“Dan Seavey stepped ashore the docks of Grand Haven, Michigan, armed with two of the most dangerous weapons known to man: booze and bad intentions.” The story of the early 20th century’s fiercest Great Lakes pirate.

Montaous Walton couldn’t throw, catch or hit. But he wanted to be a ballplayer. And with the help of the internet, the media, and an ambitious young agent, that’s what he briefly became.

The crimes of former NFL star Rae Carruth.

Previously: “The Boy They Couldn’t Kill” (Thomas Lake • Sports Illustrated)

How a struggling comedian became a pimp who eventually started sending teenage hookers on bank robbery missions that earned them notoriety as the “Starlet Bandits.”

Cassie Chadwick pulled her first con in 1870, at the age of 13. Over the next 30 years, she would scam her way to $633,000, about $16.5 million in today’s dollars.

How divisions between Nigeria’s Muslim North and Christian South resulted in the birth of terror’s most ruthless movement.

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.

How a Canadian used a Mohawk reservation’s lakes to smuggle tons of marijuana to stash houses in Brooklyn and Staten Island, resulting in nearly a billion in profits, which he laundered through the Sinaloa Cartel.

Jamie Smith said he was a co-founder of Blackwater and a former CIA officer. He appeared on cable news as a counterterrorism expert and he received millions in goverment contracts to train personnel. The money was real. The resume wasn’t.

Feeling abandoned by America, families fight to save their children from ISIS.

Struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide, Army officer Lawrence Franks went AWOL. Five years later, he reappeared as Christopher Flaherty, a member of the French Foreign Legion who served three tours in Africa. Then he was court-martialed.

The dangerous corporate ethos of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who is on trial after an explosion at one of his mines killed 29.

Since the Syrian rebel leader Hassan Aboud joined ISIS, taking with him fighters and weapons, he has been behind a sprawling mix of battlefield action and crime.

After Brooke Melton died in a car crash, her parents approached attorney Lance Cooper to investigate. What he found in her 2005 Chevy Cobalt would lead to GM’s 30 million-vehicle recall.

How a distillery worker in Kentucky stole hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of bourbon, one barrel at a time.

When cops kill civilians, their union is on hand to defend them. In many cases this has come at the expense of the truth.

Corey Arthur made headlines after being arrested and convicted in connection with the 1997 murder of his high school teacher. But the story is much more complicated than that.

Prison rape is an epidemic; but the bulk of abuses are not by prisoners themselves, but by guards and other prison workers.

In June, 1942, a German submarine dropped four young Nazi agents off on a Florida beach. Their mission was to blow up bridges, factories, and Jewish-owned department stores. Among them was Herbert Haupt, the 22-year-old son of a German-American family in Chicago.

American demand for drugs gave birth to the cartel war that is paralyzing Mexico, but American guns purchased legally across the Southwest and smuggled over the border have made it staggeringly lethal.

As a teenager, Trey Smith snuck into the cash- and porn-filled home vault of his friend’s father. Fifteen years later, he told the story from prison.

In Cleveland, TX, nineteen men and boys gang raped an eleven-year-old girl in an abandoned trailer. This is the story of the victim and her community.

In the gentrifying Bywater, the intertwined destinies of a legendary gay pool-bar and a woman who was drugged there.

In March 1971, John and Bonnie Raines broke into an FBI office, stealing documents that revealed that the government was spying on its own citizens. Today, they’re hailed as heroes. Is this what the future holds for Edward Snowden?