Tag: #TrueCrime
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The North Carolina Town That Worked for Pablo Escobar
A Cocaine Plane, REO Speedwagon, and a Tiny Town Called Varnamtown I go down some pretty wild rabbit holes while researching books and articles. While researching North Carolina’s mysterious Seneca Guns, I ended up in Varnamtown, a fishing village with fewer residents than many apartment complexes. I was looking for answers about unexplained booms. While…
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We Dismissed the Folklore. Then People Disappeared.
Was The Folklore Right? I’ve been around long enough and seen enough to know that when the folklore arrives before the body does, it deserves a second look. That’s not a comfortable position to hold. It doesn’t fit neatly into how investigations work, how evidence gets classified, or how we’ve decided to separate what counts…
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What Writing Two True Crime Books Taught Me About the Truth
The gap between what happened and what got written down Having just finished writing my second book about true crime there are a few things I wanted to share about the experience. I’ve known for a long time that court cases are never as cut and dried as the news makes them out to be.…
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How to Separate Fear, Belief, and Fact in Unexplained Cases
Why perception, not evidence, is often what shapes the outcome A woman named Alicia Maxey was found severely injured on a rural property in Blanco, Oklahoma. No one could immediately explain what caused it. The person who discovered her was an EMT. The injuries were serious enough that authorities brought in wildlife officials to determine…
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The Hammersmith Ghost Murder: When Fear Killed an Innocent Man
How superstition, panic, and mistaken belief led to one of England’s strangest murder trials On a freezing January night in 1804, a man walking home from work was shot dead in a London lane. His name was Thomas Millwood. He was twenty-nine years old. A bricklayer by trade. He wore white trousers and a white…
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When Poverty Pressed In
Life Inside the Aylesbury Estate Originally published on Medium. The Aylesbury Estate was never quiet. It was too big for that. Long concrete blocks stitched together by corridors that never seemed to end. Thousands of flats stacked on top of each other. You could walk for minutes inside the building without seeing daylight. People learned…
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When the Jury Asked the Dead
A true case, 1994, a British murder conviction was overturned Originally published on Medium. Harry and Nicola Fuller were found dead in their home in Wadhurst in February 1993. The house wasn’t torn apart. Nothing looked rushed. Nicola was bound and gagged near the phone. Harry was upstairs. Both had been shot. It was close.…
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When Belief Pulled the Trigger
A true 1923 case from Biggs, California. Originally published on Medium. In 1923, a woman told police a Ouija board warned her that her husband would kill her. She shot him first. When the gun went off in Biggs, California, it wasn’t the sound that unsettled the town. A single shot in a farming community…