In 1984, Jacqui met Bob Lambert at an animal-rights protest. They fell in love, had a son. Then Bob disappeared. It would take 25 years for Jacqui to learn that he had been working undercover.

Meeting Christopher Thomas Knight, a.k.a. the North Pond Hermit, who lived alone in the Maine woods for nearly 30 years.

Jared Lorenzen was a star quarterback in college. He won a Super Bowl. And just like the author, he has spent his entire life fighting, and losing, a battle with his weight.

In exchange for his surrender, the top Colombian drug lord was allowed to build his own jail, complete with a disco, jacuzzi, and waterfall. Now 23 years later, it’s a home for the elderly.

While war raged across Afghanistan, expats lived in a bubble of good times and easy money. But as the U.S. withdraws, life has taken a deadly turn.

The murder of a West Virginia teenager by her two best friends.

Under the cover of curing addicts, they beat and brainwashed their charges in basements across California. When a cult deprogrammer crossed them, he found a rattlesnake in his mailbox.

Nearly 70 years after Bugsy Siegel’s unsolved murder in Beverly Hills, a family finally comes forward: they know who did it.

The author, age 96, on the end.

Sixteen-year-old Kalief Browder was accused of taking a backpack. He spent the next three years on Rikers Island, without trial.

On the shared life of Tatiana and Krista Hogan, four years old and joined at the head.

A comprehensive history of the case against the Menendez brothers.

In the late 60s and early 70s, Austin Wiggins forced his three teenage daughters to play their strange music at New Hampshire ballrooms, firm in the belief that they would become stars. They did not.

On the perspective-bending art of identical twins Trevor and Ryan Oakes.

How three brothers from Chicago found tremendous success in their respective fields—Rahm in politics, Ari in Hollywood and Zeke in medicine—by their mid-30s.

Three years after skipping town, Bulger was frustrating investigators and endearing himself to neighbors all over the country. He made a particularly good impression with Gautreaux family in Grand Isle, Louisiana, where he spent the winter in 1995 and 1996 with the girlfriend who led to his eventual capture in 2011.

A view of the Barefoot Bandit from his hometown.

Can a writer disappear in America for a month with a $5,000 bounty on his head? Ratliff tried to find out, and found himself with an unnerving amount of free time.

The story of how Benjamin Holmes, wanted by the FBI for arson, spent two decades hiding in plain sight. (Also the story of how, when Holmes finally came back to see his wife, she shot him.)

On the run in Canada with Randy Quaid and his wife Evi as the try to evade “the Hollywood Star Whackers.”

A visit to the French hideaway of Ira Einhorn, co-founder of Earth Day, who had avoided arrest on murder charges for nearly 20 years. Einhorn was extradited to the United States in 2001 and is now serving a life sentence.

He’s the first kid to be featured on the side of a milk carton—and his father thinks he knows who abducted him from a New York City street in 1979.

From “comely heiress” to “armed terrorist,” an overview of the Patty Hearst kidnapping published weeks after her debut as a bank robber.

Meet Rick Strawn, the man who’ll abduct your problem child for a fee.

Rohde was kidnapped while reporting in Afghanistan. His story—in five parts—in his own words.

Elizabeth Smart, age 14, was kidnapped from her bedroom in a Salt Lake City suburb. She was found nine months later with an itinerant preacher and his wife. Theories on why it took so long.

Several American men working in the oil industry are kidnapped on the job in Ecuador.

Did Bruno Hauptmann really kidnap the Lindbergh baby? An overview of the case amidst a bunch of arguing scholars.

How smallpox went from eradicated disease to the ideal weapon of bioterrorists.

The author of The Hot Zone on how geneticists can help contain the current outbreak.

The story of H1N1 and John Behnken, whose life it claimed.

New York during the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Living on borrowed time, with liver cancer.

Exploring the riddle of Morgellons disease: sufferers feel things crawling under their skin and hardly anyone believes them.

In 1916, a down-on-its-luck traveling circus hung its star elephant. The crime? Murder.

The similarities between the reactions of elephants and humans to childhood trauma.

On imperialism, doubt and a day in colonial Burma.

Is it ever OK for zoos to display elephants? And if not, what should keepers do with them?

Nearly everything you could want to know about elephants, plus the metaphysical questions the animals raise about our own consciousness.

Riding rescued elephants through a wildlife park.