Crime Writers On...

In March 2021, after Faithe Ely left a cookout, her body was found on the side of a rural Oklahoma highway. Officials from one law enforcement agency said it looked like a hit and run accident; however, members of the Highway Patrol weren’t so sure. Her boyfriend said Faithe stormed off after a drunken altercation, and that a white truck towing a black trailer had been traveling in that direction before she was found. Five ye...

For her school project, Pippa Fitz-Amobi solved the murders of two students, rescued a girl held captive in an attic, and exposed a serial rapist. Now Pip is dating the victim’s brother; recording a podcast; and still needs to testify against Max for the rapes. But just as she thinks she has left the crimes behind her, Pip’s friend Jamie goes missing. She learns Jamie had been catfished before he vanished. Is his disapp...

After a 2000 murder case went cold, Kentucky housewife Susan Galbreath did her own snooping. With the help of cooperative cops and a British journalist, she identified Quincy Cross as Jessica Currin’s killer. Quincy got a life sentence and Susan became a local hero. But in a story already filled with inconsistencies and recantations, Susan never disclosed the original prime suspect was her friend’s son. Now, Susan&rsquo...

Willy Nast was a passing acquaintance of Jeff Signorelli, an Aurora, IL teen who was killed in 2002 when a bullet went through a wall at a party. As a college student, Nast interviewed Signorelli’s parents for an essay on the crime and the community it happened in. With plans for a sprawling book, Nast continued to interview Al and Mary Ann Signorelli over the years, documenting the ways they turned their grief into action. I...

A small Ohio city was stunned after a teen crashed her car into the side of a building, killing her boyfriend and a back seat passenger. Mackenzie Shirilla said she couldn’t remember what happened before she slammed head-on into a brick wall at 100 MPH, but said the fatal collision was an accident. Classmates described Shirilla as a spoiled mean girl whose socials were filled with videos of her expensive taste in clothes, the...

Clayton Echard was trying to bounce back from his disastrous appearance on “The Bachelor" when he hooked up with a potential real estate investor. Though he claimed they only had oral sex, Laura Owens said she was pregnant with his twins. What came next from her was an unrelenting mix of romantic overtures and legal threats. Clayton became suspicious of Laura’s evasive actions to prove her pregnancy was real. When the r...

Marcellus may be just an octopus, but he’s very observant of what’s happening around him in the aquarium. Tova the cleaning lady is considering selling her home. And when she sprains her ankle, cash-strapped Cameron takes a temp job helping clean. Marcellus can sense the deep sadness in each of them. Tova has questions about her son’s mysterious death at sea and Cameron has come to town to confront the rich father...

In the 1960s, United Mine Workers advocate Jock Yablonski bucked his own union for giving into coal companies on critical issues — including cases of black lung disease and mine safety. And when evidence revealed union president Tony Boyle had been making secret deals with the companies to enrich himself at the expense of workers, Yablonski mounted a campaign to unseat the labor boss. But a challenge to Boyle’s iron gri...

In 2020, pathologist Caroline Muirhead swiped right on a gamekeeper from the Scottish Highlands. Her whirlwind romance with Sandy McKellar led to a quick proposal. But before the wedding, her fiancé confided that years earlier, he and his twin brother killed a man and hid his body. Muirhead was torn between her love for McKellar and her duty to turn him in. Her work with police to gather evidence only drew her further into their dr...

In 2016, women of color in Newark, NJ began to disappear. The police response lacked urgency because some were sex workers and others were considered runaways. So friends of Mawa Doumbia set their own trap, using the missing 15-year-old’s social media to draw out her killer. Investigators eventually drew connections between a Jane Doe in a burned building, a murdered college student, and a prostitute who fled from an attacker...

When their friend Nancy is murdered, Eleanor and Mary believe her secret lover “David” is behind it. But Eleanor becomes an early suspect in the case when her long-simmering feelings about the victim’s husband come to the surface. Mary takes on the role of sleuth, hoping to unmask Nancy’s lover. But her quest uncovers even more complications about the friends’ decades-long relationship, as even more pe...

When Skylar Neese wasn’t posting photos of her with two best friends, she was posting cryptic messages about mean girls. One night in 2012, Skylar slipped out of her bedroom window, got into an awaiting car, and vanished. When the trail went cold, Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf flooded social media with pleas for information on their friend’s disappearance. But Shelia and Rachel had their own secrets. And investigators le...

Lucy Greenwell remembered a story from her childhood: in 1987, a newborn was abandoned off a country road near her home in Suffolk. Now a journalist, Greenwell tracked down Jess, who grew up wondering how she came to be a foundling. Jess eventually reached out to the young nanny who miraculously discovered her in a secluded field. As her suspicions about Jennifer grew, Jess would learn more about her rescuer’s life. Meanwhile...

When his eighteen-year-old twin brother Anh gets into a drunken fight at a party, Trung stabs his attacker. San Jose police place both identical twins in a lineup, and witnesses mistakenly say Anh was the one who delivered the fatal blow…a mistake neither brother cares to correct. Their silence was born from their intense fraternal bond, as well as being Vietnamese immigrants in street gangs where snitching is a dangerous pr...

TV weatherman Clark Forrest convinces his friend and ASL interpreter to sign up for an anonymous hook-up app to spice up his life. Floyd Smernitch is cash-strapped, overweight, and dealing with his distant wife and troubled stepson. But after joining DTF St. Louis, Floyd’s body is discovered in a pool house after a late-night rendezvous. Investigators examine Clark’s relationship with Floyd’s wife Carol, which lea...

The Georgia Guidestones were a 19‑foot‑tall, Stonehenge‑like tourist attraction commissioned in 1980 by an anonymous benefactor. Its purpose was unclear, and its granite inscriptions about population control made some uneasy. When an explosion destroyed the Guidestones in 2022, some brushed it off as a prank. But controversy around the monument had been growing among evangelicals, right‑wing politicians, and conspiracy theorists. T...

When Dr. Christine Marie and her videographer husband moved to Utah, they befriended members of the polygamous FLDS church. With the community’s former leader now in prison, Samuel Bateman claimed to be their new prophet and took on 20 wives. Concerned about the underage girls among them, Christine convinced Bateman to let them film a documentary about him. The couple recorded evidence that Bateman was trafficking the girls, ...

Gabrielle Vega said while on a student trip to Morocco in 2013, she was drugged and raped by the Spanish tour guide. As she worked through her trauma, she learned the charismatic Manuel Blanco had attacked other women on European excursions. After Gabrielle told her story on television, scores of other women came forward with their own tales of assault. Armed with dozens of victim statements - but little physical evidence - Gabriel...

Journalist M. Gessen’s cousin Allen rubbed everyone in their family the wrong way, an annoying windbag who moved from one hustle to another. To win his custody dispute with his ex-wife, he tried to get her deported. He kidnapped their son and fled the country — twice. And finally, he was arrested by the FBI for hiring a hitman to kill her. With relatives holding different opinions on Allen’s actions, Gessen decide...