Search Results for: crime

Longreads Best of 2014: Crime Reporting

We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in specific categories. Here, the best in crime reporting.

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Ashley Powers
Freelance journalist in Miami and a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

By Noon They’d Both Be In Heaven (Hanna Rosin, New York Magazine)

Kelli Stapleton is a Michigan mom who admitted to a particularly heinous crime: trying to kill her 14-year-old autistic daughter, Issy, via carbon monoxide poisoning. In a lesser journalist’s hands, she could have ended up a caricature, but Rosin tells her story solely in shades of gray. One minute your heart breaks for Kelli, and the next you fume at her apparent selfishness. Kelli spent years on an exhausting form of therapy for her daughter in hopes of coaxing out “the Isabelle that was in there.” Instead, Issy grew into a sometimes-violent teenager who repeatedly knocked Kelli unconscious. Kelli blogged about her struggles, ostensibly to raise awareness, but her look-at-me tone convinced her husband’s family she was more interested in fame than mothering. I’ve read the story several times, and I still don’t know what to make of Kelli. But I can’t stop thinking about her. Read more…

Cyrus Vance Jr.’s ‘Moneyball’ Approach to Crime

Longreads Pick

A profile of the District Attorney of New York County and his data-driven approaches.

Author: Chip Brown
Published: Dec 2, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,712 words)

The Secret Life of a Crime Scene Cleaner

Longreads Pick

How one Australian woman found her niche cleaning up after murders, suicides and other traumatic situations.

Source: Narratively
Published: Nov 23, 2014
Length: 22 minutes (5,684 words)

Three Tragic True Crime Stories

Longreads Pick

Here are three riveting, tragic stories of true crime.

Source: Longreads
Published: Nov 9, 2014

Three Tragic True Crime Stories

Like you, your coworker, that person on Twitter and the woman who sits in front of you on the train, I love Serial. As I fell asleep on Wednesday night, saddened by my imminent departure from New York City, I turned to my boyfriend and reassured him that I’d feel better in the morning; Serial would be on my iPhone. And yet, even as we revel in marvelous storytelling, let us not forget these are real people, not characters, and that these horrifying events actually happened. Here are three riveting, tragic stories of true crime. Read more…

Who’s Left After True Crime – Our College Pick

Longreads Pick

“During eight months of reporting about the life of a student whose father murdered her mother, Kathryn Varn did a lot of things right.”

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 21, 2014

Who’s Left After True Crime – Our College Pick

Readers and writers love a good true-crime story. There’s plenty of intrigue and suspense and enough intimate details to give the audience a good shiver. Stories about crime victims, however, are more difficult to report and write. Readers don’t want to pity the victim of a crime as much as cheer her on. The reporter can’t ignore the details of the crime, but can’t weigh a story down with them, either. The journalist must get close to the subject to tell a good, true story while also maintaining professional boundaries and trying to be a human being first and reporter second. It’s a most uncomfortable assignment. During eight months of reporting about the life of a student whose father murdered her mother, Kathryn Varn did a lot of things right. The result is a compelling read about a young woman moving forward and carrying her burden along the way.

Staying Strong

Kathryn Varn | The Alligator | October 17, 2014 | 8.5 minutes (2,126 words)

Is It a Crime to Raise a Killer?

Longreads Pick

A tragedy in New Jersey raises questions about where parental responsibility ends when a child becomes a murderer.

Source: Yahoo News
Published: Sep 12, 2014
Length: 23 minutes (5,964 words)

The Truth About Chicago’s Crime Rates

Longreads Pick

The city’s drop in crime has been nothing short of miraculous. Here’s what’s behind the unbelievable numbers:

Unfortunately for all concerned, January 2013 could not have started out worse. Five people were murdered in Chicago on New Year’s Day. The number hit 17 by the end of the first full week. “This is too much,” Al Wysinger, the police department’s first deputy superintendent, told the crowd in the January 17 CompStat meeting, according to a memo summarizing it. “Last October and November, I kept saying we have to start 2013 off on the right foot. Wrong foot! We can’t reiterate this much clearer.”

Published: Apr 7, 2014
Length: 27 minutes (6,980 words)

The Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Crime Lab

Longreads Pick

How an underfunded, understaffed crime lab in Hamilton County, Ohio manages to operate:

“On our tour we stop first in the trace evidence office, where analysts look for hair, fibers, paint chips, and other material left at a crime scene. The firearms office, which has a backlog of about 350 cases, has outgrown its own room and its machines have spilled into the trace evidence room; as a result, whenever trace evidence analysts have to look for gunshot residue—say, when they’re scouring a suspect’s garment to see if there’s any indication he fired a weapon—they must move the material two floors away to another office, to avoid contamination during testing or examination of the gunshot residue. The hallway outside is lined with microscopes and printers, and a folding ping-pong table nearby is pulled out whenever a large item needs to be spread out and examined.”

Published: Mar 22, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,313 words)