crime
"How forensic linguists use grammar, syntax and vocabulary to help crack cold cases."
No one in my family wanted to talk about Harold’s life as a contract killer for the Mob. Then one day he called me.
In 1987, two innocent teen-agers went to prison for murder. Thirty-seven years later, a juror learned she got it wrong.
The city’s homicide unit granted a year of unprecedented access to photographer Richard Sharum. His pictures tell a vivid story of cops, criminals, and victims—and the violent act that binds them together.
A journey inside Mexico’s underground vanilla economy
Advice from the world's greatest art thief
After a painting by the Dutch artist sold at auction, a movie producer claimed to be the owner. It later vanished from sight, with a trail leading to Caribbean tax havens and a jailed Chinese billionaire.
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It’s not easy to see inside a black-box. Here’s how WIRED journalists report on the technologies that quietly shape our lives.
In the spring of 1961, Georges Lemay, a dapper thirty-six-year-old French Canadian, spent his days holed up in his cottage on a private island on a river in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montre…
George Stebbins was tearing down a stone wall in the cellar of his home in Northfield, Massachusetts when he uncovered the bones. A skull emerged first, then the spine and the bones of the arms and…
The long read: In 2016, artist César Aréchiga talked one of Mexico’s most dangerous maximum security prisons into letting him run art classes for its inmates, many of them violent gang members. Could he really change their lives?
The crypto money-laundering market is tighter than at any time in the past decade, and the few big players are moving a “shocking” amount of currency.
Cops have been given an incredible set of legal powers immunizing them from the fatal errors of their own decisions—including their decision to do nothing in Uvalde, Texas.
In a 1922 Post article, an ex-bootlegger offers advice for how to break into the business.
Welcome to Video’s customers thought their payments were untraceable. They couldn’t have been more wrong. The untold story of the case that shredded the myth of Bitcoin’s anonymity.
A couple allegedly used a “laundry list” of technical measures to cover their tracks. They didn’t work.
Cryptocurrency is not merely a bad investment or speculative bubble. It’s worse than that: it’s a full-on fraud.
It was the deadliest U.S. transportation disaster in a decade. The man behind it was one of the most notorious confidential informants in FBI history.
Cody Easterday wagered hundreds of millions of dollars on the price of beef. He lost.
Mandy Matney kept a harsh spotlight trained on South Carolina’s Murdaugh family until they became impossible for anyone to ignore
On a remote island in Maine, a group of friends thought they witnessed one man killing another with an ax. But no one was ever arrested. In a small town far out at sea, justice sometimes works a little differently.
Cybersecurity experts tracing money paid by American businesses to Russian ransomware gangs found it led to one of Moscow’s most prestigious addresses.
For five years, a mysterious figure has been stealing books before their release. Is it espionage? Revenge? A trap? Or a complete waste of time?
In the mid-sixties, Candace Mossler was one of the most widely known socialites in Houston. She was in her forties, vivacious and full of charm, with wavy blond hair, deep-blue eyes, and a surgically enhanced figure that was often remarked upon in the many newspaper columns written about her.
The long read: An intrepid expert with dozens of books to his name, Stéphane Bourgoin was a bestselling author, famous in France for having interviewed more than 70 notorious murderers. Then an anonymous collective began to investigate his past
Billed as the most secure phone on the planet, An0m became a viral sensation in the underworld. There was just one problem for anyone using it for criminal means: it was run by the police
It was the most shocking crime of its day, 27 boys from the same part of town kidnapped, tortured, and killed by an affable neighbor named Dean Corll. Forty years later, it remains one of the least understood—or talked about—chapters in Houston's history.
From the depths of poverty, Du Yuesheng rose through Shanghai’s underworld to become one of the most influential, and overlooked, figures in modern China.
Conservationists saw the 6-year-old brown bear as a symbol of hope. Villagers saw him as a menace. Then he turned up dead.
The young woman who mysteriously drowned in the Ropers Motel pool in 1966 might have remained anonymous forever, if not for cutting-edge genetics, old-fashioned genealogy—and the kindness of a small West Texas town.
In Scott Kimball, the FBI thought it had found a high-value informant who could help solve big cases. What it got instead was lies, betrayal, and murder.
In 1974, John Patterson was abducted by the People’s Liberation Army of Mexico—a group no one had heard of before. The kidnappers wanted $500,000, and insisted that Patterson’s wife deliver the ransom.
‘It’s a trip just being out’: at the local Greyhound bus station with newly released men from the Texas State Penitentiary
Inside the distinctive, largely unknown ideology of American policing — and how it justifies racist violence.
In Sept. 9, 1975, William Osterhoudt, a local school principal, looked out at an implausible scene unfolding at the pink house belonging to his neighbor on United Street. Key West Fire Chief Joseph…
John Franzese Jr. helped send his father, notorious Colombo family mobster Sonny Franzese, to prison. Then he turned up in Indianapolis.
The long read: In my career, I have investigated many of the UK’s worst disasters. Few cases were as harrowing as the sinking of the Marchioness in 1989, which left scores dead and almost impossible to identify
The feds knew him as a prolific bank robber. But the bearded man who eluded them for so long was not who they imagined him to be. And absolutely no one expected the story to end the way it did.
Hitman-for-hire darknet sites are all scams. But some people turn up dead nonetheless
How an obscure legal document turned New York’s court system into a debt-collection juggernaut.
Two people went for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. Only one made it out.
Last December, a Canadian pharmaceuticals executive and his wife were found strangled in their home. No one knows who did it or why, but everyone has a theory.
The shooting of a civilian exposes the underbelly of a small town police department.
The author spent a day with three men in a high-end security detail to find out how it feels to be safe.
Discover extraordinary true stories celebrating the diversity of humanity. Click to read Narratively, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
A long-dormant police investigation gives the case new life.
A father took his 10-year-old fishing. She fell in the water and drowned. It was a tragic accident—then he was charged with murder.
Mexico’s drug cartels are moving into the gasoline industry—infiltrating the national oil company, selling stolen fuel on the black market and engaging in open war with the military.
Andrew Goldstein’s crime set in motion a dramatic shift in how we care for the violent mentally ill. Including for himself—when he’s released this month.
Is the Chinese government behind one of the boldest art-crime waves in history?
Having fallen on hard times, a former football star and the pride of his small town decides to rob the local bank. His weapons of choice: Craigslist, bear mace, and an inner tube.
Earlier this spring, Jeff Pike, the head of the infamous Texas-based Bandidos motorcycle club, went on trial in federal court for racketeering. Prosecutors called him a ruthless killer, the man behind one of the deadliest biker shoot-outs in American history, at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. Pike, however, said he was just a good family man. On Thursday, jurors announced their verdict.
The inside story of the first homicide in America’s most secure prison.
The inside story of the first homicide in America’s most secure prison.
The long read: Under Vladmir Putin, gangsterism on the streets has given way to kleptocracy in the state
She keeps watch over one of the largest databases of missing persons in the country. For Meaghan Good, the disappeared are still out here, you just have to know where to look.
In Northern Albania, vengeance is as likely a form of restitution as anything the criminal-justice system can offer.