The life and mysterious death of dissident Bulgarian writer and radio journalist Georgi Markov.

“Which is how, despite the drinking, the stealing, the racist outburst, the abysmal courtroom performance, the disbarment, and the ultimate imprisonment of his lead attorney, an intellectually disabled man has ended up on the verge of execution.”

A reclusive hacker wages a shadow war against payday loan cyber-extortioners.

An investigation into violence against Mexican citizens by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Twelve years ago, Michael Stewart killed his mother during a psychotic episode. How he and his family are coping today.

A profile of the reclusive billionaire who orchestrated a collectible toy craze.

A small town in Upstate New York, and one family in particular, endures a five-year string of car accidents, suicides, and murders.

Why 18th-century French police obsessively tracked elite sex workers.

Inside the lack of an investigation into Florida State Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston.

A diagnosis in question.

The story of a massacre in El Salvador.

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.

The mysterious death of Alfred Wright in the shadow of a town’s history of racial violence.

Following the hunters and poachers, servers and saviors of the little-known pangolin—a scaly, endangered creature sold by the thousands on the black market.

A teenager orchestrates his own attempted murder via an Internet chatroom.

A dispatch from Vermont, which is in the midst of what the governor calls a “full-blown heroin crisis.”

The case against Jonathan Pollard, an American who spied for Israel.

Over the last several years, millions of dollars worth of antique rhino horns have been stolen form collections around the world. The only thing more unusual than the crimes is the theory about who is responsible: A handful of families from rural Ireland known as the Rathkeale Rovers.

Leland Yee was a career San Francisco politician known for championing open government and gun control. For the last few years, he was also the main target of an elaborate undercover investigation, during which he traded political favors for cash, tried to sell $2 million worth of weapons to a medical marijuana kingpin and worked closely with well-known Chinatown gangster named Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow.

The murder of an Iranian band in Brooklyn by one of their own.

Previously: Nancy Jo Sales on the Longform Podcast.

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.

On the post-prison lives of several men in West Baltimore.

On the FBI's failed negotiations with David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco.

Previously: Malcolm Gladwell on the Longform Podcast.

The son of a Red Sox legend, his trail of violent attacks runs back to his teen years. So does the line of judges who somehow saw fit, time and again, to give him one more chance. Now he’s on trial for murder.