From 1976 to 1986, one of the most violent serial criminals in American history terrorized communities throughout California. He was little known, never caught, and might still be out there. The author, along with several others, couldn’t stop working on the case.
“As an added bonus, she paid for everything.”
What happens when U.S. border patrol kills—in Mexico?
One mysterious death, then another, and another — all in the same house. The first two written off as a tragic coincidence, until the third shattered doubts.
Frédéric Bourdin was an imposter. His "trail of cons," for which he used five languages and dozens of identities, extended for years across Europe and America.
After an 11-year-old Navajo girl was kidnapped, her family and friends sprang into action to find her. Why did it take so long for law enforcement to join them?
A look at the rapper’s decade-plus ordeal.
How the killing of a 20-year-old woman upended a nation’s sense of itself.
“I decided that if he would not tell us his story, then I would.”
First the red bees arrived. Then a Red Hook cherry factory’s true purpose came to light.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his spokeswoman Ma Anand Sheela moved their commune and its thousands of followers from India to an Oregon ranch. The poisoning of a nearby town, election manipulation, and plans to murder government officials and the writer of this story soon followed.
The events chronicled in this original 1985 series are the basis for the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country.
How followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh came to Oregon from India, and transformed eastern Oregon’s Big Muddy Ranch into Rancho Rajneesh.
How a small-town Indian boy became a religious guru that followers compared to Jesus Christ, Buddha and Krishna.
Before coming to Oregon, the Bhagwan built his following in Poona, India, attracting disciples from around the world.
What are the real reasons the Rajneeshees left India for Oregon? Rising tensions with the Indian government and police, and a lot of unpaid taxes.
Tales of smuggling – gold, money and drugs – dogged the Rajneesh movement since the late 1970s, and continued when they arrived in the United States.
Somewhere between India and Oregon, the life-or-death melodrama surrounding Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s failing health dissipated like a contrail against a summer sky.
How Ma Anand Sheela used family ties to help purchase the land for the Rajneeshees’ Oregon commune.
Ma Anand Sheela was much more than the guru’s personal secretary. She was a tigress of the two-minute TV interview, and wielded words like weapons.
To turn Racho Rajneesh from farmland to a city, the Rajneeshees needed to incorporate. It was a blurring of church and state that caught the eye of Oregon Attorney General Dave Frohnmayer.
While followers talked about free love, the Rajneeshees armed themselves with assault weapons, grenade launchers and submachine guns, turning Rajneeshpuram into one of the most-heavily armed places in the state.
Followers of the Bhagwan saw their ranch as a place of peace, but the universal bliss was laced with threats of violence and threads of paranoia.
Antics by the Rajneeshees during legal proceedings – including making faces and obscene gestures – confounded lawyers and judges.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh hardly led a humble life, with his diamond-encrusted Rolex watches and fleet of 74 Rolls-Royces.
The Rajneesh financial machine reached around the globe, and channeled millions of dollars to its Oregon headquarters.
How a lust for money propelled the Rajneesh movements into the arms of Big Business.
Ma Anand Sheela and other ranch officials kept a tight grip on followers.
Rajneesh used various techniques – some of them strong-armed – to separate followers from their cash, property and jewelry.
Rajneeshees bristled at the word “cult,” but it was clearly one according to religious experts.
Of all the threats to the Rajneesh movement, an immigration fraud investigation that was four years in the making loomed the largest, and focused on arranged marriages and fake relationships
The Rajneeshees took advantage of sleepy immigration officials to sneak followers into the United States. The government then bungled cases, and irritated potential witnesses to the point that they no longer cooperated.
A trip to Scotland and an investigation of enduring belief.
“I remember reading about the deathbed confession, and how strangely sad it made me, even though I had not, at that point, believed in the monster for years. How much sadder, I wondered, would it make those who still believed in the existence of a monster in Loch Ness?”
Pitcairn Island is impossibly remote, populated by descendants of a ship of British mutineers. Their population would not be revealed to the outside world until allegations of a culture of child molestation and rape that led back generations.
Inside one of America’s most corrupt police squads.
The teenager told police all about his gang, MS-13. In return, he was slated for deportation and marked for death.
How a journalist who wrote a seminal account of police brutality during the 1967 race riots in Newark wound up on the wrong side of the law.
A profile of Edna Buchanan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning crime reporter for the Miami Herald during its heyday.
Twenty-five years after 82 Branch Davidians and 4 federal officers were killed, the lead negotiator at the scene is still arguing about what happened.
How a group of hippie surfers and a former Spanish teacher built the largest weed-smuggling empire on the West Coast.
The executive and investor resigned from his position as Tronc chairman hours before the news.
When her son was sentenced to 25 years for Brooklyn’s 2003 “grid kid” slaying, Doreen Quinn Giuliano was sure he’d been wrongfully convicted. To prove it, she went undercover, testing her sanity, her marriage, and the justice system.
If you are an enemy of Putin, there’s one city where intrigue and assassins are bound to follow you.
Marcus Hutchins stopped one of the most dangerous cyberattacks ever. Then the FBI arrested him.
For years he used fake identities to charm women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then his victims banded together to take him down.
Officers can lie to juries or brutally beat civilians and still keep their jobs.
