“Texas Ranger James Holland became famous for cajoling killers into confessing to their crimes. But did some of his methods — from lying to suspects to having witnesses hypnotized — ensnare innocent people, too?”
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Posted inNonfiction
A Sketch Artist, a Grieving Mother, and An Unsolved Mystery
They set out to solve a cold case. The more they dug, the more terrifying the truth became.
Posted inTop 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Recommending great reads from Zack Stanton, Bryce Upholt, Charlie Warzel, Emily Stoddard, and Laurence Gonzalez.
Posted inFeature
30 Years Later: Phyllis Hyman, “I Refuse to Be Lonely”
The singer’s first posthumous album deserves to be remembered as the bravest of her career.
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘You Got Up and You Died’
The trial for the men accused of attacking the Bataclan theater and other sites in Paris in November 2015, leaving 130 people dead, is only the thirteenth trial in French history in which records can be made of the proceedings. Author Madeleine Schwartz shares her notes from attending the trial, in which there are some […]
Posted inUncategorized
A Couple’s Awakening and the Week’s Top 5
“Both marriage and religion had required exile from ourselves, a systematic suppression of our true identities. It was an adaptation that felt necessary for survival. But as I watched D explore, interrogate, and reinvent womanhood, changing the rules before my eyes, I wondered if I had been wrong.” Happy Friday, even if (in the Northern […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Under the Wheel
“I have always been drawn to stories about people who try to escape — escape their neighborhoods, their families, their histories — and who instead become what they were running from.”
Posted inNewsletter
Abandoned Music Dreams and The Week’s Top 5
“It felt like a homecoming but in retrospect seems more like a goodbye: a last great musical act before leaving that period of my life. It felt romantic, anyway, to record in a barn. We set the drums next to the tractor, tried to coax the chickens into cooing for the microphone, and had a […]
Posted inUncategorized
A banger of a Christmas story, best of 2023, and more
“I have enjoyed many happy Christmases and plenty of disappointing ones, like the one I spent eating alone at a Waffle House due to an ice storm, or the Christmas my father accused all the unmarried relatives of being gay. But of all the sad Yuletides of my life, the one I spent guarding $100,000 […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Untold
The legend of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno was ultimately tarnished by the heinous crimes of Paterno assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. Before Sandusky, however, there was another monster connected to the school’s football program — one whose many unspeakable violations are only coming to light now, in Junod and Lavigne’s tireless, exhaustive investigation. This […]
