Columbine Survivors Talk About the Wounds That Won’t Heal

Sometimes it feels like it happened yesterday. Other times it’s as if it happened to someone else. She has told the story of that day so many times now that it doesn’t even feel like it’s her story anymore. It’s just something she knows, something she might have picked up anywhere, a scrap of ancient history or pop trivia. I’ll take American Mass Shootings for a thousand, Alex.

Source: Westword
Published: Mar 19, 2019
Length: 27 minutes (6,900 words)

How a Career Criminal Broke the Convict Code and Saved Himself

In USP Florence, the most violent prison in the U.S. federal prison system, rats don’t live long and they don’t die peacefully. But Wayne Byerly talked, and lived — and found redemption.

Source: Westword
Published: Jan 10, 2019
Length: 47 minutes (11,920 words)

‘OUT.’

Where would you take a $100,000 check that is also a suicide note — to the cops or to the bank?

Laradon’s director found the envelope in her mailbox when she returned to work four days later. On the back, in handwritten block letters, were six words: WAIT UNTILL YOU HEAR FROM CORONER. And below that, in parentheses: PLEASE DONT CALL EVERYTHING IS OK.

Despite the plea to wait, Green opened the envelope. Inside was the original of Beech’s Last Will and Testament, which left all his worldly goods to Laradon Hall.

Source: Westword
Published: May 14, 2009
Length: 23 minutes (5,860 words)

Drilled, Baby, Drilled

The long road to reform the government’s Minerals Management Service, three years after its “sex, drugs and oil” scandal:

“One thing that the agency hasn’t done is put to rest the skepticism of its whistleblowers. They claim that schemes similar to the royalty-avoidance techniques at issue in the False Claim Act lawsuits are still being used by major oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in tens of millions in lost revenues.

“‘I don’t think a lot has changed,’ says Little. ‘Shell isn’t the only company doing this. We turned in several other companies to the inspector general. We gave them our files. We had to force them to take them. And they still have not done one thing. They have not pursued any of those companies.'”

Source: Westword
Published: Jan 20, 2012
Length: 23 minutes (5,822 words)