The transcript of chats between Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht and a man he believes to be a Hell’s Angel who agrees to supply “hitters” to carry out 5 assassinations.

Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, denies that he was ever in the IRA. The murder of Jean McConville threatened to expose him as a liar.

He was a fixture in the kitchen of one of Seattle’s most celebrated restaurants, with plans to move to New York City to further his career. Then he robbed a bank.

Rumor had it that a teenager had cut off a man’s penis, and the cops happened to have a murder victim that answered that description. Nothing else lined up.

A profile of Judy Clarke, the publicity-shy anti-death-penalty attorney, who has defended the Unabomber, Susan Smith, and Jared Loughner.

John Beale was an exemplary employee at the Environmental Protection Agency. He also led a double life, though not the rumored one at the CIA his colleagues whispered about.

Harsh sentences have given us an aging prison population, and all the medical problems that come with age are beginning to choke the system.

Decades after a young nun was murdered, a group of former Catholic high school students begin to suspect that an abusive priest may have been the culprit.

A West Hollywood aesthetician made headlines after allegedly trying to have a business rival killed. But the real story, involving ongoing harassment and a member of the so-called Bling Ring, may be more complicated.

The strange saga of Sarah Phillips, who went from message board commenter to ESPN gambling columnist and hid her identity from editors, scamming many of the people she met along the way.

The story of a Ponzi schemer who became the mark.

Matthew Roberts was a fledgling musician in L.A., DJing at a strip club and prone to nightmares. But when he learned Charles Manson might be his biological father, his whole life suddenly made sense.

When the Feds sought the death penalty for four African-American drug dealers in Baltimore, the accused found a defense in the unlikeliest of places: the legal theories of white supremacists.

Lenny makes $5,000 a week selling coke. It was easy to get into the business after finishing prep school. Getting out and going legit after his final score is proving much more difficult.

When the Internet made plagiarism harder, Jordan Kavoosi saw a burgeoning market for original essays. But in his empire of fake papers, it’s the writers, not the students, who get the shaft.

The story of the “Barefoot Bandit,” a teenage fugitive on the run.

A Hollywood screenwriter finds out his identity’s been stolen when a hooker calls–from his private office–demanding to be paid for the sex they didn’t just have.

The narcocorrido-immortalized Pacific coast traditionalists, the kidnap-crazed Gulf coast Zetas, and massacres that no longer seem tied to a discernible purpose; inside the ruins of the Mexican-American border.

For the last two decades, the varied personalities behind the Vidocq Society—retired cops, sketch artists, FBI agents—have gathered in Philadelphia to tackled cold-case homicides over lunch. They claim to have solved more than half.

Scenes from the new Tijuana: two teenage brothers from the country club set descend into the cartel underworld, bored federales guard the acid pit where hundreds of bodies were erased, families picnic through a chain-link border fence.

A ragtag band of pirate-Jihadists grab Americans from a diving resort in the Phillipines and lead them on an odyssey through the jungles of an archipelago with the competing interests of the Phillipines’ Navy and Army, the U.S. Military, and the C.I.A. thwarting their rescue.

In 2006, seven men stole £53m. Six were caught, but more than half the money remains at large. On modern money laundering best practices.

The decades-long saga of Miami’s Take Once Cocktail Lounge, where you might get shot, your money will definitely be laundered, and everybody will know your name.

First her best friend was murdered. Then her mother fell from a balcony. And finally a man she had just met was found dead in her house.