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Writers

Ben Montgomery

Sports Food

Everyone Has a Tom Pritchard Story. Only I Have His Bike.

A legendary chef and the wheels he left behind.

Ben Montgomery Bicycling Sep 2020 20min Permalink

History

The Man Who Walked Backward

When the Great Depression put Plennie Wingo’s bustling Abilene cafe out of business, he tried to find fame, fortune, and a sense of meaning the only way he knew how: by embarking on an audacious trip around the world on foot. In reverse.

Ben Montgomery Texas Monthly Aug 2018 30min Permalink

Best Article Crime

Why Cops Shoot

From 2009 to 2014, police in Florida shot 827 people. Many of these incidents were avoidable and unnecessary.

Ben Montgomery Tampa Bay Times Apr 2017 30min Permalink

Crime

The Lost Bones

For more than a century, boys were sent to the Florida School for Boys reformatory. Many were beaten brutally and bear the physical and psychological scars to this day. Many others, though, never came home.

  1. Ground Truth

    A search for lost boys and the reasons why they died.

  2. Puzzle Pieces

    A neglected cemetery yields more bodies than expected, but names are harder to find.

Ben Montgomery Tampa Bay Times Dec 2014 50min Permalink

Crime

Spectacle

On the 1934 lynching of Claude Neal, and the Florida town that kept the identity of those responsible a secret.

Ben Montgomery The St. Petersburg Times Oct 2011 25min Permalink

A Rite Gone Horribly Wrong

The deadly hazing that destroyed a legendary college marching band.

Ben Montgomery The Tampa Bay Times Nov 2012 10min Permalink

Crime

"He Never Had Nothing, and He Always Wanted Something."

A profile of lifelong thief and 13-time escapee Chris Gay, aka “Little Houdini.”

Ben Montgomery The St. Petersburg Times Sep 2011 10min Permalink

When a diver goes missing, a deep cave is scene of a deeper mystery

You’re not supposed to just vanish at Vortex Spring. Dive too deep and you might not make it back to the surface, but a search party will eventually find your body. Nobody has found Ben McDaniel yet.

Ben Montgomery The St. Petersburg Times Apr 2011 15min Permalink