crime scene.

A group of Chicago cops spent years framing innocent men, but thanks to one determined woman, their convictions are finally getting overturned.

A new breed of charlatan posts images of their fake opulent lifestyles on Instagram to lure followers into investing in sketchy financial products.

Manuel “Tati” Torrez was killed in broad daylight in the prison yard at ADX Florence. But who was really behind it, and why?

The alleged ring leader of a group of violent armored car robbers isn’t the person friends and family knew.

“Rebirth therapy” was meant to help a troubled girl start over, but it ended her life instead.

The descendants of lynching victim Elwood Higginbotham learn the circumstances of his 1935 murder in Oxford, Mississippi.

People are capturing and killing hummingbirds for cockamamie love potions, and Mexico doesn’t seem to care.

It took the murder of a young Navajo girl to get the tribal police to refine their Amber Alert system. But will these changes work?

No one twigged that whenever a member of the Harrison family died, it was always just before an important hearing in a bitter child custody battle.

Baltimore’s Gun Trace Task Force were celebrated for getting firearms off the street, until detectives discovered they were also robbing criminals of guns, drugs and money.

A desperate veteran, missing his disability payment, walked into a bank and took several people hostage. This is how he got there.

For some elderly women in Japan, prison offers companionship and a life free from worry.

When Anthony Ray Hinton was sentenced to death for two murders he didn’t commit, he used his time to create a book club for death row inmates.

May Jeong searches for answers after the death of her friend, journalist Kim Wall.

When bad forensics enter the courtroom, it can become impossible to get rid of them.

This is the story of the last day of 17-year-old Quanice Hayes’s life. It involves a police department that says they have no good way of deciphering between real guns and fake ones, and a family still searching for answers.

Despite their hard-stance bluster, death penalty states rarely impose the ultimate sentence, even if you’re the prisoner and you ask them to.

What one of TV’s longest-running reality shows says about race and our relationship with the police.

Between deadly police shootings and a white correctional officer sexually assualting Native American women, the Bad River Band of the Ojibwe nation feels more preyed upon than protected.

She keeps watch over one of the largest databases of missing persons in the country. For Meaghan Good, the disappeared are still out here, you just have to know where to look.

Before women got the right to vote, they learned jiu-jitsu and boxing to defend themselves on the streets

Illegal encampments on Colorado’s public lands are creating unsafe conditions for locals and damaging the land with trash.

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

A small town welcomed hundreds of Somali refugees. A militia splinter group wanted them dead.

What happens when you’re sentenced to life in prison as a teenager, then released 19 years later and sent to a place that’s supposed to feel like home?

How Portugal combats its drug epidemic with decriminalization, social services, and new ways of thinking.

Thanks to wacky laws, Portland, Oregon has the third highest car theft rate in America.

The violent chipping center of Aspropyrgos, Greece is a microcosm of Europe itself, struggling to benefit from the global economy while protecting its identity.

Richard Miles spent 15 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The state of Texas compensated Miles for his wrongful conviction, but life after vindication has come with its own set of challenges.