Inside the effort to exonerate the “Starved Rock Killer.” After 60 years behind bars for one of this state’s most infamous crimes, Chester Weger is out to prove his innocence with DNA testing.

Tom Justice was once a cyclist chasing Olympic gold. Then he began using his bike for a much different purpose: robbing banks.

The life of Robert Earl Hughes, who at more than 1,000 lbs. was named largest man on earth by the Guinness Book of World Records.

On the unlikely friendship between Nelson Algren and the young writer during the final years of Algren’s life.

It was June of 1980 when Nelson called me breathlessly from the highway.

Sitting with a group of mothers who lost a child.

“If Sullivan High School had a motto, it would be ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ Its immigrant population now numbers close to 300—45 percent of the school’s 641 students—and many are refugees new to this country. This academic year alone, the Rogers Park school has welcomed a staggering 89 refugees—nearly three times as many as last year and far more than at any other high school in the city.”

A sociologist embeds with a gang in Chicago.

Violence convulses the city of Chicago after dark. Reporting on it leaves its own scars.

When it’s finished, architect Adrian Smith’s Jeddah Tower will be the tallest building in the world, over a kilometer high. He’s already thinking about pushing past a mile in the air.

Memories of a scorching three days that left 739 dead.

The anatomy of a collapse.

A talented young chef loses control.

A profile of the reclusive billionaire who orchestrated a collectible toy craze.

When an antsy tech entrepreneur takes over a struggling newspaper.

On the culture of misogyny and abuse at one of the nation’s largest megachurches.

How a small-town comptroller became the biggest municipal embezzler in U.S. history.

How a family man dentist got involved in an underage prostitution ring.

Inside the shadowy meetings between Chicago’s violent gang members and its elected officials.

Life inside the original Playboy Mansion.

How one man terrorized a small Illinois town.

In June, 1942, a German submarine dropped four young Nazi agents off on a Florida beach. Their mission was to blow up bridges, factories, and Jewish-owned department stores. Among them was Herbert Haupt, the 22-year-old son of a German-American family in Chicago.

When Chicago’s Stevens Hotel opened in 1927, it was the biggest hotel in the world. By the time it was closed, it had bankrupted and caused the suicide of a member of the Stevens’ family (which included a seven-year-old future Justice John Paul Stevens), and changed the city forever.

A veteran reporter investigates his own beating.