On Christmas Eve, a pretty, young, pregnant wife goes missing. Right after the Iraq war, her body washes up, and her husband is arrested. With its heartbreaking details and perfect timing, the Laci Peterson murder has become America’s No. 1 crime and human-interest story. In Modesto, California, where National Enquirer reporters wield huge checks, cable-news anchors fight over gruesome autopsy exclusives, and the most elusive prey is Scott Peterson’s “motive,” Maureen Orth reports on three families, a town, and an industry, all consumed by a national obsession.
Does it get more bizarre than it’s been getting lately? Apparently, yes. From Michael Jackson’s increasingly freakish appearance to his voodoo death spells, to the disturbing revelations in a $21.2 million civil suit against him, the pop star’s life has been spinning out of control. Investigating his spiraling debt, his grandiose schemes, and his controversial relationship with children, the author wonders if Jackson is as crazy as he seems—or a cool manipulator of his own fame.
February 2003 To the Editor: Most of America knew Mr. Rogers by his TV neighborhood but Mr. Rogers had another neighborhood in Nantucket at Smith Point. His unimposing, weathered, “Crooked…
Original Publication: New York Times Magazine, Spring 2002 “Artem,” I said to my young interpreter in the Tajik city of Dushanbe on a day of particularly fierce “Tajik Torture” –…
No matter who controls Afghanistan, its opium crop—more than 70 percent of the world’s supply—is creating narco-societies throughout Central Asia, from Russia to Pakistan. In Tajikistan, the author discovers the extent of the region’s drug corruption, which may prove more destructive than any terrorist threat.
In 1944, with a temporary commission as a general, 32-year-old reporter Ruth Gruber brought 1,000 World War II refugees to America aboard a U.S. military transport ship. That journey, recounted in her book Haven and now in a CBS mini-series, inspired Gruber’s still-vital career as a warrior of word and image.