The author attends a Tolstoy conference as a grad student. She wears flip-flops, sweatpants and a flannel shirt, and tries to determine if Tolstoy was murdered.

No one knew how Suzanne Jovin ended up in a wealthy neighborhood away from Yale’s campus in New Haven, or why she was brutally stabbed on the sidewalk, apparently by someone she knew. The only suspect that police named was her thesis advisor.

She was the daughter of movie mogul Harry Warner. He was 15 years younger and embezzled her money, landing himself in jail. In prison, he offered a young inmate named Richard Matt $100,000 to kill her.

In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy working for British intelligence, was poisoned. As he lay dying, he worked with detectives to find his killer.

Asunta Fong Yang was adopted as a baby by a wealthy Spanish couple. Aged 12, she was found dead beside a country road. Not long after, her mother and father were arrested.

A reporter on her way out of India probes a case of a woman beaten to death by her husband in public.

The story of a lynching in rural CO in 1900, while hundreds watched, done with the complicity of press and cops, and why it still resonates today.

It’s tempting to think Marco McMillian was killed because of his race, his sexuality, or because he was running for mayor. The truth is more elusive.

Nancy and Frank Howard were happily married for three decades. Then he fell in love with another woman, embezzled $30 million, and hired a parade of inept hit men to kill his wife.

After his wife disappears, Hans Reiser’s defense contacts a Wired writer who they believe can help explain the world of groundbreaking code, video games, and sci-fi that defines Reiser’s existence.

The diner manager told the cook not to prepare the poached eggs a woman had ordered. The next day, the cook killed the manager. They had worked together amicably for 20 years.

Last December, a Canadian pharmaceuticals executive and his wife were found strangled in their home. No one knows who did it or why, but everyone has a theory.

A little over 30 years ago, a Northern Neck fisherman went to prison for the brutal slaying of a homecoming queen and mother of two. Now, a reexamination of the case by a hard-charging UVA lawyer has turned up troubling questions.

A bizarre 1970 Arctic killing over a jug of raisin wine shows that we need to think about crime outside our atmosphere now.

During New York’s ’80s and ’90s crack epedemic, a flashy detective who “imagined himself a crusader who created his own rules” and his star witness, a crack addicted prostitute who seemed to constantly be at the scene of homicides, sent dozens of men to prison for life. Now, they are under investigation.

At the very bottom of the porn totem pole is the “mope”, a barely paid assistant who hangs around and occasionally performs. Stephen Hill was mope-ing for Ultima Studios in exchange for pocket money and a place to crash. Learning he was going to be evicted, he sharpened a prop machete.

Deep in the jungle, the tourists were targetted, but only the porters were hacked by the machetes. Was it a robbery? Or a deeper pattern of violence amongst ancient tribes?

How a serial killer and his teenage accomplice used listings for “the job of a lifetime” to lure their victims, all down-and-out single men, to the backwoods of Ohio.

In 1985, a lost 22-year-old wrote a letter to a Manson girl-turned-model prisoner, asking for advice on conquering his demons. Then they fell in love.

An abridged history of violence in "America's first suburb."

Note: Elon Green is a contributing editor to Longform.

“‘It’s like a novel,’ a newspaper editor once told me, shaking his head. When I recently asked Ruggeri, the chief investigator, to sum up the case, she stared at her desk and just said ‘incredible’ four times.”

A Stockholm prostitute is found hacked apart in a dumpster, her head is never found. Two accomplished doctors, confirmed creeps, are arrested. Uncertainty endures.

In the beginning, they were known as die Dönermorde – the kebab murders. The victims had little in common, apart from immigrant backgrounds and the modest businesses they ran.

Olathe, Kansas, became a global magnet for tech talent, thanks to plentiful jobs, cheap housing, and good schools. Then someone opened fire on a pair of Indian-born engineers.

Almost five years ago, the author’s 13-year-old niece was murdered in her bedroom in suburban New Delhi. Since then, both of her parents have spent time in jail. Evidence, bungled by police, points to another possible killer. The trial has not yet begun.