This Month in Books: ‘I Don’t Want To Become a Giant Insect!’ By Dana Snitzky Commentary This month’s books newsletter is a bodily affair.
How Thailand’s Rich Escape Prosecution By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Thailand’s criminal justice system is plauged by an accepted double standard, where corruption prevails.
It Comes in Waves By Lilly Dancyger Feature Years after her cousin was killed, Lilly Dancyger is haunted by images of murdered women in the news.
Fugitive Justice By Jennifer Lunden Feature After stumbling upon the scene of the capture of an escaped murderer, clinical social worker Jennifer Lunden grapples with the polarities of innocence and guilt, social neglect and social justice.
No One Knows Why Gunshots Are Terrorizing the Malibu Mountains By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight 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?
Murder in the Name of Drug Prevention By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Filipinos are reckoning with their presidents’ violent approach to the drug trade.
Jill the Ripper By Tori Telfer Feature True crime’s massive gender gap (95% of murderers are male) isn’t really one that needs fixing. And yet, since the beginning, a steadfast minority of Ripperologists have argued that Jack was really Jill.
‘The Most Versatile Criminal In History’ By Jonny Auping Feature Journalist Evan Ratliff has uncovered the shocking reach of Paul Le Roux’s criminal enterprise — a global network of pawns, most of whom were unaware of the full extent of the empire.
The Hackers Who Led a Young Woman to Her Death By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight How did an ambitious, kind 23-year-old go from working at a California cannabis dispensary to living in Manila with an internet criminal?
They Wanted Her Body By Rafia Zakaria Feature Thinking of Qandeel Baloch’s murder as an honor killing doesn’t capture the whole truth. She was silenced for revealing men’s hypocrisy.
Who Killed Canada’s Pharmaceutical Giants? By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight The investigation into the murder of two Canadian pharmaceutical giants remains inconclusive.
Vladimir Nabokov’s Other Favorite Crime By Sarah Weinman Feature While the Sally Horner case gave ‘Lolita’ its main character, the Edward Grammer case gave the book an almost perfect murder.
How MS-13 Targeted Latino Youths for Execution on Long Island By Krista Stevens Highlight ‘Too often, Suffolk detectives acknowledge, police have stereotyped young immigrants as gang members and minimized violence against them as “misdemeanor murder.”’
Sabrina By Longreads Feature A video of a missing woman being murdered has surfaced on the internet, confirming the worst. Her boyfriend, lying low at a friend’s house, stumbles upon a radio program whose enigmatic host says she’s still alive.
The Killer Who Spared My Mother By Diana Whitney Feature In an attempt to understand her own chronic pain, Diana Whitney uncovers a violent trauma from her mother’s past.
Twenty-five Years After Breaking Brandon Teena’s Story: An Apology By Katie Kosma Highlight Journalist Donna Minkowitz realizes 25 years later she was victim to her own internalized homophobia and ignorance on trans issues when she broke the story of Brandon Teena, subject of Boys Don’t Cry.
‘I Had Nothing To Do With It But Have Been Punished’: Issac Bailey On His Brother Moochie, the Murderer By Tori Telfer Feature Issac Bailey wants us to recognize that the families of perpetrators need just as much support as the families of victims.
When the Answers Wash Out with the Tide By Michelle Weber Highlight Police eventually figured out who killed Jaimee Mendez, but not how or why.
In Just 40 Hours, You Too Can Be an Expert By Michelle Weber Highlight Pamela Colloff took the same 40-hour course that is the sum total of the training many blood spatter experts claim… and it did not inspire confidence in the reliability of this particular forensic “science.”
How to (Almost) Get Away With Murder By Krista Stevens Highlight 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.
In Service of the Slender Man: When Teen Girls Become Murderous By Krista Stevens Highlight Alex Mar on how and why teen-girl duos become murderous.
When You’re Broken by Breaking News By Danielle Tcholakian Commentary If reporting becomes excessive, it can do more harm than good.
Harvard’s About-Face on Michelle Jones’s Acceptance By Sari Botton Commentary The ex-convict, who became a history scholar behind bars, prepares to start classes at NYU instead.
Processing Clues About a Friend’s True Identity to Make Sense of Her Murder By Sari Botton Highlight In an excerpt from her memoir, Carolyn Murnick tries to piece together the stabbing murder of her childhood friend.
Kingston’s Little Shop of Horrors By Sari Botton Highlight James Lasdun chronicles a murder trial in which his own dentist is the defendant.
How One Porn Mogul Made His Fortune and Ruined Everything By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Michael Thevis built a lucrative pornography empire in the 1970s only to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Wrestling With the Truth By Aaron Gilbreath Feature A 1992 murder of a young boy unravels a journalist’s dark family secrets.
‘They Would Try to Love Whoever Killed Her, and Forgive.’ By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight In 1985, a girl was abducted and left to die in Winnipeg’s severe cold. While her parents, Cliff and Wilma Derksen, did not yet know the killer’s identity, they made a decision to forgive.
My Mother’s Murder: ‘I am good at keeping secrets. I am good at telling lies.’ By Krista Stevens Highlight It took Leah Carroll years to determine that her mother was murdered by an organized crime syndicate as a suspected drug informant.
‘Nobody Is Safe’: A Dispatch from Manila By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight At The New York Review of Books, James Fenton reports from the night shift in Manila, giving us a glimpse into the war on drugs in the Philippines, from “buy-bust” undercover operations to EJKs (extrajudicial killings).
