Showing 25 articles matching murder mysteries.
He was a college freshman partying in Manhattan for the first. He ran into a woman he knew from college, got separated from his friends, and ended up at a house party full of strangers. By the next morning, his body would be dumped in a Brooklyn driveway. Fifteen years later, the “circumstances of his death remain muddled.”
How a brilliant self-made software programmer from South Africa single-handedly built an online startup that became one of the largest individual contributors to America’s burgeoning painkiller epidemic. In his world, everything was for sale. Pure methamphetamine manufactured in North Korea. Yachts built to outrun coast guards. Police protection and judges’ favor. Crates of military-grade weapons. Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping. Torture. Murder. It's a world that lurks just outside of our everyday perception, in the dark corners of the internet we never visit, the quiet ports where ships slip in by night, the back room of the clinic down the street.
Sponsored
Our sponsor this week is Texas Monthly, which has just published a truly incredible piece of journalism. Michael Hall, whose work has appeared on Longform many times, spent a year investigating one of the most confounding criminal cases in Texas history. In the summer of 1982, three Waco teenagers were savagely murdered for no apparent reason. Four men were ultimately charged with the crime. One was executed, two others were given life sentences, and a fourth was sent to death row only to be released after six years. They all may have been innocent.
Over the next two weeks, Texas Monthly will serialize Hall's 25,000-word piece, "The Murder at the Lake," which looks at the case from five distinct perspectives. Part One is available now; you should read it.
On the utility of euphemisms:
In the upper reaches of the British establishment, euphemism is a fine art, one that new arrivals need to master quickly. “Other Whitehall agencies” or “our friends over the river” means the intelligence services (American spooks often say they “work for the government”). A civil servant warning a minister that a decision would be “courageous” is saying that it will be career-cripplingly unpopular. “Adventurous” is even worse: it means mad and unworkable. A “frank discussion” is a row, while a “robust exchange of views” is a full-scale shouting match. (These kind of euphemisms are also common in Japanese, where the reply maemuki ni kento sasete itadakimasu—I will examine it in a forward-looking manner—means something on the lines of “This idea is so stupid that I am cross you are even asking me and will certainly ignore it.”)
For nearly 17 years, the truth about the murder of Mac Dre has been one of hip-hop’s great unsolved mysteries.
On the mysteries of the man behind Alice in Wonderland.
The writer investigates her brother’s death, their complicated relationship, and the disturbing mysteries he left behind.
The mysteries of the least known Brontë sister.
An ambitious new system will track scores of species from space—shedding light, scientists hope, on the lingering mysteries of animal movement.
The investigation of 20-year-old Russian model’s fall from a Manhattan rooftop uncovers a string of mysteries and clues embedded within the insular world of international models and those who scout them.
The dark world of online murder markets.
James Allen is serving three life sentences for murder. No one ever said he killed anyone.
Anatomy of a murder trial.
An older brother’s murder and its aftermath.
Reexamining the murder of James Jordan.
A murder involving the late actor leaves unanswered questions.
The murder of a rapper amid the rise of Greece’s fascist party.
On the 1866 murder of Laura Foster and the subsequent hanging of Tom Dula.
An endangered-species murder mystery in Hawaii.
Investigating a brutal double murder in a Kentucky military town.
How an obsession with school shooters led to a murder plot.
How self-harm came to take more lives than war, murder and natural disasters combined.
Thirty years after the murder in Abilene, the question remains unanswered.
On the murder of a young Hasidic boy in Brooklyn.
On murder and mental illness.
