Rafael del Castillo and I had never met, but a mutual friend put us in touch before I left for Cartagena. “Rafa” came from one of the leading families there and had married a former beauty queen. “The night you arrive, come to dinner at my house,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I’ll pick you up.” True to his word, Rafa appeared promptly at my hotel and brought me to his home, the top-floor apartment in a gleaming twelve-story glass and concrete building in the Bocagrande area. The slick boutiques and luxury residential towers of this chic stretch of waterfront, bordering a peninsula just south of the city’s colonial center, sprang up only in the past decade. Today Bocagrande, which has some of Colombia’s most expensive real estate, is the neighborhood of choice for those who prefer, and can afford, ocean-side modern.
Read moreFess Parker, who died yesterday at 85, was a childhood hero of mine as the star of the TV series Davy Crockett. I got to know him, however, because he…
Read moreFor me, each day in Ghana has gotten better. Yesterday I met my first African Chief, or Nana. He was resplendent in a blue and gold kinte cloth and he…
Read moreIt is with great sadness that we announce the death of Timothy Joseph Russert.
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Special correspondent Maureen Orth’s investigation into the “Craigslist Murder” explored the dark corners of the Internet and of the psyche of alleged killer Philip Markoff. She spoke with VF Daily about the public’s fascination with the crime and how she managed to get her story.
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