Investigative Reporting

June 20, 2007

by Ron Chepesiuk

No one had ever seen 44 pounds of cocaine in New York City before.
– Ken Robinson, DEA agent

In the summer of 1978, the DEA's New York City branch office received a letter from a citizen's committee representing the Jackson Heights neighborhood in the borough of Queens. "I'm concerned about the violence in our district and the crime wave the cocaine traffic is causing," the letter read. "The DEA is the government agency responsible for investigating drugs. You need to do something about it."

Updated 6/20/07

by Hal Mansfield

The Great Southwest Manhunt of 1998 came to an end on June 10, 2007, not with blazing gunfire, but when a solitary cowboy got off his horse, walked over and tugged on what he thought might be a saddle blanket, partially buried in the soil of southeast Utah. He found what over 500 officers from 75 law-enforcement agencies, the FBI and National Guard units, using helicopters search dogs and Navajo trackers, could not find nine years earlier.

When the cowboy, Eric Bayles, of Blanding, Utah, pulled the material out of the dirt, it turned out to be a bulletproof vest. Further searching revealed a backpack. He saw some things in the backpack and noticed some other items, also mostly buried, that caused him immediately to contact the San Juan County, Utah, sheriff's office.

by Lona Manning

Mary and Robert Halsey

Robert Halsey is in prison in Massachusetts. He's in his 70s, in poor health and he's been behind bars since 1993. Officially, he was convicted of sexual assault on children, but in another sense, he was convicted of being the bogeyman. His trial transcript makes for chilling reading -- and not for the reason you might expect. It raises the frightening possibility that an innocent person was accused and convicted of a childish concoction of fantasy and fear.

April 14, 2003

by Ryan Ross

Copyright by Ryan Ross. 2003. All rights reserved. Copying and posting or otherwise disseminating any portion of this article is a violation of copyright law.

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Editor's Note:

On July 9, 2008, Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy stated that DNA tests conducted by Bode Technology Group revealed that skin cells left behind on JonBenet Ramsey's long underwear point to a killer other than the girl's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, or her brother, Burke. Mrs. Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006 at age 49.

by John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne

Scientific crime solving or sci-crime – it is an image upon which much of the FBI's awesome reputation is based. Humans are fallible, are inclined to lie and are often motivated by anything but the truth. The history of crime fighting in the United States is littered with eyewitnesses who misidentified a suspect, defense lawyers who persuaded juries to find reasonable doubt, and suspects who had credible alibis. The physical evidence on the other hand is the silent, definitive witness. The traces of explosives on Timothy McVeigh's clothes in Oklahoma City, the bloody shoe-prints left by the killer of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in Los Angeles, the saliva traces recovered from the sealed envelope of a letter claiming responsibility for the bombing of the World Trade Center…all these offer certainty. And certainty equals proof.

by Ronald J. Lawrence

Prologue

When Harvey Martin Zelin came to the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri in 1984, he was heralded, not only by others, but by himself, as a Messiah who would lead the people of this extensive recreational area into financial paradise. He would replace the bitter taste of disappointment and deprivation many of its residents knew with the sweet taste of prosperity. Economic revival with its accompanying wealth, he assured them, was just around the corner and he would make it happen.

by Ronald J. Lawrence

Prologue

Joseph H. Langworthy Jr. was a man of strong convictions and unshakable principles. A lawyer with a practice in Pacific, a community on the southwest fringes of the St. Louis suburbs, he tolerated no abuses of his profession and of the law.

He often was the center of controversy he sometimes created. He had been city attorney of nearby Times Beach, his hometown, but was dismissed when he charged that municipal officials had violated state laws in their administration of the police department. In Pacific, he sent tremors through the local political establishment when he challenged the qualifications of the newly elected police judge.