A Reporter at Large

Silence of the Lam

here's a particular quality to the moment a long-held secret is unearthed -- the one around which, subterraneously, a life is organized, like the temple of a ruined city. You take a step back and…

The Life and Death of the Chosen One

Rolling Stones Magazine/July, 2005 By Peter Wilkinson Born into the deviant religious cult Children of God, Ricky Rodriguez was raised as the Messiah who would lead believers against the Antichrist.…

Outdoor Adventure

Outside magazine, July 1995 The Martyrdom of Leonard Peltier He became a rallying cry for centuries of oppression against his people, one of America's most potent political symbols. But now, 20…

The Survivor

13. He doesn't much like doing these things, but he does them all the same. Bill Petit arrives at the high school alone and walks up the knoll from the parking lot, squinting against the low,…

You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!

The audience at a show featuring Disney characters. Something you learn rearing kids in this young millennium is that the word “Disney” works as a verb. As in, “Do you Disney?” Or, “Are we Disneying…

First Wave at Omaha Beach

UNLIKE what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the retelling of the story have softened the horror of Omaha Beach on D Day. This fluke of history is doubly ironic since no…

Bobby Fischer: from prodigy to pariah

Bobby Fischer, right, and Boris Spassky in their world championship meeting on 31 August 1972. Photograph: J. Walter Green/AP In 1999, I spent three days sitting in a variety of thermal baths dotted…

Christmas in Baltimore City, 2009

The funeral came off without a hitch, in spite of the snow. It was as dignified as we could have hoped for and no one from the altar mentioned what had happened. I parked my rental car on Argyle…

Midnight in the Garden of East Texas

Marjorie Nugent was the richest widow in an eccentric town full of rich widows. Bernie Tiede was an assistant funeral home director who became her companion. When she disappeared, nobody seemed…

THE CASTAWAYS

Interview

Earlier this year, Michael Stipe turned 51, and his band, R.E.M., released its 15th full-length album, Collapse Into Now (Warner Bros.). I highly doubt that there was ever a time in American culture…

Story of the Tokelau Teenagers Lost in the Ocean for 51 Days:…

A crewman on a commercial tuna-fishing boat was the first to spot it: something shiny and metallic in the water off the ship's bow. The crewman alerted the navigator, and the 280-foot San Nikunau…

The Lazarus File

I t was a burglary gone awry. That s how it looked, at least, to the Los Angeles police detectives who arrived at a gated condo complex in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles on the evening of…

The Long Con by Brendan Kiley - Seattle Features

Because this story has to start somewhere, let's begin on any given night in early 2009. It's probably drizzling, and a cluster of people is standing outside the wooden apartment building on the…

Are You Sure You Want To Quit The World?

Update, March 16, 2011: Back in October, GQ correspondent Nadya Labi took us into the shadowy cyber-world of "Li Dao," a seemingly sweet nurse doling out advice in suicide chat rooms on how to best…

Church Burners

It was one of the most perplexing crimes anyone could recall ten churches in East Texas torched in six weeks. But even more mysterious was the fact that the arsonists were two local boys, raised as…

A Kiss Before Dying

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. For public distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, contact ccasey@texasmonthly.com for reprint information and fees. WHEN…

Sad as Hell

When we self-diagnose, we look for control factors. Sometimes we invent them. The goal of solipsistic anxiety is to find an individual agent that explains our misery. We eliminate possibilities…

The Setup

  You may have heard the name Christopher Butler in the news lately but certainly not for reasons that the 49-year-old Concord resident would want you to know about. I’ve been following…

My Favorite Teacher

ONE NIGHT TWENTY YEARS AGO, my biology teacher picked up a seventeen-year-old hitchhiker named Jefferson Wesley. Hitchhikers were rare on Chicago's exclusive North Shore, where kids owned Camaros…

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

In the winter of 1965, writer Gay Talese arrived in Los Angeles with an assignment from Esquire to profile Frank Sinatra. The legendary singer was approaching fifty, under the weather, out of sorts,…

Innocence Lost

Since August 23, 1992, Anthony Graves has been behind bars for the gruesome murder of a family in Somerville. There was no clear motive, no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, and the…

My Student, the 'Terrorist'

By Jeanne Theoharis Pale and gaunt, he stood there, having endured three years of pretrial solitary confinement. " Alhamdullilah," he said. Yes. He had allowed an acquaintance to stay with him in…

How Slavery Really Ended in America

On May 23, 1861, little more than a month into the Civil War, three young black men rowed across the James River in Virginia and claimed asylum in a Union-held citadel. Fort Monroe, Va., a…

How Slavery Really Ended in America

On May 23, 1861, little more than a month into the Civil War, three young black men rowed across the James River in Virginia and claimed asylum in a Union-held citadel. Fort Monroe, Va., a…

John Jeremiah Sullivan Reviews David Foster Wallace's Last Novel,…

One of the few detectable lies in David Foster Wallace's books occurs in his essay on the obscure '90s-era American tennis prodigy Michael Joyce, included in Wallace's first nonfiction anthology, A…

A poem by Stephen Dobyns

My stepdaughter and I circle round and round. You see, I like the music loud, the speakers throbbing, jam-packing the room with sound whether Bach or rock and roll, the volume cranked up so each…

The Lost Boys

In December 1970 two teenagers disappeared from the Heights neighborhood, in Houston. Then another and another and another. As the number of missing kids grew, no one realized that the most prolific…

Why BoingBoing's Doctorow Is Wrong About Times' Pay Wall | Commentary…

Simon DumencoGiven all the turmoil around the world, it's an incredibly harrowing time to be journalist. Case in point: Four bloggers from BoingBoing, as you've probably already heard, were captured…