In November 1985, a woman who appeared to be a homeless drifter staked out the offices of 80-year-old banker Nicholas Deak, waited until he returned from lunch, then executed Deak and his secretary. As police wrestled her to the floor, she said “Don’t hurt me. He told me I could carry the gun.”

How a hanger-on at the fringe of San Francisco’s rock scene built the Rolling Stone empire.

Contemplating plastic surgery.

On the militarization of America’s police forces.

Why the head of Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey hired a former CIA agent to ruin a freelance writer’s career.

The outing of a failed writer who spent years anonymously grinding axes on Wikipedia.

The story of a suicide.

His book panned in the New York Times after being misread by the critic, an author responds.

Uncovered letters reveal ties between the literary magazine and the CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom.

On the family origins of an eating disorder.

A profile of Maggie Gallagher, founder of National Organization for Marriage.

A group of misfit boys from the fringes of Las Vegas form a clique. Then, with murky motives, they decide to murder one of their own and bury him in a desert pit.

The state of the American cockfight.

Enlightened is probably the sharpest satire of modern white-collar work since the original British version of The Office, and its skewering of this world intertwines with its portrait of individual personalities so deftly that you can’t separate them. Creator Mike White captures the unsettling blandness of office protocol, politics and jargon, from the chill that workers feel when Human Resources calls them out of the blue to the impressive-sounding word salad labels that the company gives to its departments and projects. (The experimental department to which the newly demoted Amy is assigned is called “Cogentiva.”)

I’ve read stories from people who say they always knew they were attracted to the same sex, or that they figured it out at a young age. I’m not one of them.

Rogue cops in the LAPD Rampart division’s anti-gang CRASH unit (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) were involved in everything from drug smuggling and bank robberies to, allegedly, the murder of Christopher “Notorious BIG” Wallace.

How a herbalist who used to swim naked with Allen Ginsberg became one of conservative talk radio’s most vicious—and listened to—hosts.

A lifetime worth of little scams adds up.

The cozy relationship between “the internet newspaper” and bogus medicine.

The Great Recession meant great things for Nick Popovich, who gets paid by banks to take planes back from hard-up millionaires.

Profile of the flip-flop wearing 61-year-old ‘dude’ who turned around a dying company by selling all-American sex to teens – and isn’t apologizing.