A tony bedroom community in Los Angeles, a kidnapping gone horribly wrong, and the birth of a teenage fugitive.

The jury room was a gray-green, institutional rectangle: coat hooks on the wall, two small bathrooms off to one side, a long, scarred table surrounded by wooden armchairs, wastebaskets, and a floor superficially clean, deeply filthy. We entered this room on a Friday at noon, most of us expecting to be gone from it by four or five that same day. We did not see the last of it until a full twelve hours had elapsed, by which time the grimy oppressiveness of the place had become, for me at least, inextricably bound up with psychological defeat.

On the complete corruption of Paul Bergin, a federal attorney turned high-priced defense lawyer now awaiting trial on a host of charges.

If Paul is guilty of half the things they say, he’d be the craziest, most evil lawyer in the history of the State of New Jersey. That is saying something.

An investigation of the American sex trafficking industry.

In the 1970s, Kelbessa Negewo was a midlevel administrator in Ethiopia’s brutal Red Terror regime. In the 1990s, he was a bellhop in an Atlanta hotel. Then someone he had tortured back home recognized him.

The questionable close relationship between a mobster/informant and an F.B.I. agent during a bloody Colombo crime family battle.

When he was 16, Mark Clements talked his way into four life sentences. Twenty-eight years later, he talked his way out.

The anatomy of a bungled, massively expensive undercover sting conducted by the Seattle Police Department.

How slot machines snuck into the mall, along with money laundering, bribery, shootouts, and billions in profits.

For 18 months, Coatesville, Penn., was besieged with an improbable number of arsons.  But who started the fires – and why?

An interview with David Simon, creator of The Wire.

How Craigslist dealers do business in New York City.

The story of dog-scent lineup innovator Keith Pikett and the not-so-scientific science behind forensics.

In 1991, Frank Sterling confessed to a crime he didn’t commit. His story highlights a common – and controversial – method of police interrogation.

The barbaric brutalization of Abner Louima and the tragic fate of a handful of flawed Brooklyn cops.

Investigating the investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks.

How a legally dubious FBI sting lured a pair of Russian hackers stateside.

A young girl is reported missing. The detective assigned to her case quickly discovers she’s been gone for years. The story of his search for justice.

The amiable international arms dealer and the sting.

The cop says she nabbed an online sexual predator. He says he was just willing to chat whatever it took to get laid in real life. Their story, from both perspectives.

A profile of Rafael Pérez, an infamously corrupt LAPD officer and the inspiration behind the Vic Mackey character on The Shield.

Dandenis Muñoz Mosquera, a.k.a. “La Quica,” was one of Pablo Escobar’s top killers. Now he’s in a maximum security prison in Colorado. Here’s the thing: for all his crimes, La Quica may not have committed the one that put him away.

For the last two decades, the varied personalities behind the Vidocq Society—retired cops, sketch artists, FBI agents—have gathered in Philadelphia to tackled cold-case homicides over lunch. They claim to have solved more than half.

The cops thought they had captured a fugitive. They had not. Elias Fishburne was a hairdresser from Maryland and was going to jail.